Seven_Practices_of_Successful_Organizations

Yes we can apply several of the seven practices of successful organizations to the article “Managers Need to know what their Workers aren’t Telling Them”. In order to make sure that the organization is functioning to the best of its ability we need to make sure that all employees, managers and owners are as happy and content as we can feasibly make them without doing so at the expense of others. For the heading ‘We’re Not Interested in Taking One for The Team’ I have decided that could go under the category of comparatively high compensation. I believe this because many employees would not be happy to see a person in higher power leave that was already making more money than them get to walk out of the office with an extra bonus package, while the lower level employees are being told that they cannot get a pay increase because the company does not have enough money to provide them with one. This can lead to employees putting in less effort when they work because they feel as though they are not being fairly compensated for the work they already provide. In the article there was a heading titled ‘We’re Tired of Picking up the Slack’ I believe that this heading can go under the category of self-managed teams and decentralization. I put them in this pile because in the article it stated that “everyone knows who isn’t performing well in their unit” if they are in groups and made to have responsibility to other people who are in the same situation as them and they are held responsible to their teammates instead of their boss there could be a greater sense of commitment to the job. Also team members know more about each other than the boss does, they could assign people who they know are stronger in some areas to certain tasks while other people who are stronger in other areas to work on other tasks, because they work side by side everyday they may have a better sense of who would fit better where than the boss would. With the issue ‘Measure me on Results’ which is shown in the article I feel as though this issue is best related to the practice of comparatively high compensation. I believe this because if people feel as though they are doing work faster and better than others who are getting more money or the same amount of money for procrastinating and using time inefficiently than they will become angry and not put as much effort into their work as they would have done if they were being paid for the amount and quality of their work. Managers need to realize that they are in charge of the atmosphere in the workplace if several workers are unhappy then everyone becomes unhappy and then it is no longer a good environment. To resolve this, managers need to come up with a system of pay which does not reward laziness over hard work and time management. Many employees feel as though they are being micromanaged which leads us to the next heading ‘Stop Micromanaging Me’, if you did hire correctly then there is no need to micromanage! Doing so only creates an atmosphere of mistrust between employees and managers. To rectify this problem we would look at the practice of self-managed teams and decentralization. If you do not give employees the ability to work freely and come up with new ideas and experiment then they are never going to grow or take chances in case they fail which could make the company lose out on some really great ideas. These employees were hired on the basis that the company found them qualified and able to the job that they are assigned, by not allowing them to do that, you are not only hurting the level of trust in the workplace but also not allowing your employees to do the job that they were hired to do. A common mistake which many managers make is that they complain that employees do not act like they are business owners. The way the employees feel can be summed up by the next heading ‘I’m not the business owner’ this can be described in the principle of comparatively high compensation. This happens because employees do not feel as though they are being paid enough money for the amount of work which managers expect them to perform. Expecting employees to think the way business owners do while not being adequately compensated for it is not fair for the employees, there has to be a balance of work initiative and pay for performance. The last thing in the article for which I found a relation to a practice of successful organizations was ‘Measuring team leaders,’ the practices which I thought this heading was related to both extensive training and self- managed teams and decentralization. I thought that the measuring team leaders heading was related to extensive training because in the article it talks about how the managers have a higher EQ level than those that aren’t managers, which brings up the question whether they were trained because of this, or did they develop the higher EQ because they were trained' Training is not a right and it should only go to the people who show the most promise within the company so that the company isn’t wasting their time and money. I think that this topic also relates to self-managed teams and decentralization because that part of the article was on who is more successful in leading teams. It is interesting to look over the facts for this particular issue to see why those in management are in charge. I thought that this was a very good article to analyze using the seven practices of successful organizations, and even though not all seven were used and it seemed more like three it was interesting to apply these ideas to actual situations to see what it relates to. I thought this was a great learning experience because of the way we were able to apply in-class knowledge to outside situations.