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Fit vs. Feel: Leading Change in Unique and Emergent Companies


Guest Blogger: Dr. Kenda Lentz, Bracken Leadership Senior Human Strategy Consultant

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit in on a business development call with a colleague.  The call was with the leader of an emergent global retail business.  A few minutes into the call, I recognized that this unique and young organization was experiencing typical growing pains as a result of rapid success in the global marketplace (i.e., structural issues, human process issues, and human relation issues).  These growing pains were causing alignment issues among the organization’s operational components, which is not unusual or unique to start-ups. Organizational alignment is both a condition and reflection of good organizational health.  In other words, alignment is required for good health and it is reflective of good health. When an organization’s operational components are aligned and working in harmony, or in sync, it is able to thrive.

Peeling the Onion: a lesson in critical listening
As the business development call continued, my mind began racing toward traditional diagnostic methods and interventions that could help this company move into better organizational alignment.  However, as I continued to listen, it became increasingly clear that nothing about this company was traditional.  In fact, this company appeared to have a very unique contemporary internal culture, an exceptionally progressive vision, and a well-executed socially responsible mission within the global marketplace.  I quickly jotted down these three assessments on my note pad (i.e., contemporary culture, progressive vision, and socially responsible mission) and continued to listen to this potential client describe the current state of his organization.  With every uttered story about the company’s historical growth and current concerns, I repeatedly circled the three assessments as if to say “yep—an example of a contemporary culture”, “yep—an example of their progressive vision”, “yep—an example of their socially responsible mission”.  When the call was finished, my notes look like a venn diagram; the individual assessments were now intersected by my circular doodled confirmations.  The emerging picture was clear; a traditional approach to diagnosis and intervention would not be the best approach to understanding or helping this organization.

The Clear Picture: a lesson in allowing the best answers to emerge
Although this company’s issues were reflective of typical growing pains, it was clear that a traditional consulting approach would be inadequate and inappropriate because of its unique culture, vision, and mission.  Traditional consulting approaches rely on theoretical models of development and change. In the field of organizational development and change, there are a handful of valid and reliable approaches for helping organizations achieve organizational alignment.  These traditional approaches require three basic steps: (a) conducting an accurate organizational diagnosis, (b) designing and implementing appropriate interventions that correspond directly to the diagnosis, and (c) engaging in appropriate actions for measuring and institutionalizing related changes in order to keep the organization in good health.  Using these basic steps, organizational development experts examine a company’s internal components and processes to see how well they work together, and function independently, to support the organization’s strategic vision and mission.  While these traditional models of diagnosis and intervention are well-tested, and most are proven effective, they fall short of addressing the significant influence that an organization’s internal culture has on both its internal and external environment.

The focus on alignment among organizational components is about “fit”—that is,organizational fit—not to be confused with person-organization fit which is a traditional measure of an employee’s values and beliefs to the organization’s values and accepted norms. Rather, alignment is about the intentional fit between and among organizational components and processes in relationship to the company’s mission and its ability to operate within its external environment.  The cultural component is about “feel” rather than fit. Understanding the difference between fit and feel is imperative when leading change, especially with contemporary and progressive emergent companies.

The feel of an organization is related organically to the organization. The feel is a personal perspective of how organizational alignment is translated through human beings at each level of the organization.  This translation results in individual actions that move the organization forward or hold it back.  The collective “feel” is what perpetuates and maintains norms, both good and bad; and creates culture, both healthy and unhealthy.  It will always be difficult to create and maintain organizational alignment without consideration of the organization’s culture.  After all, alignment is not a one-time event. It’s an ongoing condition and measure of organizational health that is only possible when the people who are there to create and maintain it, do what needs to be done—because it feels right to them. Organizational culture is built and maintained from “feel” rather than from “fit”; it is both interconnected with and inseparable from organizational alignment.

Have you considered both fit and feel for your organization?