Renewed Working Approach

It is increasingly becoming difficult for many organizations to cope with the ongoing labour strikes, rising fuel costs and the depreciating rand. Admittedly things aren't easy for all the stakeholders involved, be it the striking employees, the labour unions or the organizations ; and with emotions high and in some cases violent attacks and service delivery protests on the rise, I cannot help but notice a declining trend in attitudes amongst the various stakeholders.

The purpose of this article is not to debate how unfair the renumeration policy of some companies are or how unrealistic the demands of the striking workforce might seem. The article was inspired by how easily we as employees ,working in different organizations are keen to be repressive in our approach in addressing customer needs.

Strategic Management experts mention that in order for organizations to really survive, they ought to find a market inspired by their product offering. An organization's product offering must be different from the ordinary and must be dynamic enough to attract customers. Further more they mention that an organization must be entrepreneurial and consistently reinvent their products and positioning in the market. However, in order for them to be competitive, an organization needs to move from what is called the repressive context to a renewed context.

Repressive context is defined as a rigid and strict environment where compliance with policies is mandatory and where standards are closely controlled. At first, I thought the repressive context was how business ought to be done until I learned how policies( if not reviewed)can inhibit an organization's growth. The experts suggest we move towards a more renewed approach where employees have the support of their senior management team, where trust -prevails allowing for transparency and where being disciplined is the norm. But how true is this situation in practice? How many of us have the support of our management team? How many organizations actually renew polices that are no longer adequate in the environment where they operate?

The problem I have with employees I've worked with and interacted with from different organizations is that we are always waiting for someone (management or a hero of some sort) to get things done for us; we continue blaming the system for its inadequacies,policies for being old and any other problems. What we fail to do is to initiate change ,even though it seems impossible. We fail to get up and be counted. We fail by not doing anything different, or trying to make the difficult the restrictions work for us. Instead we wait around and loose profits that pay our salaries.

What I've learnt is that the nature of business is rough;and we need to do what is necessary to survive. And in order to survive we need to be innovative in how we service the clients paying our salaries and how to work around the red tape organizations Impose on us. Because the reality is that if the organizations we work for aren't profitable, retrenchment is a reality we live with. I'm done blaming the red tape affecting my productive, instead finding solutions to work within the constraints. The question is what are u doing?

Smile. Laugh. Live