Is Your Organization Headed for a Breakdown?

June 14, 2013

Is your organization or team headed for a breakdown?

Organizations emit warning signs before breaking down, but the financial signals, such as revenue declines, shrinking margins, and deteriorating working capital ratios, are lagging indicators. Leading indicators are much more important because you can address them before the financials go south. Using our triple crown leadership framework, here are 20 indicators of organizational breakdowns:

Focusing too much on strategy shifts instead of accountability for results
Creeping complacency
Cutting ethical corners when the pressure is on
Not building ethics into day-to-day processes and decisions
Falling prey to short-termism
Neglecting integrity, passion for the purpose, and emotional intelligence in talent selection and promotions
Failing to invest adequately in developing leaders with character
Not seeking input from everybody in the organization regarding the shared purpose, values, and vision
Failing to inculcate values into daily decisions
Leaders staying in their comfort zones and not flexing between the hard and soft edges of leadership (between “steel and velvet”)
Excessively tight controls
Leaders being too soft because they want to be liked
Excessive deference to the top authorities
Leaders assuming they must make all the decisions and have all the answers
Failing to unleash other leaders throughout the organization
Reluctance to be a “voice of one” and challenge authority
Constantly changing priorities
Poor communication and secrecy with people operating in silos
Insufficient understanding of how efforts across the enterprise fit together
Lack of discipline and follow-through

Leadership Derailers Assessment

Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. It will help you develop self-awareness and identify ways to improve your leadership.

Triple crown leadership sometimes entails constructively challenging people to do what they think is impossible. Often they produce astonishing results.

When the challenge is to make the numbers short- and long-term, and to do it ethically, while operating sustainably and honoring obligations to all stakeholders (what we call “triple crown leadership“–building excellent, ethical, and enduring organizations), that is when people really dig in and find a better way, a new way, and refuse to settle for the easy way out.

Triple crown leaders find a better way.

Practical Applications

Evaluate your organization or team using the 20 indicators above.
If you answer 4 or more with negative responses, your organization may be headed for a breakdown. It’s time to implement the five advanced practices of triple crown leadership.

Tools for You

Leadership Derailers Assessment to help you identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness
Personal Values Exercise to help you determine and clarify what’s most important to you
Alignment Scorecard to help you assess your organization’s level of alignment

Alignment Scorecard

When organizations aren’t aligned, it can reduce performance dramatically and cause frustration and dysfunction. With this Alignment Scorecard, you can assess your organization’s level of alignment and make plans for improving it.

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Gregg Vanourek and Bob Vanourek are leadership practitioners, teachers, and award-winning authors (and son and father). They are co-authors of Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations, a winner of the International Book Awards. Check out their Leadership Derailers Assessment or get their monthly newsletter. If you found value in this, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!