When organisations scale, they tend to become bureaucratic. The leaders become the sole decision makers and employees mere executers. Authority flows from organisational position, and not from needs of the task. As a result, producing outputs become the primary focus of the organisation. This creates a get-paid-go-home (GPGH) mentality among employees. From the employee’s perspective, there is no need to go above and beyond at work for a corporate whose intention is to treat them as money making resources. The relationship with an organisation is merely transactional.
But as someone studying how to create organisations with people who actually like their job, and thrive as a result of their environment, creating GPGH culture should be your biggest fear, because it directly impacts how businesses perform long-term. Creating mutually rewarding relationships are the baseline for building outcome focused employees and organisations.
Adding clarity to the output equation gives it direction, or the why. It promotes organisational equity, where thinkers and doers are not separated.
What creates organisational equity?
This, I’ve learned, is the difference between Founder lead vs CEO lead companies.
Founders have a vision, that pulls other like minded people to work toward a common goal. Their organisations tend to be smaller in size, and the culture of the organisation directly flows from the founder. The employees here have freedom and flexibility. In CEO-led organisations, the primary responsibility of the CEO is to maintain the success of the organisation by managing and controlling existing systems. Hence, they expect compliance from their employees. (The question is — will all organisations scale to become output and compliance focused?)
Task clarity versus Goal clarity: Task clarity leads to output. Outputs over time leads to plateaued growth and sub par performance. Large, bureaucratic organisations promote and reward task clarity. Their organisation is already in the mature phase of growth, and putting controls in place to sustain what has been achieved, is the CEO’s role.
Goal clarity leads to outcome. Outcomes over time lead to accelerated growth and high performance. Founders focus on outcomes because they are building and scaling their organisation to reach greater heights. Outcomes and high performance are necessary to achieve that goal.
The thoughts of this blog are sponsored by the book I’m currently reading — Totally Aligned Organisation by Raghu Ananthanarayanan.
Postscript/ Extra thoughts
I recently learned the science behind reaching the flow state. Flow state is achieved when challenge and skill meet. The thought process behind producing only outputs stems from the current generation’s mentality of Why should I think beyond what I’m dong right now? GPGH. Which I don’t blame, because I am the current generation, and I think that sometimes. But as someone studying organisational development and behaviour, maybe intentionally designing a job or a role that allows people to reach flow state easily, would make an organisation outcome focused, regardless of its size?
Reference — Four phases of organisational growth.
Until next time -
