Organisational Orientation!
Nutrition, medications, even the human body, everything which is organic more or less has some sort of expiration date. However, when dealing with organisation, I’m getting the impression that every single piece of effort lays a claim to last for eternity. On the other hand side, more and more people suffer from a lack of orientation. And I’m thinking to myself, that the two phenomena may be closely related.
Apparently, half-life of solutions within organisations decreases according to the increase in environmental turbulences. Why is it, that people still try to create solutions with an air of perfection, instead of concentrating on what’s really useful within a given span of organisational lifetime? At first glance, I have been tempted to blame an urge to overcome unfulfilled appreciation. But on second look this explanation appears too trivial.
What I really do believe is that people in organisations are lacking orientation. The orientation they require to make their own judgements about what would be called a fit-for-purpose solution. The societal trend of disorientation simply extends its arms into our life within organisations. And honestly, I cannot blame any hard working IT service professional for it. The Sarbanes-Oxley-Act, at the latest, but also ITIL, COBiT, ISO9000, ISO20000, Basel II, has played its part in killing orientation. Ironically it killed orientation in an attempt to provide for just the same.
Regulations, frameworks, best practices, standards are means for providing orientation between systems. They teach us little about orientation within systems. The gap of orientation they leave us behind with is tremendous. Yet they give us the impression of quality, value and achievement where we should bluntly look upon them as external contraints, wherever they may be applicable.
In my opinion, teaching is the central word there. Frameworks don’t teach us orientation. Rules and regulatories do neither. What we really do need in organisations is an environment, where people can experience their environment in a manner, which helps them learn orientation, so they can become adult partners in solution finding. So people can attach expiry dates to their solutions and thus relieve strain on organisational resources. According to the half-life the turbulences of their very own environment are calling for.
I will be glad to help create a working atmosphere for you, in which your people can gather the experience they need for this learning curve. I firmly believe that a reasonable concept for organisational orientation, avoiding permanent demotivation, is the key factor for any sound organisational evolution. A prerequisite, whose absence dooms any service provision to fail badly.
