Gaming the System: How to Stop Playing the Organizational Game and Start Playing the Competitive Game

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"We spend too much time firefighting and fighting among oursleves" ..."our management meetings are taking too much time, they're just not productive anymore" ..."it was a good idea, but it lacks direction. It has no day to day manager sitting abover it" ..."these measures have come at the expense of innovation." Sound familiar? These are all real statements from real employees in businesses where the organisation itself, and the priorities that it sets, have become the end and not the means. Places where people do what gets counted, and lose sight of what counts. Optimistic sales projections, creative accounting, fear of risk taking, uneccessary meetings, e-mail "cc" culture, resistance to change, empire building...all symptoms of people playing the organisational game. It comes to every organisation, and it drains resources and squanders opportunities. Are your people doing what needs doing? or doing what gets measured once a month? How many people in your business can't get to the bigger competitive challenges beacause they're busy "firefighting"? This book will explore why and how people play the political game, respond to internal dynamics rather than market movements and work to company deadlines rather than market trends. It will show you how to understand and identify the symptoms of playing the system, mitigate its effects and then act to tackle its causes. It's time to stop playing the organisation game and start playing the competitive game. In a world in which organisations are facing an ongoing struggle to improve their outcomes, it has become increasingly clear that by simply 'cranking up' the productivity targets, their organisational gains are rarely sustainable. Of all the issues facing organisations that are inhibiting this ability, it is the organisational population's ability to 'game the system' that limits the success of initiatives. In order to be able to deal effectively with this issues, managers at all levels need to understand the dynamics at play in an organisation that create the ability to 'game the system,' as well as ways in which to mitigate its effects. Gaming the system occurs on many levels in an organisation, and in many forms. Gaming the System identifies how structures in organisations (both explicit and implicit policies and procedures, stated goals, and mental models) drive behaviours that are detrimental to long-term organisational success. Through the utilisation of case examples, the book shows how to identify these behaviours and develop ways in which to counteract their negative effects that will minimise the long-term personal and organisational potential. The book highlights three core-competencies that can mitigate the negative impacts of organisational gaming the system.