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The Organisation as an Energy Source
By Simon Marshall
revised on 7th January 2021
An organisation in its simplest form, can be viewed as a collection of people who share a common belief and have got together to accomplish more of it together, than they could do individually.
Thinking about an organisation as the sum of all these people and the energy they bring, both individually and more significantly when working effectively together, gives us access to better understanding and maximising that Potential. How managers relate to, lead and manage the various energy sources in an organisation is often what makes the difference between creating a good business or creating a great business.
Performance = Potential – Interference
Viewing an organisation through this perspective, we see it and its people as a vast reservoir of potential energy. Just as every cell in the human body is important and indeed vital to the overall health and vitality of the body, so every individual person is important to the health and vitality of the corporate body. It can often help to view the corporate body as a living, breathing entity comprised of individual cells that all need constant connecting, nurturing and supporting. The challenge is to convert as much of this potential energy to fulfil on the organisation’s Higher purpose.
In order to optimise on its potential energy, four separate but related forms of energy must be channelled, physical, emotional and spiritual. Being clear on their Higher Purpose, enables everyone to be inspired and sourced from this powerful place. When people think, act and communicate from here it is the highest source of energy for an organisation.
Other sources of potential energy are the motivation, capability, well-being of the people and how they work together. The challenge as a leader is to firstly maximise the potential energy and then channel it so that it is most effectively released in service of the company’s Higher Purpose.
There are many things in an organisation that are energy sapping, unaligned expectations, ineffective communications, structures and systems that do not enable the company’s Higher Purpose. All these are a drag on the potential energy, WhyNot call these things Interference. A way of representing this is:
The Performance you get, the Potential energy you have, minus the Interference.
Performance = Potential – Interference
Leaders recognise that people choosing to think, act and communicate from their Higher Purpose is the source of the highest energy. In addition, they need to reduce the energy sapping Interference and noise that occurs as a result of the many sources that distract the individual from what they want to be spending the vast proportion of their energy on.
Whether you are thinking about yourself, or an organisation, the above formular can be used to determine the Performance you will get.
Leaders don't focus on managing performance directly, they focus on building and maintaining this potential energy, while noticing and reducing areas of interference.
