Many leaders and heads of organizations speak passionately about improvement initiatives and therein lies the problem. They merely speak and do nothing beyond that which is concrete enough to carry the momentum forward.
Mere lip service to improvement initiatives is not enough due to several reasons.
So unless there is a sincere follow-up from leaders and executives, their words remain just that, mere words.
In organizations where the leaders are not really professional but maintain a hands-off approach and run the organization through a close-knit coterie, improvement initiatives have even lesser chance of success.
The coterie would typically be highly defensive of its power base and hence protect its turf with needless aggression. The coterie will have high reluctance and resistance to any improvement initiative and also the change agents and will label the change agents as outsiders and create distance between them and the leaders.
The leaders in such organizations develop a comfort zone around themselves where no one in the coterie will challenge the leaders (and in fact some will act in a typical stooge-like manner), but instead leave no chance to show their absolute loyalty to the leaders.
Lip service in such organizations is very common. Evey quarter a new initiative is started with lot of fanfare and after few quarters no one even talks about it. The leaders are good at providing lip service with a lot of passion getting displayed but most of it would really not be real but fake.
Leaders in such organizations are experts in uttering words and more words. They seem to firmly believe in the following lines from the famous song "Words" by Boyzone:
"It's only words
And words are all I have
To take your heart away"
Unfortunately such leaders cause a lot of damage to the cultural fabric of the organization. The damage is, even more unfortunately, compounded by what is additionally caused by the stooges who are a part of the close-knit coterie.
Mere lip service to improvement initiatives is not enough due to several reasons.
- First and foremost, employees in general and those charged to drive the improvement initiatives in particular can see through and beneath the fake facade put up by the leaders.
- Secondly, unless leaders solidly and sincerely stand behind such initiatives and act as cheerleaders for the change agents not much would actually happen on the ground.
- In addition, leaders must not just expect progress but inspect the progress like what Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. advocated (see the note below).
So unless there is a sincere follow-up from leaders and executives, their words remain just that, mere words.
In organizations where the leaders are not really professional but maintain a hands-off approach and run the organization through a close-knit coterie, improvement initiatives have even lesser chance of success.
The coterie would typically be highly defensive of its power base and hence protect its turf with needless aggression. The coterie will have high reluctance and resistance to any improvement initiative and also the change agents and will label the change agents as outsiders and create distance between them and the leaders.
The leaders in such organizations develop a comfort zone around themselves where no one in the coterie will challenge the leaders (and in fact some will act in a typical stooge-like manner), but instead leave no chance to show their absolute loyalty to the leaders.
Lip service in such organizations is very common. Evey quarter a new initiative is started with lot of fanfare and after few quarters no one even talks about it. The leaders are good at providing lip service with a lot of passion getting displayed but most of it would really not be real but fake.
Leaders in such organizations are experts in uttering words and more words. They seem to firmly believe in the following lines from the famous song "Words" by Boyzone:
"It's only words
And words are all I have
To take your heart away"
Unfortunately such leaders cause a lot of damage to the cultural fabric of the organization. The damage is, even more unfortunately, compounded by what is additionally caused by the stooges who are a part of the close-knit coterie.
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