Your 401K has been decimated, and you've been told neither you nor the workforce you manage should expect a raise this year. So, understandably, you're a little concerned. Wondering if your company will make it through this one? Clues to your organization's future already have been set before you, according to "Financial Agility: The Four Crucial Conversations for Uncertain Times," a newly released study from VitalSmarts. The research findings show there are four crucial moments that predict an organization's ability to respond effectively and quickly to financial threats. Here are key points from the study:
- There are four behaviors (and resulting conversations) of uncertain times:
- Denial: Often, employees question the severity of financial crises and resist change. Unable to overturn doubts, leaders make across-the-board cuts or get bogged down in endless discussions.
- Silence: During financial crises, people often fail to hold teammates accountable to commitments made by the whole group. Companies that encourage people to speak up and hold others accountable to agreed-upon plans experience steady, rapid, and unified action.
- Protection Of Pet Projects: In many companies, employees half-heartedly engage in cost-cutting decisions. The most obvious and necessary cuts often are the boss' pet projects, but suggesting cuts there could be politically unwise.
- Irrational Slashing: Leaders often hastily conclude they can't trust their team to offer up real reduction opportunities, and consequently, they impose deep, across-the-board cuts. These companies emerge from recessions cynical rather than nimble and vital.
- Some 60 percent of the more than 2,000 managers, leaders, and executives polled for the study say their bosses may offer potential solutions "but genuinely challenge the team to candidly discuss other possible options" when they have to respond to immediate budget constraints.
- Fifty-two percent of respondents say their company tends to make "appropriate and intelligent adjustments in a very short period of time" when the organization's leaders are required to respond to significant changes in financial outlooks.
- Some 40 percent of respondents say disagreements "rarely" occur among team members and the boss about how severe or urgent a financial issue is. Thirty-four percent say these disagreements arise "occasionally," and 11 percent say they "never" occur.
- Forty percent of respondents say their peers talked to each other, but not with the person who was failing to act at times when people on the team failed to take the kind of rapid and decisive actions needed.
- Forty percent also say it took their team "somewhat longer than ideal—a few weeks" to respond in an effective way to their financial challenge.
- Twenty-seven percent say they "spoke up in a professional way and shared all of their criticisms of the organization's norms or practices" when faced with a time when the biggest savings would require taking on an entrenched cultural norm or practice. "Others added their perspectives, and the issue was fully discussed by the team," these respondents agreed.
- Nearly half of respondents are satisfied with how their organization responded to the financial crisis. Forty-seven percent report: "We miss a few opportunities, but generally do O.K."
Thanks to Training Maganize
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