Latest news with #organizationalperformance
Harvard Business Review
08-08-2025
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
Avoid These Communication Breakdowns When Launching Strategic Initiatives
In boardrooms worldwide, executives invest significant resources creating polished presentations and communication plans to roll out strategic initiatives. Yet, as with the childhood game of telephone, what reaches the frontlines often bears little resemblance to the original vision. This breakdown isn't just frustrating—it's devastating to organizational performance. Consider what happens to your best strategic ideas. As a senior leader, you've developed a comprehensive mental model of a transformative initiative. But when you begin documenting it, you inadvertently compress the multidimensional concept into a linear format. During subsequent town halls and leadership meetings, further compression occurs. While you believe your team has sufficient context to fill information gaps, they're left with fragments of your original vision. This degradation occurs systematically through what I call 'communication leak points'—specific transition moments where critical meaning evaporates. See more HBR charts in Data & Visuals My team's research across multiple industries reveals that addressing these leak points requires more than conventional communication training. Leaders need targeted interventions at each crucial transition stage where meaning is vulnerable to distortion. The following are three of the most common breakdown points in organizational messaging along with structural solutions for how to mitigate them. Moving from ideation to documentation Our minds process ideas holistically, rich with connections, implications, and nuances. Language, by contrast, is inherently sequential and reductive. This first leak point is where visionary thinking often becomes pedestrian communication — when you put what's in your head into words, usually through traditional documentation. To address this leak point, create immersive decision environments where stakeholders can interact with multiple dimensions of complex ideas simultaneously. Establish physical or virtual spaces where all facets of a concept are displayed simultaneously (such as financial projections, customer impact models, implementation timelines, and risk assessments). This enables executives to physically navigate these spaces before making major decisions, forcing engagement with complexity rather than simplification. Document those observations as stakeholders move through these environments to capture insights that would have otherwise been lost in one-way presentations. A Fortune 500 manufacturing firm implemented this approach by converting a conference room into a 'strategic immersion space' where leaders could physically walk through various dimensions of a proposed new market entry. This resulted in identifying three critical interdependencies that a traditional omnidirectional presentation would have missed. Moving from documentation to presentation Even well-formulated ideas suffer degradation when articulated publicly—in other words, in the space between what you put into words and what you end up saying. Unconscious filters, institutional politics, and presentation anxiety lead many leaders to water down their messaging precisely when clarity is most crucial. Before major communications, pressure-test your message's resilience under communication strain. Start by identifying three essential components of your message that must survive any dilution. Then recruit five individuals unfamiliar with your initiative from different functions of the organization. Present your message, and have each person explain it to another in sequence. Determine what remains intact after multiple translations and what falls through the cracks. Rebuild your communication around those elements that survived the compression test. When a healthcare system CEO used this method before announcing a major restructuring, he discovered his carefully crafted messages about a 'patient-centered reorganization' was consistently being perceived by others as 'cost-cutting' by the third retelling. This insight allowed him to fundamentally recalibrate his approach before the actual announcement. Moving from presentation to interpretation The final and most treacherous leak point occurs when listeners interpret your message through their unique filters of experience, role, and self-interest, often creating meaning you never intended. What you're saying may not match with what others understand. Rather than assuming understanding, systematically measure the variance in how your message is absorbed. After significant communications, hold brief 'interpretation checks,' asking recipients to articulate: What they believe the main message was. What specifically it requires of them. What questions remain unanswered. Map the distribution of interpretations across departments, hierarchical levels, and functional areas, identifying patterns of misinterpretation. Then use those insights to create targeted clarification communications that address specific distortion patterns. A technology firm that implemented quarterly 'interpretation audits' discovered that messages from headquarters were consistently interpreted differently by engineering versus sales teams. This insight led to the development of function-specific communication protocols that dramatically improved cross-functional alignment. . . . The standard advice to communicate clearly, check for understanding, and use concrete language remains valid but insufficient. The communication leak points in organizations are structural and require systematic intervention. Leaders who master these communication techniques don't just transmit information more effectively. They fundamentally transform how their organizations process and act on strategic direction. By applying rigorous discipline to each translation leak point, leaders can ensure that what they envision materializes in organizational behavior. When an idea passes unchanged from conception to execution, the result isn't just better communication, it's better business performance. By treating communication leak points as mission-critical vulnerabilities requiring dedicated resources and attention, organizations can convert this weakness into a formidable competitive advantage.
