Why Should A Small Organisation Pay Attention To Organisational Effectiveness?

A phrase like "organisational effectiveness" makes our minds think of the largest organisations

. It doesn't somehow seem relevant to a small organisation. But is our perception correct? Perhaps there is something in the tools and techniques that have evolved around organisational effectiveness that would be of value there too? In this article we examine organisational effectiveness and the benefit is can bring to the small organisation.

Organisational Effectiveness

Let's start by reminding ourselves what organisational effectiveness is all about. In many organisations the way that things are done today often owes more to the history of how the products or services have evolved than to the logic of what is currently required to deliver to the customer. We end up being less effective than we should be because the organisation builds steps into the process that didn't need to be there. Sometimes, we end up doing the job in a cumbersome way. We loose efficiency. This loss of effectiveness and efficiency means that our processes are often more complex than they need to be. The end result is that the quality of delivery to the customer is compromised and the cost of delivery can become uncompetitive.

Organisational effectiveness techniques have evolved to help to address these issues. By focusing on customers and their requirements and redesigning the organisation's processes to deliver just what the customer requires and at the same time eliminating unnecessary cost gives the organisation the opportunity to control the quality of delivery and regain competitiveness.

Through empowering key staff to focus on the customer delivery and engaging in their own internal improvement process, organisations have been able to make considerable savings. Case studies suggest that savings of up to 25% can be made through this approach.

The tools and techniques that deliver organisational effectiveness have evolved in the larger organisations because that is where the greatest need lay. They had that accumulated ineffectiveness and inefficiency. These organisations found themselves facing competitors with a much more streamlined approach and found themselves having to do something to respond.

So much for the background, can these techniques bring value to the smaller organisation?

Ineffectiveness in the Small Organisation

While the small organisation tends not to have the sort of history that causes ineffectiveness in a large organisation, it can occur in other ways. The very nature of the small organisation means that there are fewer people, who of necessity have to be more flexible about what they do. That very flexibility can lead to ineffectiveness. The absence of defined processes and the likelihood that different individuals will do the same task on different occasions means that things are neither done consistently nor effectively.

A recent example that I came across illustrates this point. A small organisation, because of demand for its services had taken on additional staff, all located in different places. Each did their best to satisfy their customers, but they all did it differently, and none of them did it the way that the original individual had done it before they came. Customer feedback was not as good as before. Fortunately the organisation realised that what it needed to do was to define a single process that drew on their best experience that all the individuals would follow once they were trained to use it. Having grown, the organisation needed to become effective again.

The Benefits for the Small Organisation

In a small organisation there is ample case study evidence to suggest that attention to organisational effectiveness can deliver a range of benefits, including quality and cost.

*Cost - benefit analysis can show where there are savings to be made.

*Consistent quality of delivery to your customers can be achieved.

*You can demonstrate focus on your customer's requirements.

*You gain competitive advantage.

*Provides a means of developing staff engagement.

*Your efforts may be newsworthy and achieve industry recognition.

*Contributes to the achievement of quality assurance standards.

A focus on organisational effectiveness is therefore just as valuable in the small organisation as in a large one. If it is introduced early enough, it can lead to a culture in the organisation that plans to get things right from the outset, rather than letting them drift and then having to address them later.

The incentive is there, but how to make it happen? The challenge is yours! Here are three things that you can do now that will take you in the right direction.

*Take time to convince your colleagues that this approach will help you to succeed in business

*Put the support systems and tools in place.

*Provide leadership by example and draw your colleagues in.

by: Eric Thompson

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