It’s never just one thing. Organisations are complex. Complex organisations more so. A malfunction in one area can have profound consequences elsewhere. Everything is connected , nothing is independent. That’s why being a chief executive/senior manager can feel like being engaged in a game of Whack-a-mole, bashing at problems here and there, smash one problem only for another to pop up elsewhere.
Address the budget issues and suddenly performance pops up as an issue, hit that on the head and recruitment and retention becomes a problem, that in turn throws up issues around EDI, which leads to concern about the quality of leadership and the culture within the organisation all of which impacts on the organisation reputation.
Having got the budget back on course and seen an improvement in performance the risk is that the recruitment and retention issues will undo the good work. Either because we have to bust the budget to recruit and retain the best or because are failure to do so robs us of the experience and expertise we need to maintain progress.
If we invested more in leadership and development we might see the gains in retention, improved morale, fewer grievances and complaints of management bullying. A happy workforce is a more productive workforce. But management development is expensive and a long term strategy the budget and performance issues are here and now. Having said that there might be something in this work/life balance thinking that would reduce our levels of absenteeism and reenergise our managers.
Similarly if we could make more progress on our EDI strategy not only would we solve some of our recruitment and retention problems and have a happier more motivated workforce the addition diversity just might give us the extra creativity we need to address the challenges we face.
We focus on budget and performance but this leads to a firefighting approach when we know that addressing the cultural issues, making a reality of the EDI rhetoric, and better leadership would greatly reduce the risk of fires.
