When Leading an Organization, Discipline Matters

During a recent onsite quarterly planning session, a client group asked me, “How can we be more like them?!” They wanted to be like another company that they admired, and they were struggling to figure out why they weren’t more like them. After all, they worked just as hard! “We know we do,” they said, “because we hit the ground running every single morning and we work hard all day – at least until mid-evening each night!”

The other company was, in all honesty, a good one to admire. This group, though, was having a hard time comprehending why they weren’t more like the other company. I let them vent a bit and we went through an exercise that helped them try to gain understanding in what might be missing for them, etc. It was therapeutic on multiple levels, and with each passing moment their thinking would continue to spin more and more out of control. Their discussion evolved and became so complicated… and their conversation was becoming really convoluted. When the conversation shifted toward excuses (such as all the advantages the other company must have over them, etc.), I had to step in with a brutal fact (…because “it’s my job”).

“All they have over you is discipline. They’ve simply given their world a sense of order.” Suddenly, there was a hush in the room. They were just sitting there staring at me and exchanging glances with each other. “Huh?”

It’s funny to me the degree to which habits impact us. Even when we’re in a bad habit of doing something, it’s just easier to keep doing it the wrong way vs. change to a better way. Change requires work – hard work. How hard depends on what needs to be changed, but either way we like what we know, even if what we know leads to complexity and/or dysfunction.

Discipline: The Tangible & the Intangible

There are the tangible aspects of discipline, such as stated (and followed) systems and processes, and activities such as Annual Planning, Quarterly Planning, Monthly Meetings, Weekly Meetings, and/or Daily Huddles – each with a clear purpose and designed to build a community around more frequent and meaningful communication and joint problem-solving, all in realtime.

But there’s also the intangible aspects of discipline, such as leadership. The tangible side of leadership can be seen on an organizational chart; it’s clear who the “leaders” are by looking at their place on the chart. But as Rummler and Brache have noted, where leadership really matters is in the white space between the boxes. What goes on in the white space around each organizational box matters. Discipline in this esoteric realm is a beautiful thing to watch because in a truly disciplined organization, informal leaders organically emerge when the context is such that it’s important for them to step-up. It’s this temporary structure (which is within the white space of your organizational chart) where the disciplined organization sets sail. When you get to this level of informal leadership, your organization is smooth sailing across the waters, no matter how choppy or disruptive. It just keeps moving forward. The tangibles of your organization’s systems and processes are giving order, then, to the intangibles.

Decision-making, for instance, isn’t adhoc or staccato; the framework for sound decision-making is right there, ready to serve.

Here are few interesting perspectives to consider as you think about building a disciplined organization.

• A disciplined organization isn’t a rigid and structured entity. The business climate requires companies of all sizes and in all sectors to reinvent what they do and/or how they do it. The business climate stimulates us toward growth and self-renewal. Creative thinking and brainstorming are requirements in today’s world. What matters, though, is that we allow leaders to emerge when the context calls for them to do so. “It’s not my job,” or “That’s her job,” or “I’m waiting on him to get that done” are all indicators of poor discipline. Team members not consistently attending set meetings because they’re “busy” doing other things shows a lack of discipline. Leaders who don’t establish and/or routinely status their success metrics weekly indicate a lack of discipline. And all of these are also indicators of a lack of accountability, and when there’s a lack of accountability the organization isn’t disciplined. Formal leaders might think they run a tight ship, but running a tight ship via formal leadership only gets compliance at best. Compliance doesn’t build a disciplined organization. It builds a machine, but not a heart.

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