For companies to be successful and to thrive, it is critical for leaders to ensure employees remain motivated and give their best at work. While this idea is obvious in theory, exactly how leaders can achieve this consistently in reality is less clear. At Bioss, our work focuses on creating the condititions for individuals to achieve a state of flow – a construct that explores positive experiences and employee engagement. This blog suggests some actions that managers can take to ensure their employees remain engaged and in flow with their work.
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The ability of leaders to deal with compliance matters is becoming increasingly important. Whilst it may be feasible to delegate some of these responsibilities (especially compliance that is procedural in nature, or related to the provision of information), the concern is with the unintended consequences of compliance. If leaders do not have the ability to consider the context and approach compliance from the perspectives of foresight, oversight and patience, it could lead to outcomes that are at best, wasteful, and at worst, destructive.
The term ‘potential’ is often mistakenly used when referring to other dimensions, such as competence, intelligence, personal attributes or skills. At Bioss, we differentiate between how “capable” a person is and the way in which they go about accomplishing something when conditions are ambiguous and uncertain. Our capability to exercise our judgment in the face of these conditions is what makes the difference. Our definition of ‘potential’ refers to a person’s ability to look to the future and visualise an outcome – which will direct our actions in the immediate, medium and long term.
Successful organisational design acknowledges the different kinds of complexity in the
work that people do in different domains of the organisation. It understands that this
‘hierarchy of complexity’ enables clarity about who is accountable for what decisions and
respects the unique perspective each individual brings to bear on decision-making.
When identifying potential successors, one of the main dimensions that needs to be considered is capability, both potential and future. The other two dimensions are values and the absence of negative personality traits. This blog explores Bioss’s approach to identifying a person’s current capability and predicting future potential, and explains why placing too much emphasis on competency ratings to select potential succession candidates is ineffective.
Management is anything but simple; it is complex, multi-faceted and difficult. Therefore, management development has been — and always will be — a key focus area in organisations. At Bioss, our management model is the Tripod of Work, which describes three key conditions that most employees need and want to exist at work. This simple framework can be applied to improve leadership effectiveness.
Decision-making is an integral part of organisational life. The potential consequences of poor decisions include waste of resources, tarnished reputation and missed opportunities. The success of an organisation depends on employees at different levels having the right capability to make effective decisions.
If we look at innovation as a purposeful and systemic organisational practice to develop new ideas for economic or social value, the degrees of innovation (incremental, radical and disruptive) can be seen in terms of progressive levels of work complexity. Referencing Bioss’s Matrix of Working Relationships Model and its associated Themes of Work, innovation is experienced and can be defined distinctly at different organisational levels. The author of this blog differentiates between seven Levels of Innovation and discusses how each level contributes to the organisation.
Managerial leaders are held to account for the standard of leadership they provide to
their teams. If employees are able to answer the 3 critical questions proposed in this
blog, it is a good indication that they are receiving quality leadership.
The VUCA concept has been adopted by the corporate world to help describe and understand the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous contexts in which corporations operate today. Organisational success in a VUCA world is dependent not only on successful leadership but also through the entire organisational system being able to cope with these challenges.