Have you ever been a part of an organization that seems dysfunctional? The logistics of the workflow are inefficient. Customers are mounting complaints every day about the quality of service. The turnover rate is high, and new hires seem to only last 1 year before leaving the company. Communication is lacking within the organization, which has lead to more siloed departments. That sounds like a dysfunctional organization to most people.
But is it really dysfunctional at all?
What if I told you that this organization is functioning exactly how it should be? What if sum of this organization's actions has aligned itself with the exact results it has achieved thus far?
What if this broken and dysfunctional system within the organization is truly not broken at all: it is working just fine for those who benefit from it.
To quote the book The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, "There is no such thing as a dysfunctional organization, because every organization is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it currently gets."
Wow. Talk about a hard dose of reality!
The reality is that some people benefit from the way the system is currently set up in an organization that seems dysfunctional. An inefficient workflow might benefit the leaders who do not want to face the modern changes in the workplace today. The poor quality of customer service might benefit the department leadership, as they want to be indispensable to their employees on escalation calls. The high turnover rate benefits the middle management, as they believe they are keeping their jobs safe from potential competition down the road. The lack of communication between departments in an organization benefits the upper management who are conflict adverse.
All of the above examples are not readily obvious at first glance. It takes some diagnosis time to flesh out who, where, and why the system only seems to be working for some and not others. Asking tough questions will be necessary to properly diagnose the system's challenges. Such questions might include: "Who is the system currently working for?", "What makes change hard for them?", and "What do they stand to use lose if the desired change was implemented?".
It is quite eye-opening once you see that your organization's "dysfunction" is a by-product of those it works for. Finding the solution to this challenge will not be easy, as there are no easy answers to human capital-related challenges (aka Adaptive challenges). This is where leaders will need to roll up their sleeves, take a deep breath (or a few), and begin organizing those around them to help with the hard work that comes with making progress on challenges of this magnitude.
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