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Correcting the course

There are lots of questions and asked about organizational and leadership which are completely based on the functioning of the organization and its growth aspects. We extracted  a sample post which talks about these issues and questions which motivates an organization growth and the individual performance. Check out this post about correcting the course.

Question: In taking control of the House this week, Republicans have committed themselves to investigating and repealing all of the major initiatives taken by the Democratic president and Congress over the past two years. How much should the new leaders of any organization focus on undoing the past as opposed to charting a more affirmative course for the future?

The key questions may be: “What have the incoming leaders of an organization determined to be their charter?” And, “Why were they hired, and what is their vision for the organization?” These are familiar questions posed in business and corporate settings, where boards of directors appoint CEOs to lead. The same questions are appropriate for members of the department of defense, where the military appoints officers to command units and headquarters.

In The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Michael Watkins provided a useful framework for new leaders transitioning in organizational settings. One of the first things leaders should do is diagnose the situation. Watkins uses the business context of a new start-up, turnaround, realignment or sustaining success. The same categories can be applied to public leaders, whether elected government officials or commissioned military officers.

Watkins offered that some organizations “have significant strengths, but also serious weaknesses on what you can and cannot do.” Challenges abound when the mission is to turn around an organization that stakeholders perceive to be in trouble and that requires major efforts to get it back on track. For realignment, the need is to correct the course of an organization that is adrift.

Both turnarounds and realignments require an understanding of the existing strengths and weaknesses of the organization in question, paired with a clear vision of what should be done. Visions help leaders and enterprises sustain relevancy in changing environments, which may require redirecting or reversing past organizational decisions.

What if Steve Jobs and Apple stayed the course with a 1976 vision? Recognizing and seizing opportunities, the vision changed from “An Apple on every desk” to “Make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.” This mindset led to the now-ubiquitous iTunes, iPods, iPhones and iPads.

With the past two U.S. elections of 2008 and 2010, incoming presidential and congressional leaders, elected by the people, have assessed the situation of our nation. Now the elected officers are pursuing their respective visions, which in several cases result in attempts to reverse some decisions by previous leaders. That is the nature and the beauty of our constitutional system.

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