Reduce the Cost of Friction - Part 4

This post concludes a series of four posts on reducing frictions with people in your organization.

A common problem discussed in this series is how hard it is to identify forces of friction at first sight without a more objective assessment. In other words, you can relax until you start feeling the pain and it hurts the bottom line. You could hardly have prevented that friction without access to necessary information in the first place.

Various types of friction, however, translate into much that is unwelcome in a company, such as:

• Lack of interest and fulfillment
• Reduced creativity
• Unstable relationships between team members
• People who leave because of poor management practices
• Imprecise language that carries ineffective decisions
• Time wasted in interviews
• Hires that do not match the organization’s needs
• Mentoring, training, and coaching support that fails to provide expected results
• Disengagement
• High employee turnover

KPIs in finance, production, marketing, service, etc., hardly capture the above intangible aspects of a job. The implementation of KPIs is an indicator itself of professional management, but it hides the behavioral/emotional characteristics at play that help to deliver those KPIs.

Friction eventually leads to disengagement and turnover in a company. A lack of creativity and innovation generates additional friction. When this happens, people frequently take action to leave and move to more rewarding positions and organizations.

By mastering the intangible aspects of managing people from an objective perspective and creating a culture that hires, welcomes, and rewards various ways of performing and succeeding, companies can remove friction that would have otherwise prevented them from enduring and growing.

Explore how you can minimize friction between team members and increase productivity with the GRI. Read chapter 12 of Lead Beyond Intuition: How to Build a High-Performing Organization. Order the book on Amazon today.