IT vs. Facilities vs. Security vs. Vendors vs. ______ playing well in the sandbox

Posted by Terry R. Vergon on Jun 3, 2012 in Facilities Management, Leadership | 3 comments

Rivalries between people are caused by competing goals, limited resources, or personal issues.  As the leader of an organization, you can control goals and resources.  When it comes to personal issues, more often than not you wind up removing them from the organization one way or another. The different groups within organizations also operate as people do in the sense that collectively they have competing goals and must vie for limited resources.  It’s natural that rivalries would develop as groups with divergent goals compete for limited resources; but, left unchecked, rivalries can be very detrimental to the efficiency of an organization as a whole.  So how do you as a leader of such an organization prevent this type of rivalry and create an environment that promotes cooperation and organizational efficiency? Communicated goals tend to unify organizations The answer lies in communicating the goals and priorities of the organization.  While goals usually remain consistent over long periods of time, priorities can actually change from day to day – even hour to hour.  Yet when everyone knows the goals and understands the priorities, they will naturally work toward those as informed.  Leadership needs to make sure that each group understands how their tasks work to achieve the goals and where they fit into the priorities of the organization as a whole.  It sounds simple enough, but it’s actually far more difficult to put into practice. So hopefully an example or two will illustrate how things can go awry....