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Building Your Organization Around Strength of People

Guest post by: Ron Edmondson

Article Overview: Is your strategy built around your organization’s people strengths?

Building Your Organization Around Strength of People

I consistently see churches and businesses that are built completely upon the strengths and desires of the leader. I even see places where everyone begins to look like the leader! (Same hair style, same glasses, etc.) That model works fine if the leader is Jesus (no joke intended here), but I am not sure it works as well if you and/or I am the leader.

The vision of an organization is constant. It doesn’t change. The strategy to accomplish the vision, however, should be fluid enough to meet changing environments, such as culture and economy. Part of determining that strategy should be built around the key people within the organization.

An important variable in determining strategy that is often overlooked is the strengths of the team members within the organization at the time. I posted before about the way organizations typically replace senior leaders.Organizations usually replace the top position with someone opposite from the one that leaves. They do this to build on a strength they feel the former leader didn’t have. While that may or may not be a valid method of replacing leadership, the real principle I believe the organization is trying to accomplish in that practice is finding new strengths for the organization. In like manner, the leader should try to capitalize on the strengths of the people within the organization or the team.

With that thought in mind, if you are the senior leader, ask yourself these questions:

Who is on my team?

What are the individual strengths represented on the team?

Is your organization structured in a way to allow these strengths to “strengthen” your organization?

If you do not like your answers, work to change the culture towards one that embraces the combined strength of the organization’s team members. A quick word of warning, however: If you truly want to create an organization built upon the strength of the team and that isn’t currently your situation, the biggest change may have to be in the leader…even if that leader is you.

Related Articles
  How to Build a Great Team
  Article #46 What Do Leaders Strive Everyday For?
  A Talent Driven Organization
  Leadership Bottlenecks Kill Companies
  Fear vs. Courage

Article Tags: Leadership, People, Strengths



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