The Power of Identity
An organization's identity ultimately boils down to its values and goals—CL4. In regard to action, these must be used to govern accountability and to determine what resolutions of disputes are acceptable.
Values & Goals (CL4) ↔ Accountability (CL2)
Shared values and organizational goals must influence what employees are accountable for and vice versa.
Details
Individual employees allow themselves to be oriented by the shared values, and they orient their own goals to enable achievement of the organization's goals. The reverse also holds true: employees should orient the values, goals and strategies of the organization, to a greater or lesser degree, according to their particular role and responsibility (CL2).
So there needs to be a channel: CL4B ↔ CL2B and it is named: ORIENTATION.
Values & Goals (CL4) ↔ Issue Resolution (CL3)
Particular goals can easily raise hackles and cause internal managerial and political clashes that call for resolution. At the same time shared values and goals should also play an important part in determining which resolutions of issues are acceptable, and which are not.
Details
New values and goals can activate group-based disputes. However, the social and practical imperative of common values and organizational goals mostly helps prevent clashes with professionals or unions dragging on; and is therefore a key factor in activating resolution of such disputes. The resolutions that occur will activate specific values and goals by highlighting and potentially modifying their significance.
We name the CL4B ↔ CL3I channel: ACTIVATION.
Disputes between divisions of the organization often herald or signify differences of opinion about what the value or goals of the organization should be or of what their implications are. So resolution engages staff in debating suitable values and their realization in strategies and other goals. Any genuinely shared values or agreed strategy has the power to take the minds of divisional chiefs away from their own empires. Instead, values and strategy should engage them and help them become stronger by resolving outstanding issues constructively.
The CL4B ↔ CL3O channel is named: ENGAGEMENT.
Values & Goals (CL4) - Necessary Action (CL1)
There is no CL4B ↔ CL1B channel.
Why? ►
Necessary actions (CL1) do not, or at least should not, influence what values and objectives are chosen for an organization. Although values and objectives (CL4) must eventually show up in actions taken (CL1), they cannot directly influence them. Any value or strategic goal must be mediated by the accountability (CL2) of a person in a post or sometimes via a special assignment to a particular employee.
Temporary Completeness
At this point, there is a robust model—it generates values and goals for achievement, and it delivers these despite differences of viewpoint and power-plays.
The model might deliver results if the environment is benign. However, it lacks specific organizational mechanisms for determining suitable goals, or for shaping its values. The prime forces to this point are sense of duty, individual pressures and group interests—and these are insufficient for sustained successful achievement under stress.
- To remedy this deficiency, we must move up a level to the first method of improving effectiveness: activation of the empiricist mode.
Originally posted: 17-Sep-2011