In all societies, where people live and interact, one can experience many types of behaviour. It can be exciting but also a source of trouble. That's life. Variety of background, education, experience feeds diversity and differences.

Nevertheless, when dealing with some organisations, I wonder sometimes where people's heads are. Or rather hearts. How can some people look into the mirror (see my blogs of November 29th and December 14th 2008) or in the eyes of a significant other person and say 'another great day at the office' after knowingly and unrightfully escaping legal or contractual obligations, not meeting commitments.

At lesser scale but not less relevant, with respect to moral obligations everyone can ask oneself whether one did all one could, did not free ride the system, was 'good' to others, was worth the salary.

Little conscious and weak values, I guess. Cognitive dissonance discarded because what story does one need to tell oneself to believe in the just cause of such behaviour.

Fortunately, in my experience, such behaviour at Trasys is not the rule. Most colleagues are well intentioned, do right, excell in doing their job... and thereby inspire, energise and excite others.

That's the environment we can create or contribute to!

Chris

What a pity I could not read Johnny's comment before posting mine... So smart and inspiring, his image of boundaries!

Indeed, in the company, each of us has to move within his own boundaries. Boundaries may be tight and rigid or fuzzy and flexible. This depends both on the role and on the person. For some roles, the company will gain more benefits if the boundaries are fuzzy, while for some other roles, boundaries need to be tight. On the other hand, some persons are more efficient, more productive if they can move within fuzzy boundaries, while other persons need tight boundaries (this depends on the very person, not on his age or experience).

It is because of a boundary problem that a well-intentioned person does not do right: boundaries are too fuzzy, or not well understood, etc.

At company level, managing boundaries is an important key to success. In particular, in the assignment of a given person to a given role, adequacy of the boundaries (tight or fuzzy) must be closely and continuously monitored. Boundaries may be fuzzy, but boundary management may not!

It is as well important to draw the full map of boundaries and check that they assemble as a perfect jigsaw puzzle.

Let me recall some ideas for self-assessing and improving our understanding of our own boundaries: see my comments on the blog 'Mirror' of November 29th (deep sense of our activities) and on the blog 'Speed' of Februari 20th (efficiency of interactions).

Together with Chris, I do believe that most people are well-intentioned. But well-intentioned people do not necessarily do right, especially if they do not understand what the company expects them to do.

Some people think they understand what their role is, but actually, they don't. Here are three reasons why this might happen to a well-intentioned person: (1) his manager doesn't understand himself; (2) the person has reached his “incompetence level” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle); (3) no indicator has been defined to measure how well he is performing and so, he cannot be given objective feedback.

For example, imagine that you are participating in setting up a new organisation for a department or a company. Such a project takes times and requires careful change management. Probably, benefits of the organisation change cannot be seen during the first steps of the project. Financial results of the entity could even be worse for a while. So, how do you know you're doing right?

Setting up a new organisation is like developing a new system. Would you monitor the progress of a long software development project only by waiting until the last phases so that you can assess the performance of the system? No, you will rather validate the specification, the design, assess the methodology, check the progress against a precise planning, etc.

In the same way, you cannot wait until the last phases of an organisation project, so that you can assess the financial performance of the entity: you need to define and monitor other indicators earlier in the project. “Management projects” must be carried out just as “technical projects”, otherwise you will probably wonder why all your efforts were so vain...

Companies like ours need systems, rules, values, moral and ethical principles to keep going, they mark the companies boundaries.

Proper boundaries are important for a company, if there are no boundaries there is place for endless creativity, inspiration but also for laziness and misbehavior. A company with no boundaries is defenseless and will be crushed by competitors.

However if the boundaries are like solid walls the organizations become like a fortress, nothing gets in or gets out, after a while only history books will know about it.

Boundaries need to be clear, transparent , moveable and most important in balance with the company community. To survive and grow we need different kinds of people to keep the balance, those who are rigid and those who challenge the boundaries every day.

If we ALL try to understand and manage those different values we will become really ‘Value-Able’.

Johnny