In this video, I will talk about the manipulative organization and why you need to get out of the chaos. Hi there. Matts Rehnstrom here. Shaper of Business Excellence.
Thanks for all the emails and comments on my previous videos from this series. One of the questions, actually I think it was a couple of questions, was ” Why do we need to care?”
I talked about the big WHY in your organization and that is important, but why do we need to care about all of these things, that you talk about, Matts? And I will illustrate that by giving you an introduction to something that I call the clarity matrix that I will cover in four short videos.
The Clarity Matrix
We will start our clarity matrix in this video, where will talk about the first little square we have down here. But first of all, what is this matrix then? The matrix contains four different fields, and we have on one axis here, we have things that are unclear or they’re clear.
On this axis, we have things that they’re articulated or unarticulated. So that’s what we’re working with here. The first part then is to look at what’s down here in the unarticulated and the unclear sector. This is the “no-no” zone for all the businesses.
The Unarticulated and Unclear Sector of the Clarity Matrix
So let me explain through examples. So, we can take a meeting for example. We have a meeting, but during the meeting we don’t take minutes, we just meet. We also maybe just meet ad hoc.
We meet and we talk, but it’s not clear what we talked about and there’s no trace about what we talked about because no one took notes. Everyone has their own picture in their head of what the results are from that meeting.
Another example is a sales rep. If we have a sales organization, people are running out to different customers, but no one takes notes and reports back to the organization regarding what they talked about and when the deal is going to be closed.
So when you speak to the sales reps, they say that, oh, it’s closing soon. We’re so close. We were just doing this and this, and it’s always the next sale. The next sale is always the largest sales in history for them, but there’s no trace of it. So if they just vanish from the face of the earth, nobody knows anything about what has been said because it’s unarticulated. Nobody wrote down anything about it and it’s, of course then, unclear as well.
In a Manipulative Organization, Some People Manipulate Others
So what we have down here then is the manipulative organization. Everyone in the organization really commits to anything because we have this chaos down here where people then can start to play each other. They manipulate the structure, they manipulate each other.
Nobody knows what’s actually going on. Nobody really knows where we’re heading. So everyone is playing everyone out of their own personal agenda. And it could be then, it becomes then a game within the organization where people try to sidestep someone else and bypass them and in the organization structure and the hierarchy to come up. They want to get their point of view heard. So, they then play someone at some situation and so on.
In a Manipulative Organization, Those Who Don’t Play the Game Feel Bad
So down here people are scared. They don’t feel well. We have a high sick rate. I mean it’s not fun to be down here because we’re not all alike. Some need to play others. Some need to move to the next level on the ladder of the promotion for example. They do anything. They walk over bodies just to get that race, that promotion. And here, down here, those people are actually stepping on other people as we’re not all alike.
In a Manipulative Organization, 20% Manipulate Others to Get What They Want
Some people just want to do a good job. Some want to deliver value to their customers. They don’t really care about the next level on this promotion ladder. They want to do a good job, but then they have these people playing them. Not really committing to anything, and that creates a chaos down here that we want to get out of because it’s not healthy for us as individuals and it’s not healthy for the organization.
In the next few videos I will talk about the other fields that we can have within an organization, and that explains why you need to improve your business because down here you don’t want to be. So that’s why you need this improvement because if you understand all these things that I have in the poster and you excel in handling them, you understand them, you talk about them, you articulate them, and they’re clear. Then you move away from the chaos.
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, in a Manipulative Organization?
So, let’s take that in the next couple of videos, and I also like to know, do you have an environment that I just described? You don’t need to say any names or anything, but just say that you have experienced it early on in your carrier or something. So you can relate to the chaos that I just showed you or talked about.
Please comment down below. So, I’m excited to see what you say, or just email me if you wanted to be not that articulated. Anyway, if you like to have a copy of this poster, click here and you will be taken to a page where you can for free download it so you can follow along when we continue to talk about these different components. And until then, let’s go and shape our business for excellence.
