Have you identified your Corporate Disconnect symptoms?

Management Tips, Words of Wisdom / By

Words of wisdom for this week.

“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

In my latest book Corporate Disconnect, I offer 20 of the most common symptoms of this deadly illness. Why not take a few minutes and ask yourself the following questions.

Now that you are beginning to understand CD and how it manifests in your organization, you are ready to take a brief look at some of the symptoms of this disease. Then we will discuss how to reduce it, eliminate it, manage it or possibly even prevent some of it.

Every organization I have worked with worldwide for over 40 years has suffered from CD to some degree. Over the years that I’ve observed these organizations, I’ve put together a list of some of the common symptoms. The following traits are not in any special order or degree. Every organization experienced some of them; some organizations experienced many of them and a very few suffered from most of them. And if they did and didn’t correct them, they are most likely just a statistic now. Circle a yes or no by each item as it relates to your organization from your perspective. Remember, your perspective will vary, depending on whether you are at the 40,000-, 20,000- or 500-foot level.

  1. One of the biggest challenges today for many organizations is knowing what the future holds for them. Managers plan, think, strategize, hope, dream and even cross their fingers from time to time, but many are still unsure how to move successfully from today into tomorrow. Yes / No
  2. Is it clear to everyone in your organization where you are going, why you are going there, how you are going to get there and their roles in helping you get there? Yes / No
  3. If not, do you know why not? Yes / No
  4. When you have a problem in your organization, do you look up the ladder for the cause and down the ladder for the solution? Yes / No
  5. Or is it the opposite: You look down the ladder for the cause and up the ladder for the solution? Yes / No
  6. A recent study found that to replace an employee who leaves an organization costs an average of three times that person’s salary. Are you aware of the direct and indirect costs of your turnover? Yes / No
  7. Every organization loses sales and sales revenue every month due to poor sales skills, lousy sales attitudes and poor or ineffective training. Yes / No
  8. You know what your lost sales are costing you every month. Yes / No
  9. A poor hire can cost you significantly in a very short time due to down time, impacted relationships, lost momentum, the impact of poor attitudes on a department or the entire organization. Yes / No
  10. You have safeguards in place to prevent your organization from making poor hiring decisions. Yes / No
  11. Managers make lots of small and some important decisions every day. Some of these might turn out right in the short- or long-term, but many poor ones can cost you morale, employee or customer loyalty or money right off the bottom line. Yes / No
  12. Your managers have been trained to manage effectively rather than just winging their way through their days and responsibilities, one after another. Yes / No
  13. Most managers complain that a great deal of their wasted time is due to poorly planned or run meetings. Yes / No
  14. What would you guess is the total number of man-hours spent in meetings in your organization in a month?
  15. Most of your meetings are poorly planned, run too long, have a lot of politics and hidden agendas, and often end without specific actions scheduled and a lack of closure. Yes / No
  16. You are aware of what is on your competitor’s agenda for the near future to take business away from you and how that might impact your future sales, growth and success. Yes / No
  17. Your organization is sending clear and consistent messages to the market place, your customers and your competitors as to who you are, what you represent, what you stand for and where you are going. Yes / No
  18. You are in touch with reality – the truth – when it comes to the impact on your organization and your employees as a result of your attitudes, philosophy and management style. Yes / No
  19. Your employees feel they receive adequate and appropriate employee development opportunities and/or training. Yes / No
  20. Your overall corporate culture is consistent and embraced by everyone? Yes / No