In today’s rapidly changing and expanding business environment it is important for organizations to be competitive. Globalization of markets combined with rapidly evolving technology are forcing businesses to seek new methods to remain competitive and survive (“Managing Organization Change”). The widespread access to technology and “nano-second change” is no longer enough to provide organizations with a competitive advantage (Schawbel, 2012). Companies cannot survive solely on technology. Recent studies are pointing to organizational health as the new factor behind motivating employees to be more productive and aligning companies with their objectives (Schawbel, 2012). According to Schawbel, “The seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has less to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are” (2012). The article Organizational Health: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage by Scott Keller and Colin Price highlights many of the advantages and benefits of pursuing a strategy based on organizational health to build or rebuild a company.
Keller and Price dissect the elements associated with establishing a “healthy” organization and emphasize the importance of organizational health in increasing a company’s overall performance. According to the authors, “organizational health propels performance” 1 (Keller & Price, 2011). Organizational health is the organization’s ability to “align, execute, and renew itself faster than competitors” (Keller & Price, 2011, p. 2) which enables the company to adapt to present and future circumstances. The authors recognize five frames to direct and analyze performance and health on: aspire, assess, architect, act, and advance. When companies aspire they set clearly defined health and performance goals for the company to achieve.
Studies found that companies with clearly defined aspirations for both health and performance were 4.4 times more likely to be successful than companies that focused solely on performance (Keller & Price, 2011). Companies that allocated time to assess their problems were four times more likely to view their transformations as successful (Schawbel, 2012). Architect refers to the process of setting priorities and establishing processes and incentives to shift the organization’s mindset 10 (Schawbel, 2012). When acting, the article cited pilot programs as the best means of assessing the impact of newly implemented change on performance (Schawbel, 2012). And lastly, to advance, companies must transition from being in the transformational period to continuous improvement (Keller & Price, 2011). When the five frames are carried out correctly and organizations provide transparent communication with employees, organizational health will be established.
The article supports my understanding of feedback as an ingredient of effective organizational performance because the authors constantly cite the importance of communication across all levels of the organization. When implementing change communication is necessary to manage resistance. By allowing employees to participate in change and facilitate feedback and recommendations employees are more likely to feel a part of the change rather than threatened by it and are more likely to show support (“Managing Organization Change”). A healthy organization gets smarter as time progresses because leaders are open with peers, learn from one another, unafraid to communicate, and identify issues and mistakes within the company (Schawbel, 2012).
I desire to work in the business field and eventually secure a positon at the C-level suite. The information presented in this article is valuable to me because it reveals the most important factor that drives company performance: health. According to the article, “at least 50 percent of any organization’s long-term success is driven by its health” (Keller & Price, 2011, p. 3). As the health of an organization increases, the more of its intelligence it is able to utilize (Schawbel, 2012). By focusing on the health of an organization I can implement change that will affect the company positively in the short and long run.
References
Keller, S. & Price, C. (2011). Organizational Health: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage.
McKinsey Quarterly. Retrieved from
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/organizational_health_the_ultimate_com
petitive_advantage
Schawbel, D. (2012). Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business. The
Forbes.com. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/03/26/why-
organizational-health-trumps-everything-else-in-business/
Managing Organization Change. INC.com. Retrieved from
http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/managing-organizational-change.html
