Most of what goes wrong in organizations can be traced back to a drift away from what’s really important (the organization’s purpose and core values) to a fixation on keeping track of a series of isolated outcomes. What results is a backwards looking, slow-to-react, rigid organization (and organizational culture) which is always struggling to keep up with a rapidly changing world. If you get your structures, culture, and people focused back to purpose and core values, you start to weed out outdated processes, generate more diverse viewpoints, and develop the ability to change more quickly and with less trauma. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?!
At the first-ever Catalyst Africa event, spoke to an eclectic mix of entrepreneurs, academics, and business leaders about the traps many organizations fall into that make them obsolete, the importance of changing how and why you hire people, and how to adjust some key organizational practices that can re-focus everyone’s work.