HR Pulse

What are the qualities of successful organisations?

82% of South African employees report that co-worker behaviour has left them feeling frustrated, angry and hurt. This is according to the latest research survey undertaken by behavioural change experts, The Human Edge. At a recent executive breakfast held in Johannesburg, organisational psychologist Helene Vermaak – director and business owner at the company – also expanded on what the qualities of successful organisations are.

"We believe," said Vermaak, "that all successful organisations or institutions have two key qualities." These organisations are:

1. Smart: These companies develop intelligent strategies, marketing plans, product features and financial models that will lead to them getting a competitive advantage over their rivals. "They know where they're going and their strategy is clear," says Vermaak.

2. Healthy: These are cultures where people eliminate politics and confusion. This leads to higher morale, lower staff turnover and higher levels of innovation and productivity.

To qualify as a successful organisation, you need to make sure that in your company:

• Strategies, structures, processes and systems are in place, and
• A cultural operating system is in place, which is healthy.

Organisational health is often neglected

This is because it involves facing the realities of human behaviour that even the most committed executive is tempted to avoid.

"Recently, I met with a national sales manager of an organisation in the pharmaceutical industry, which is highly pressured in terms of issues such as targets and call rates," said Vermaak. "She has 76 people reporting into her and she is experiencing challenges in terms of two of her first-line sales managers – one in Cape Town and the other in KwaZulu-Natal."

The problem is that this national sales manager – because she wasn't dealing with the problems she was experiencing with these two first-line sales managers – was, in fact, authorising their behaviour to carry on.

As behaviours always come before results, it's critical to build new behavioural ground rules or behavioural contracts so that we can hold our employees accountable for everything that they do.

What are our contracts around behaviour in our teams?

Vital Smarts performed a worldwide study – in which approximately 7 000 people participated - to try and understand what the key cultural competencies you need to build in your business are so that your organisation can become successful.

The team asked participants the following questions:

1. What percentage of the people working around you, in your teams, are contributing at their full potential?

This question aimed to find out if the people surrounding the participants are:

• Fully engaged, and
• Self directed in their change.

"They look at where the business or organisation is going and say: 'I know how to align my personal behaviour to achieve those objectives," said Vermaak.

2. What percentage of people in your business believe they can say anything to anyone at any level if it will help improve results?

This question is directed at finding out if the culture of the organisation is open, honest and direct about the challenges it faces.

3. What percentage of your people believe that they can hold anyone accountable regardless of levels or position?

"Here," says Vermaak, "We're talking about peer accountability as well as top-down accountability."

4. What percentage of your people have high levels of confidence that management's latest initiative and strategic focus area will be a big success?

The organisation's research found that if you want your organisation to have a powerful cultural operating system, and ultimately be successful, you need four key skills in your company:

• Individual: Self-directed change,
• Interpersonal: Open dialogue,
• Team: Universal accountability, and
• Organisational: Influential leadership

Unfortunately, many companies that Vermaak has come across don't display these hallmarks of successful organisations:

"When we have a group of execs in the room, they emphatically pronounce: 'People in our organisation are allowed to speak up!' However, when we go deeper into the organisation, and ask the employees if they are indeed allowed to speak their minds, they say: 'The execs won't take it well if we give them feedback," says Vermaak.

Probably less than 10% of employees feel that they can speak up. This is a worrying statistic as research has proved that one of the key characteristics of successful organisations is that their employees feel that they won't be victimised if they voice their opinions. So how many truly successful organisations are really out there?

Lia Marus is the editor of HR Pulse. She has a BA in French, Italian and Linguistics from UCT, an MA in translation from Wits and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. She is currently studying towards her LLB through Unisa. Lia started her career off in corporate communications, where she worked as a sub-editor, researcher and marketing coordinator. She then heeded the call of the publishing world and went into the business-to-business publishing field. She worked as a sub-editor as well as a chief sub-editor. Before joining ITWeb, she managed an HR guidebook at a leading international publishing company.