By Kim Jong-nam
Usually, "How are you?" is not a genuine question, but a question asked out of habit and courtesy. However, nowadays, we really mean it ― we are seriously inquiring after people's health and the state of their affairs.
"Goodbye" has undergone a similar transformation; it now means "I hope you stay healthy." In times of stability; "How are you doing?" really means "How have you been doing?" But in times of tumult, we are focused on the actual present and even the future. Being healthy today does not necessarily mean you will be healthy tomorrow.
How can we maintain our health? Doctors emphasize what we already know: exercising regularly, sleeping enough, having meals at regular times, washing your hands, relieving stress, refraining from drinking and smoking too much, etc. These are well-known precautions that many people still neglect. However, you may meet a person who says that he or she has kept up all the above items and lived a regular and healthy life but has cancer. Is this surprising? Not totally. These habits, although powerful, do not protect against everything.
It is the same thing with organizations. Many distinguished practitioners of organizational development, such as Richard Beckhard and John Gardner, have outlined items that they believe to be instrumental to creating a healthy organization. For example, managing performance, relationships, culture, HR, or learning. They argue that maintaining organizational health will lead to organizational prosperity.
These theorists, however, are primarily concerned with the internal workings of organizations, and neglect to address external factors or influences. When organizations are not affected by external factors, this perspective works perfectly; however, as has been revealed by the coronavirus outbreak, during times of external tumult, this perspective is flawed. Will organizations that are otherwise "healthy" be able to remain so during this storm? Should we make the long-term investments that we normally would in order to ensure our organization's future health? Should we maintain our current size and structure without making any adjustments? We need to think about whether our previous efforts to create a culture will be relevant in this new future. Thus, we cannot deem an organization "healthy" without taking into account its abilities in change management. This means that organizations that are too focused on internal health and do not take into account external factors will not be able to adapt: paradoxically, their very focus on health is what makes them unable to stay healthy! Similarly, focusing too much on the present, and not enough on the future, will make organizations ill-equipped to deal with the inevitable changes that each new environment brings.
Given this, organizations need to be equipped with the adaptive coping abilities that Edgar Schein, another organizational theorist, emphasized were crucial for an organization to be healthy. According to him, abilities that help organizations deal with any changes in the internal or external environment increase organizational health and effectiveness. He suggested that organizational conditions that encourage effective coping are the effective communication of trustworthy information, the executing of necessary changes based on aforementioned information with creativity and flexibility, commitment and engagement to the organizational goal, and an internal climate of support and freedom from threat.
Of course, it is impossible to use the same standard to measure the organizational health of every organization because each one has its own unique criteria, priorities, and resources. However, the proactive and active change management capabilities of an organization should be major objects of consideration in any assessment of an organization's effectiveness, especially in terms of crisis management. It is essential to develop these capabilities during safe or stable conditions, not when a crisis has already begun. Looking around, we see many organizations do not have these abilities, which means they will not be ready for the next crisis. If so, what exactly should they do to develop them?
First, organizations should be more aware about potential threats, risks, and vulnerabilities. They need to know how to identify these and calculate their business impacts. Of course, they also need to be equipped with appropriate responses and countermeasures. It takes time to do this.
Second, they should be agile and flexible enough to benchmark and train their own change agents to help them make the necessary changes. Many organizations are not adept in developing skills of their staff who could otherwise lead through drastic periods of changes. They need to be well-informed and develop efficient practices. This also takes time.
Third, organizations need to foster the growth of experts who can deal with psychological fatigue, deprivation, stress, and depression. It is impossible for an organization to be healthy without healthy individuals. Once again, it takes time to develop expert employees who know about the organization, its business, its culture, and its people.
In addition, it is important for organizations to be knowledgeable about the structures appropriate for transforming their business, which many organizations have recently done as they have begun to move to being able to work both online and offline. Furthermore, organizations need to develop a new mindset in their employees that will help them adjust. This will increase their reformative abilities, which will allow them to remain healthy. However, all of these things cannot happen within a day. To stay healthy in the future requires acting today.
Kim Jong-nam is the founding CEO of META (www.imeta.co.kr) and the author of three books on organizational culture and leadership. He works as an organizational development consultant globally. He has an office in Jakarta, Indonesia, as well as in Seoul.
