Relevant or irrelevant; which do you want your organisation to be?
It’s no longer news that things are changing at a more rapid pace than we’ve had the pleasure of witnessing in past years. While there might be the temptation to look back and wish for what once was, wisdom and progress require us to look ahead and keep moving forward. Organisations that want to survive and remain relevant will have to sit up straight and be intentional in their activities. There are 3 things I believe such organisations will do well to pay careful attention to. These 3 things are leadership, labour, and logistics.
3 Key Things To Pay Attention To
- Leadership – I believe leadership does not need too much of an introduction. It’s grown in popularity to the point where even toddlers are quite familiar with the word. Seriously though, leadership is such an important factor in any organisation and over time it’s become clearer that it plays a crucial role in the success or failure of an organisation. While there are other factors that determine whether or not an organisation succeeds, leadership is a strong determinant of said success. Your organisation paying careful attention to leadership means that it has a competent leadership team that provides clear direction, develops coherent strategies, establishes good culture, and sets protective measures. The ability of your leadership team to do the aforementioned will ensure your organisation is thinking, doing and achieving things that will keep it relevant in your industry and community.
- Labour – in very simple terms, labour is work. To pay careful attention to this, organisations must know what their work is. They must know their products and/or services as well as their people. They must pay attention to the skills and knowledge within, their most productive function and how efforts are directed to it, what their strengths are and leveraging it, intellectual and physical gaps that must be filled in order to achieve specific results, etc. Organisations must also pay attention to the welfare of their people. This is so important because if the welfare of your people are ignored, you’ll get mediocre work from them that does not produce the kind of results that’ll keep you relevant.
- Logistics – this deals with the management of your resources, both human and material. Your organisation must have its finger on the pulse regarding: what resources it has, how it gets its resources, how and what it is spending its resources on, what it is saving/preserving/keeping, what it is investing the resources in, the returns it is getting from the investment, how it is increasing its resources, etc. An organisation paying attention to its logistics means that it is managing its resources from acquisition to increase, and furthermore to sustenance.
Interestingly, the 3 L’s; leadership, labour, and logistics can also be utilised by any individual leader who wants to remain relevant in their organisation. What you’ll need to do is simply make the 3 L’s more personal to you. In which case you will need to work at improving your leadership competence to provide clear direction, develop coherent strategies, establish a good culture, and set protective measures. You’ll also need to think about your work and how you are directing your efforts. Are you directing it to the most productive outcome? Are you leveraging your strengths to give your best performance? Do you need to develop certain skills in order to get better results from yourself and from your team? Lastly, logistics. As a leader, what resources do you have at your disposal? How are you using them? Are you leveraging them, improving them, or leaving them to lie dormant?
Rapidly changing times call for intentional organisations and leaders who continue to be relevant. Pay careful attention to the 3 L’s above so you can stay relevant through change and enjoy recurrent success.
To your relevance and success,
Belinda
