Why your organisation is not growing as it should

What you need to know:

  • Addressing challenges. Reports indicating the problems and solutions that can take the organisation to a higher level have been presented to senior management or executives. However, knowing the challenges is one thing and implementing the action points required to address them is another thing.

A lot of investment has been put into companies/organisations ranging from capital, human resource to reengineered processes and systems as well as introduction of new products. However, the outcomes have not matched the heavy investment. Nearly 80 per cent of companies have failed to register any significant growth despite all the investment and business process enhancement made. Why?

The learning and reflection process is not built into the organisation process and procedures. There is no room for positive reflection, learning and action in our organisations. If lessons learned were fixed or adopted the same way the army fixes its mistakes immediately after a failed or successful mission, then optimal growth would be registered in companies.
Is your company, the kind that continually devises and develops processes that allows it to draw learning from its own or other’s experience? Is it committed to the process of learning? Is learning rooted in processes and procedures of your organisation? Is learning effectively being captured and maximally used to refine strategies and processes?
Your existence depends on the organisational ability to learn and adapt. It is only positive reflection and learning that can make you adopt to the unpredictable more quickly than your competitors.

There are so many things taking place in the organisations that if we learnt from them in the same way a car manufacturer notices a defect and immediately fixes it, then we would have strong organisations in Uganda.
Reports indicating the problems and solutions that can take the organisation to a higher level have been presented to senior management or executives. However, knowing the challenges is one thing and implementing the action points required to address them is another thing. What are the reasons why reflection, learning and actions have not been effectively used to improve practices?

The top-heavy management layers have hindered positive learning and reflections. The many management layers have encouraged reflections for accountability and not reflection for effectiveness.
Reflection for accountability focuses at meeting the target, but not whether the results were achieved in an effective and efficient way. The many layers do not allow certain things to filter through to senior management.

You have often heard statement such as “this problem is not for management.” We do not want to bother management with this problem and as a result, things remain unsolved.
Secondly, the issue of “managing politics” in organisations have hindered positive reflection and learning. Most people in leadership do not want to be told that things are not working. Do not want to be advised on areas that need to be improved.
Some people who come out to point out the wrongs have in some cases been pushed aside. As a result, many people do not offer their best to the organisation. Why?

You hear statement like, “even if we gave in our opinions, nothing will be done.” “So longer as I get my salary, that is all that matters, I do not want to get into the organisational politics.”
Staff are living in safe zones while organisations are going down the drainage. Some other people have utilised this gap to befriend the boss (people with power) to only feed them with what they want to hear thus misleading them.

It is high time organisation created a supportive learning environment that enables them to explore and adapt according to the lessons learnt. The same way a hospital minimises errors through encouraging blameless reporting, is the same way, organisations (both private and public) should invest in their learning processes and needs. The solution to growth is within not outside.

Ms Nakato is a Monitoring and Evaluation specialist. [email protected]
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