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"Goodbye" has undergone a similar transformation; it now means "I hope you stay healthy." In times of stability; "How are you doing?" really means "How have you been doing?" But in times of tumult, we are focused on the actual present and even the future. Being healthy today does not necessarily mean you will be healthy tomorrow.
How can we maintain our health? Doctors emphasize what we already know: exercising regularly, sleeping enough, having meals at regular times, washing your hands, relieving stress, refraining from drinking and smoking too much, etc. These are well-known precautions that many people still neglect. However, you may meet a person who says that he or she has kept up all the above items and lived a regular and healthy life but has cancer. Is this surprising? Not totally. These habits, although powerful, do not protect against everything.
It is the same thing with organizations. Many distinguished practitioners of organizational development, such as Richard Beckhard and John Gardner, have outlined items that they believe to be instrumental to creating a healthy organization. For example, managing performance, relationships, culture, HR, or learning. They argue that maintaining organizational health will lead to organizational prosperity.
These theorists, however, are primarily concerned with the internal workings of organizations, and neglect to address external factors or influences. When organizations are not affected by external factors, this perspective works perfectly; however, as has been revealed by the coronavirus outbreak, during times of external tumult, this perspective is flawed. Will organizations that are otherwise "healthy" be able to remain so during this storm? Should we make the long-term investments that we normally would in order to ensure our organization's future health? Should we maintain our current size and structure without making any adjustments? We need to think about whether our previous efforts to create a culture will be relevant in this new future. Thus, we cannot deem an organization "healthy" without taking into account its abilities in change management. This means that organizations that are too focused on internal health and do not take into account external factors will not be able to adapt: paradoxically, their very focus on health is what makes them unable to stay healthy! Similarly, focusing too much on the present, and not enough on the future, will make organizations ill-equipped to deal with the inevitable changes that each new environment brings.
Given this, organizations need to be equipped with the adaptive coping abilities that Edgar Schein, another organizational theorist, emphasized were crucial for an organization to be healthy. According to him, abilities that help organizations deal with any changes in the internal or external environment increase organizational health and effectiveness. He suggested that organizational conditions that encourage effective coping are the effective communication of trustworthy information, the executing of necessary changes based on aforementioned information with creativity and flexibility, commitment and engagement to the organizational goal, and an internal climate of support and freedom from threat.
Of course, it is impossible to use the same standard to measure the organizational health of every organization because each one has its own unique criteria, priorities, and resources. However, the proactive and active change management capabilities of an organization should be major objects of consideration in any assessment of an organization's effectiveness, especially in terms of crisis management. It is essential to develop these capabilities during safe or stable conditions, not when a crisis has already begun. Looking around, we see many organizations do not have these abilities, which means they will not be ready for the next crisis. If so, what exactly should they do to develop them?
First, organizations should be more aware about potential threats, risks, and vulnerabilities. They need to know how to identify these and calculate their business impacts. Of course, they also need to be equipped with appropriate responses and countermeasures. It takes time to do this.
Second, they should be agile and flexible enough to benchmark and train their own change agents to help them make the necessary changes. Many organizations are not adept in developing skills of their staff who could otherwise lead through drastic periods of changes. They need to be well-informed and develop efficient practices. This also takes time.
Third, organizations need to foster the growth of experts who can deal with psychological fatigue, deprivation, stress, and depression. It is impossible for an organization to be healthy without healthy individuals. Once again, it takes time to develop expert employees who know about the organization, its business, its culture, and its people.
In addition, it is important for organizations to be knowledgeable about the structures appropriate for transforming their business, which many organizations have recently done as they have begun to move to being able to work both online and offline. Furthermore, organizations need to develop a new mindset in their employees that will help them adjust. This will increase their reformative abilities, which will allow them to remain healthy. However, all of these things cannot happen within a day. To stay healthy in the future requires acting today.
Kim Jong-nam is the founding CEO of META (www.imeta.co.kr) and the author of three books on organizational culture and leadership. He works as an organizational development consultant globally. He has an office in Jakarta, Indonesia, as well as in Seoul.
