In this video, I will talk about the insecure organization and why you need to get out of the chaos and to improve your business. Hi there. Matts Rehnstrom here, Shaper of Business Excellence. I’m continuing this mini-series of explaining the clarity matrix and it’s all connected to all of these, I should say, all these components that you need to understand, and to work with, and to excel in, in order to get a truly powerful, successful business.
But let’s get over to this clarity matrix. We have two axes, clear and unclear and we have unarticulated and articulated.
So we have been talking about what’s down here within the manipulative situation, relationship, an organization where people are playing each other. Here, nothing is written. Nothing is said in a clear way. We don’t really know what’s going on because people are playing us due to their own agenda.
So down here we have chaos. In some views, some people’s view, it could be ordered, but it’s their order to achieve whatever they like. Not what we as a team are going to do. More like what’s individually going to be done. But generally, then, we have this manipulative environment where people are playing each other for their own sake.
Then we talked about what’s clear but still unarticulated, and we have the manageable situation and relationship where people know exactly when they cross a certain line, but they can’t learn about that line in advance. They can’t read about it. They can’t really be seeing a video about it because then it would be articulated, but here it’s unarticulated. Culture is down here. When the culture is really strong in a certain way and especially a culture where we don’t talk about it because if we have a culture which always exists, then we’re up here. But we will come to that. So down here we have that culture where you’re supposed to know things.
The Articulated But Still Unclear Culture
But in this video, then, we move up here to things that are articulated, but it’s still unclear. What can that be then? It can be a situation, for example, a meeting. We have a very important meeting. The big boss has told you to come to a meeting, and you and the rest of the staff are within this meeting. And the big boss stands there and he or she talks about everything. Blah, blah, blah. Here’s the vision.
So he or she talks about maybe the components that I have in the chart, but when you leave that meeting, you’re still like, “What?”, and you asked your colleague, “Did you understand what he said?” “No, I didn’t get it.”
Some Managers Purposely Keep Employees in the Dark
So people are talking to you. People are writing things to you, but you still don’t get it because it’s so unclear what they want. They may want to keep it fuzzy because they’re a little bit like down here, where you can manipulate people. So then, that top manager that I talked about in that meeting you were a part of. He or she might honestly think that he or she told everything. Now everyone knows what I mean. Now it will be very good, but maybe not because that manager could be a manager that’s not allowing criticism, questions.
Maybe people don’t want to raise their hand. “Excuse me, sir. I didn’t really get that.”, because “No. Are you stupid? Don’t you understand what I’m saying?” And you don’t want that as an individual. So it might be that people don’t really invite you to question and ask for clarity. But it could also be that people up here, they articulate things, but they’re fuzzy because they want to be fuzzy. Because they want you not to be too sure about what to do because then they can come back to you and they can play you. A little bit like down here, but now they talk to you, but they are fuzzy and they do it on purpose.
In An Insecure Organization, People Don’t Know How to Act or React
So what we have up here is then an insecure relationship, situation, organization. People don’t really feel safe about taking the next step because they don’t really know if they’re doing as they’re supposed to do. And I took a meeting as an example, but it could also be an email. An email comes out. People read it. They don’t really understand what it says. It could be on the internet. You go in, you see the managers told something on the internet. You read it, but you don’t really understand what it’s all about, and you don’t know how to react or to act on the information you’ve got and then you feel the insecurity.
You don’t know what to do because if you have the culture or do it’s not okay to do wrong. Then you don’t want to do or take the extra or go the extra step just to, “Oh, should I move over here? No, I’m not really sure because what happens if I move over here? Maybe someone then says something about me or I get a penalty of some kind.”
So we have now, you see, that those red parts here, the manipulative situation, or relationship, organization, and the manageable situation is also red. It’s turning green and the insecure one is also red, turning green towards that.
I Would Love to Hear About Your Organization and Experiences
In the upcoming video, I will talk about where things are clear and where things are articulated, and if you follow the color codes you will understand that will be a green zone up there, but that’s for the next video.
Do you feel that you have an experience of this insecurity within your organization? Please leave a comment down below. It would be fun to see what your experiences are in this matter. And if you’d like to have a copy of this chart that shows all the components that I’ve talked about within this series, please click here and the hyperlink will take you to a site to where you can for free download it. Until the next time, let’s go and shape our business for excellence.