Forbes
10-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Strategic Withdrawal Vs. Checking Out
Jonathan H. Westover, PhD // Founder and CEO, Human Capital Innovations // Chief Academic & Learning Officer, HCI Academy. Throughout my consulting career, I've observed a concerning pattern: In their quest to make work more tolerable, many professionals inadvertently make it less meaningful. I have found there to be a critical distinction between avoidance-oriented job crafting and escape-oriented disengagement, which has significant implications for employee engagement and organizational performance. While they may appear similar on the surface, these behaviors stem from different motivations and lead to markedly different outcomes. By understanding this nuanced relationship, leaders and HR professionals can develop more effective interventions that address the underlying causes of disengagement rather than merely treating its symptoms. Job crafting is the physical and cognitive changes individuals make to tasks or relational boundaries of their work. This pioneering research of Wrzesniewski and Dutton recognized that employees aren't passive recipients of job design but active shapers of their work experience. The concept has continued to evolve to encompass a variety of dimensions, such as being viewed through the lens of job demands-resources theory. In my work with healthcare professionals, I have found that understanding job crafting as a multidimensional construct is essential. Job crafting isn't simply "good" or "bad"—its impact depends on how and why it's employed. This nuance becomes particularly important when examining avoidant forms of job crafting. Research has identified several key dimensions of job crafting: • Increasing structural job resources (seeking opportunities for development) • Increasing social job resources (seeking feedback or coaching) • Increasing challenging job demands (initiating new projects) • Decreasing hindering job demands (reducing emotional or cognitive strain) This final dimension—decreasing hindering demands—is where avoidant job crafting typically manifests, though not all demand-reduction behaviors are inherently avoidant. Avoidant job crafting refers to behaviors aimed at reducing aspects of work that employees find aversive, threatening or excessively demanding. Unlike approach-oriented crafting (which adds positive elements to work), avoidant crafting focuses on minimizing negative elements. In my work with technology companies, I've documented several common avoidant crafting behaviors: • Reducing interaction with difficult colleagues or clients • Delegating emotionally taxing tasks • Creating procedural barriers that limit exposure to stressful situations • Narrowing job scope to focus on less challenging responsibilities • Restructuring workflows to minimize cognitive load These behaviors aren't inherently problematic—indeed, they can be adaptive responses to genuinely hindering demands. The critical distinction lies in the intent behind these behaviors and whether they represent strategic boundary management or the beginning of psychological withdrawal. Research has distinguished between avoidance-oriented crafting aimed at self-protection versus avoidance behavior stemming from disengagement. The former represents a calculated effort to preserve resources and maintain functioning; the latter reflects giving up. Work disengagement represents a psychological state characterized by emotional, cognitive and behavioral withdrawal from work roles. Kahn, who pioneered engagement research, described disengagement as the "uncoupling of selves from work roles," resulting in passive, incomplete role performances. Disengagement exists on a continuum, from mild detachment to complete psychological withdrawal. Research suggests disengagement isn't simply the absence of engagement but a distinct psychological state with its own antecedents and consequences. Escape-oriented behaviors differ fundamentally from avoidant job crafting. While both involve reducing certain aspects of work, escape behaviors are: • Reactive rather than strategic • Motivated by withdrawal rather than preservation • Lacking in compensatory engagement elsewhere • Characterized by psychological resignation rather than adaptation In my consulting work with financial institutions, I observed employees who superficially displayed similar behaviors—reducing meeting attendance, limiting client interaction—but with profoundly different motivations and outcomes. Those engaged in strategic avoidant crafting redirected energy to value-adding activities; those exhibiting escape behaviors simply withdrew without compensatory engagement. The key distinction between avoidant job crafting and escape-oriented disengagement lies in motivation. Recent research found that avoidant crafting is often preventive—aimed at preserving resources and preventing burnout—while escape behaviors are primarily defensive and withdrawal-oriented. In my own research interviews, employees engaging in avoidant crafting consistently expressed motivation to optimize their work experience, while those experiencing disengagement described motivation to minimize their work presence entirely. This distinction in intent produces markedly different outcomes. The consequences of avoidant job crafting versus escape-oriented disengagement differ significantly: Avoidant job crafting potential outcomes: • Can preserve mental health and prevent burnout • May lead to increased engagement in preferred work aspects • Often results in sustainable performance maintenance • Typically maintains professional identity and meaning Escape-oriented disengagement potential outcomes: • Associated with decreased overall well-being • Leads to diminished performance across all work domains • Results in reduced organizational commitment • Often precipitates turnover intentions Distinguishing