Organizational excellence is based on best practices, best practices consist of processes, and processes must be sustained. Three types of grave consequences MAY originate from this simple premise:
– lack of leadership within the organization
– lack of adaptability and change readiness
– lack of innovation
Best practices are called so because they become the standard across an entire industry, which means that an entire industry becomes like one organization.
No matter which one of the numerous definitions of operational excellence we look at, we will surely come across with the terms performance, quality, efficiency and cost. Naturally, the value of all of these factors should be determined by corporate strategy, which in turn should be determined by the identity of the organization.
Reality is that factors like performance, quality, efficiency and cost have become THE strategy for most organizations, which is only possible if the company lacks identity. This means that most organizations in a given industry – players and suppliers alike – have become an undifferentiated mass.
The paradox is simple: the more obsessed an organization is about operational excellence, the more mechanical it becomes and the more mediocre the people performing the processes are, or forced to be. In such cases the organization is not dedicated to a cause, it is dedicated to the maintenance of processes: essentially it has no purpose. At this stage it rewards mediocrity with leadership positions and administrators run entire industries.
Due to the large number of players in each industry in advanced economies, and due to a substantially quantitative mindset that is predominant in administrative functions, an entire industry becomes like the weakest organization in that particular industry. This is one explanation why in most industries true innovation comes from the periphery and not from the mainstream.
This applies everywhere and when it comes to internal functions we may pick any division as an example: marketing, PR, IT, engineering, sales, whatever.
For now let’s look at recruiting in particular and HR in general. Recruiting is interesting because this is an industry itself where innovation and leadership is almost non-existent, and change readiness merely means lack of control. Everywhere in the world recruiting companies, internal recruiting organizations (and HR departments) operate almost identically and the tendency of degeneration seems to be unstoppable, despite the unbridled enthusiasm of players[1].
Two observations:
– the style of behavior and the expectations of corporate players (HR managers on various levels and hiring managers representing areas of specialization) towards recruiting companies and the internal recruiting reflects rigidity that comes from the administrator attitude which is favorable for the maintenance of the system only. Communication protocols within the organization are mostly non-existent, most projects are not launched appropriately, or they are launched for the wrong reasons, meaning that expectations continually change, but the reason for change is often the rationalization of previously made wrong decisions, or solving the results of these. Mostly there is a general lack of control and a general confusion because most actors in the process either do not know what they are doing and why (for whatever reason) or they have no chance to initiate change based on their insights and knowledge. When this is the case, employer branding initiatives are typically a farce: both employees and candidates can sing volumes about this.
– The behavior of the recruiting organization is also rigid, they maintain their own processes both when communicating with clients and candidates, trying to accommodate the clients’ changing expectations as much as possible. Motivation of the actors here, similarly to those in the client organization, is to perfectly maintain their part of the system, performing the process that is assigned to them. Activities are highly quantitative, almost impossible to discover any trace of quality and depth. Rigidity is so pervasive that there is no essential (qualitative) difference even between the behavior of older and younger players – and this is more than alarming since it is not the younger who acts wiser but the older who acts immature.
General conclusions
– once an organization becomes bureaucratic, best practices may hurt more than help
– bureaucratic organizations are desperately buying best practices from academia or less bureaucratic ones, because they can’t develop them internally: the organization can’t think
– the key is to de-bureauctratize periodically.
Let us know if you want to discuss ways out of this conundrum and share your insights with others in one of our small peer-group meetings!
[1] When it comes to vendors, this is more visible at recruiting companies and the vast majority of executive search firms and perhaps a little less visible at elite executive search firms that handle C level and board level assignments in mature markets, although the regression of the industry maybe observed among them as well.
Recruiting companies look for people with more specialized skills, while executive search firm look for people with more leadership skills. There is room here on touching on the problems of the “skills based, or “specialized” leadership phenomenon here, it is enough to mention only, that these leadership concepts are themselves the result of a declining tendency and are some of the contributing factors to the degeneration of the executive search or “leadership business”.