Three Ways to Unclog Your Organization

I was on a conference call this afternoon with a colleague who informed me that it was raining inside her car. Apparently, the vents in her sunroof were clogged. A little bit of preventative maintenance would have prevented Mother Nature from raining on her parade today.

As her story unfolded, I began to think about those organizations who fail to do any work on themselves until it’s absolutely necessary. By then, the damage has been done. The poor attitudes of those who should have been fired a long time ago have tainted those people who were on the fence. Leaders, who had potential, have already shot themselves in the foot and are dead on arrival by the time they are shipped to the Holiday Inn for a shot of training. It doesn’t have to be this way if you take measures to unclog your organization. Here’s how:

1. Remove communication barriers that are preventing people from being heard at the top. You can’t fix things if you don’t know about them and you can’t know about them if you have blockage in your system.
2. Do an annual checkup. It’s a good idea to do a temperature check of the organization even if you think you know what the reading will be. You’d be amazed what a difference being off by a few degrees can make. This approach will allow you to make inexpensive adjustments, before extensive work is necessary.
3. Stop what you are doing the moment you sense there is a problem and take care of the issue at hand. My colleague said she knew her sunroof was clogged, yet she went about her day without giving much thought to the problem, until it started raining inside her car. She could have avoided this situation if she had taken care of the problem the moment she knew about it.

I hope by now the rain has stopped and that my colleague can see clearly now what she could have done to avoid this situation, so she doesn’t make this mistake again. The forecast may be sunny in your area, but eventually things will cloud up and the rains will come in. Take preventative action now and you’ll easily weather whatever comes your way.