strategic avoidant crafting from disengagement requires attention to both behaviors and motivations. Based on my consulting experience, I recommend assessing: • Whether the reduction in certain activities corresponds with increased investment elsewhere • The employee's articulated rationale for behavioral changes • Whether performance on core metrics remains stable • The presence of continued discretionary effort • Whether professional relationships remain intact Organizations can encourage adaptive forms of avoidant crafting while minimizing risks of disengagement through: • Creating psychological safety: Psychological safety allows employees to engage in appropriate boundary-setting without fear of repercussion. • Developing crafting competence: In my work with pharmaceutical research teams, crafting workshops that explicitly taught strategic avoidance techniques (alongside approach-oriented strategies) resulted in higher engagement scores compared to control groups. • Encouraging collaborative crafting: When teams craft together, individual avoidance behaviors remain visible and accountable. • Addressing underlying issues: Often, excessive avoidant crafting signals legitimate organizational problems. My work with university faculty revealed that increasing administrative demands drove avoidant crafting; addressing these root causes proved more effective than targeting the crafting behaviors themselves. Understanding avoidant job crafting versus escape-oriented disengagement is crucial for today's leaders. As work intensifies, employees naturally adapt to manage demands. Rather than universally discouraging or ignoring avoidant behaviors, organizations should recognize underlying motivations and create environments where such strategies become sustainable adaptations rather than paths to disengagement. By acknowledging that "avoidance" differs from "escape," I have found that leaders can foster workplaces where employees modify roles positively, sustaining both engagement and performance in our increasingly autonomous work environment. Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
Forbes
08-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Rethinking The MD/MBA Pathway: Why Timing Matters
When I was a medical student, I was among the few who pursued and completed a joint MD/MBA degree. At the time, it felt pioneering. The combination of clinical and business education promised to equip us to address the deep inefficiencies and inequities of the American healthcare system—not just from the exam room, but also from the boardroom. Fast forward two decades, and MD/MBA programs have grown substantially in popularity. Today, many top-tier medical schools a formalized path to earning both degrees. At my alma mater, Harvard Medical School, more than a dozen students graduate each year with the dual credential. On the surface, this seems like progress. And to be clear, I am a passionate believer in business education for clinicians. Our healthcare system is in urgent need of transformation, and we will not achieve it without leaders who understand both patient care and the principles of organizational performance, economics, and innovation. But as someone who has walked this path—and who now leads a large healthcare organization—I believe we need to be more deliberate about when clinicians acquire their business training. The current model of embedding business school into the middle of medical school, while increasingly common, is flawed. There are two major reasons why the MD/MBA timing deserves reconsideration: Moreover, there is a hidden cost: MD/MBA students pause their clinical training midstream to pursue their MBA. This interruption in clinical development can hinder their confidence and competence upon return—something no one tells you when you're eagerly filling out dual-degree applications. What, then, is the better model? During my residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital, I collaborated with my program director, Dr. Joel Katz, to co-design a novel training pathway: the residency-MBA. This program, developed in partnership with Harvard Business School, integrated MBA coursework into the final two years of clinical training. Residents didn't need to choose between business education and medical progression—they did both, simultaneously. Yes, it extended training by a year, but critically, residents maintained clinical continuity while also building their management and leadership toolkit. They emerged from training ready to take on real-world leadership roles immediately—with fresh, relevant clinical knowledge and newly acquired business acumen. The success of that program should serve as a blueprint for medical schools and teaching hospitals across the country. It allows business education to do what it does best: serve as a catalyst for strategic thinking, innovation, and organizational leadership at the moment it is most needed. There are exceptions. A small number of students with meaningful pre-med business experience—entrepreneurs, consultants, or analysts—may benefit from the MD/MBA sequence. For them, business school isn't a leap into the unknown, but a formalization of skills they've already begun to develop. Financial considerations, such as scholarship availability or institutional aid, may also influence decision-making. But for the majority of aspiring physician-leaders, the integrated residency-MBA model is the superior path. It allows for deeper learning, better timing, and more immediate relevance—without compromising the continuity of clinical education. As we think about how to train the next generation of leaders in medicine, it's time to move beyond what's available, and ask what's optimal. Medical educators, program directors, and students themselves should rethink not just what we learn, but when we learn it. Only then can we develop the kind of leaders healthcare so desperately needs.
