Business Analysis & Organizational Effectiveness
Cooperation is not born out of principle (perhaps collaboration, but certainly not cooperation). Instead, it is Business Analysis, also in the sense of organizational analysis, that plans it with effectiveness. In a strategic way, on the basis of observed behaviours, it intervenes on specific interests, powers and constraints.
The ways of working are nothing more than operational solutions. Always specific, created, invented, established by people in relative autonomy, with their particular resources and capabilities. In order to solve the fundamental problem of cooperation in order to achieve common objectives, despite their divergent orientations.
As a way of integrating divergent and contradictory behaviours, the set of working methods both presuppose and establish a minimum level of organization of the operational fields in the company.
This organization may be formalized and conscious, or may have been “naturalized” by history, tradition, beliefs, to the point of seeming evident. However, it always remains a human artifact. Which – by directing people’s behavior and limiting their freedom and ability to act – makes the development of the company possible. And at the same time it profoundly influences its results.
👉Symptoms such as: people showing resentment, duplicity, wearing masks, managing their own gardens, not understanding each other and hiding key information.
👉Effects such as: rigidity and inertia, vicious circles, conflicts of interest, contribution of individuals not understood or not well directed, low performance and job satisfaction.
They are consequences of the action of this system and before criticizing the working methods and before possibly proposing new ones, it is essential to know them. That is, it is necessary to understand their logic and their rationality. Questioning the problems that, through them, people have tried to resolve and the difficulties and constraints that arise from it. This is the purpose of organizational analysis.
Conclusions
In our blog we have already talked about good and bad practices in organizations. Remember the ‘make jobs not wars’ from the previous article by Pier Paolo Stoppino?
When we feel that something isn’t working, we don’t look at the people or the processes. The first thing to question is the real organization, the games that structure the possibilities of cooperation. That happens in a more or less fluid, more or less formalized, more or less conscious form.