What is an "Extraordinary Workplace?"

First of all, let's be clear that an Extraordinary Workplace is a RESULT; a result of continuous and simultaneous key practices:

• Creating and sustaining an environment for employees to accomplish great things on a consistent basis

• Ensuring that the customer/client continues to find a reason to remain loyal

• Close and continuous attention to the alignment of values, mission, vision, strategy, leadership, management, organizational structures, and culture 

Secondly, an extraordinary workplace is known as having certain characteristics that are attractive to employees and customers/clients. They're great places to work in, do business with, and invest in.

Organizations and environments like this are created by people with the fundamental capacities, desire, choice, and opportunity to make this all happen within increasingly complex circumstances.

Extraordinary Workplaces Don't "Just Happen!"

Extraordinary Workplaces don't just happen. There's nothing accidental about them. They are built with focused intention, continuous attention, creativity, and hard work. They are built with clear and embedded values and clear commitments; keen strategy and powerful leadership; mindfully planned, aligned, and managed structures; quality employees with the "right fit;" and specific capacities, efforts, and practices to sustain them all for the long run. 

In order to build a future with these building blocks, organizations and the people in them must have the basic capacities to do so. These capacities are vitally linked to the building blocks of success.

At Dynamic Foundations, we have specialized expertise in a broad variety of subjects related to the building blocks of successful organizations and work environments. We work with these building blocks using strategically chosen assessments and approaches. 

We are the authors of the highly respected employee opinion survey, "WorkScope^™." We call our approach to individual and team business coaching and development, "CAPACITIES^™". Dynamic Foundations helps organizations, leaders, managers, and employees build their capacities to make success happen in an increasingly complex world.

What are the Specific Building Blocks for Extraordinary Organizations and Workplaces?

In our experience, the specific building blocks for extraordinary organizations and workplaces are simultaneously and paradoxically simple and complex. Keen organizational and business researchers, observers, and writers have begun to narrow down the list of these key elements and highlight which are the most important in the daily life of employees and organizations. They have also started to correlate them with their direct impact on organizational results and outcomes, including profitability. 

In our experience, most of these elements fall within the following major areas. We consider these the real building blocks of successful organizations. No matter what kind of organization we serve (private, service, public, government, manufacturing, philanthropic, education, large, small, etc.), all organizations increase their likelihood of success when the following building blocks and characteristics are fully present. Our work consists of assuring that these building blocks are successfully put in place and properly maintained over time:

VALUES:

• Clearly articulated and embedded values (when everyone in the organization has a clear sense of the values the organization has freely chosen to guide behavior and the courage to enforce them, individually and collectively)

MISSION:

• A genuine sense of purpose that lives throughout the organization and in each and every employee

• Clearly articulated, powerful, and worthy commitments

VISION:

• A crystal-clear picture of "what success is" for the organization and how every individual work unit and employee in the organization contributes to its success

• An urgency to bring this vision of success to life

STRATEGY:

• A powerful and close relationship with the desired and well-understood customer/client

• "Strategy-with-an-edge" (when organizations zero in on exactly what they do best and focus on making and keeping their promises to clearly-targeted and "well-understood" customers or clients)

• Ongoing measurement of strategic performance that flow through the organization, giving employees focus and accountability for accomplishing the vision, strategy, and goals of the organization,... together

LEADERSHIP:

• The tangible presence of spirited, purpose-giving, connected, engaging, and accountable leadership; the kind of leadership that will bring to life and sustain the organization's values, mission, vision, and strategy

• A desire and drive to be the best, along with the disciplined action to actually be the best

STRUCTURE:

• People with a great fit with the organization with the disciplined capacity and personal drive to make success happen performing the work they're meant to perform

• Clearly stated, understood, measured and enforced accountabilities for each work unit and employee

• Courageous, compassionate, effective, and consistent managers and management practices

• Great products and/or great services

• Focused structures and actions throughout the organization consistent with commitment

• Positively enabling and aligned structures, all linked (in various ways) to strategy

• Consistent and humane workplace practices (resulting in "employer-of-choice" and "extraordinary workplace" status)

• Organizational work environment worthy of attracting and retaining the best employees

• A commitment to continuous learning and practice and actions to match

• Individual and organizational core capacities to "improvise' effectively and move forward in a constantly changing and demanding world

• Individual and organizational capacities to create and sustain these ingredients over the course of time, in increasingly complex circumstances

CULTURE:

• A powerfully aligned organizational culture

• A powerful, energetic, and purposeful work environment that people seek to join, generate, and sustain over time

• A feeling generated by great people coming together to accomplish great things

• Creative collaboration

• Coachability

For more information, call us at (715) 842-9842 or email us at: rjm@dynamicfoundations.com.