Author: Dr. Yamaç Kaya
Humans are the foundation of any knowledge organization. We are complex creatures. This makes it impossible to come up with a perfect organizational system and structure. However, there are some critical mistakes that most organizations persist in, that harm the behavior of employees and affect the overall performance of companies.
1- Setting too many individual performance goals.
Teamwork has proven more effective than being alone in resolving complex problems. If you want teamwork in your company, don’t focus on individual targets. This systemically disbands your teams into groups where individuals fight over targets or help each other just out of kindness, being completely disconnected from the results that the organization needs to produce.
2- Making “being a manager” the only way to get a raise.
You have a brilliant technical mind. But the promotion system only gives high salaries to managers. You don’t want to lose that person. So, you promote them to “Manager”. Is your problem solved? Probably not. And here is what happened:
– You lost the potential of that brilliant technical mind.
– The colleagues took that as a success point, everyone is now trying to be a manager.
– You are left with an expensive and very lousy manager.
How many times did you see a CTO in front of their screen doing something on Visual Studio or Toad?
3- Setting activity-based performance goals.
Do you wonder why your team is not creative? Maybe because you are measuring performance by how many projects they have completed.
Wonder why your team is fighting over a type of work? Say “resolving easier tickets” to run for the quantity. Maybe because they are rewarded based on the number of tickets they have resolved.
Activity-based performance measurement kills proactivity.
4- Calling humans “resources”
Data, information, and continuous learning are new resources. And people are the producers. Humans are not “resources” but valuable sources in the digital age. So don’t treat employees like tangible assets that your company owns and depreciate every year. Because now you need the wisdom more than before.
5- Having no improvement system for skills, competencies and growth.
We hear a lot about “Industrial workers are now being knowledge workers”. But now it is even shifting toward “Learning Workers”. This means that whatever you have learned in college, or in your last job will be outdated faster than ever. Therefore, to catch up with an evolving environment, a continuous learning culture is paramount. Having end-to-end learning and growth programs for your learning workers will be a great starting point for establishing that culture. Continuous learning requires persistent discipline.
6- Ignoring Onboarding and Offboarding.
Neglecting to invest in onboarding and offboarding processes can be detrimental to an organization’s overall efficiency and success, especially if the turnover is high. Without an effective onboarding process, new employees will struggle to acclimate. In this sense, proper integration into work mode and culture is proven to effectively reduce the duration of “being a newbie” in an organization. On the other hand, proper offboarding can help retain knowledge, reduce security risks, and gain insights about improvement points for human department processes. Addressing these, is crucial for smooth transitions and mitigating the costs associated with frequent turnover.
Thanks
Special thanks to my dear friend and fellow System Artist, Aslıhan Azeri for her contributions to this post.
