How Ideal Is Your Company?

HBR Blog Network / Our Editors

by Andrea Ovans  |  11:30 AM June 28, 2013

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Is your company getting your best work? Do you come in every day energized, enthusiastic, creative, and engaged? If not, you're not alone, at least in the U.S, according to the latest Gallup poll of employee engagement, which you can see if you scroll down through the wealth of data my HBR colleague Gretchen Gavett recently collated.

If you're among the less than enchanted, what are you missing? What would you need to be your most productive?

Professors Rob Goffee, of the London Business School, and Gareth Jones, of Madrid's IE Business School, asked this question to hundreds of executives, as part of their on-going research into authentic leadership. Here's a sampling of the replies they received:

"It would be great to be in an organization where I felt I really knew what was going on — where there were no corporate secrets — no spin."

"I'd love it if I was in an organization where I felt I was adding value as widely as possible at the same time as I was growing myself."

"I've been given too many mission statements and cards with corporate values on them. What I really want is work that fulfills me in many ways."

"I don't want to sink in a quicksand of regulations and controls — I dream of a workplace where there are simple rules and we all know where we stand."

Some of these sentiments may resonate strongly, and some may not, certainly. But underlying the body of comments, spanning differences in circumstances, industries, and individual ambitions, Goffee and Jones found six common imperatives, which taken together, they suggest, describes the ideal organization — a place that enables people to operate at their fullest potential by letting them do their best work.

In a nutshell, this is a place where:

• Differences are nurtured, so individuals can be themselves at work and contribute their unique talents.
• Information is not suppressed or distorted, so people can find out what they need to know to do their work.
• Individuals are given meaningful chances to grow, becoming more valuable to the organization in the process.
• The company is a place where everyone feels proud to work, spurring them to go beyond their stated roles.
• People's day to day work makes sense to them, and they understand how their own jobs fit in with everyone else's.
• And they are not hindered by stupid rules.

Does any of this surprise you? Who wouldn't want to work in a company like that? And yet, Goffee and Jones found, few (if any) companies that live up to this ideal entirely.

I don't find that all that surprising either, considering how hard some of these aspirations are to pull off. Consider, for example, how difficult it is to design an organization in which everyone's duties fits seamlessly and perfectly with everyone else's. Or how challenging it is to create a strong company culture people feel proud of while also encouraging individuals to express their differences. Or simply how hard it is to keep everyone informed all the time.

How close is your company to the ideal? Goffee and Jones have developed a diagnostic that can give you a quick sense of how your organization stacks up and in what ways it might still fall short. You can click here, to take it.

One company that measures up well, they found, is Arup, the engineering and design firm that built the Sydney Opera House, the Centre Pompidou, and the Beijing Water Cube. As far back as 1970, founder Ove Arup, laid down a gauntlet to its directors as they considered what kind of company they wished to leave behind when they retired. It came to be known as the "Key Speech," which Goffee and Jones report, is still required reading today for Arup employees.

In it, he warned, that if someone becomes "frustrated by red tape or by having someone breathing down his neck, someone for whom he has scant respect, if he has little influence on decisions which affect his work, and which he may not agree with, then he will pack up and go. And so he should. It is up to us, therefore, to create an organisation which will allow gifted individuals to unfold."