Organizational Discipline

In organizations, DISCIPLINE is important in the area of behavior but is even more important in the area of systems.Organizational DISCIPLINE centers on systems!Businesses, military organizations, government organizations, nonprofit organizations, charitable organizations, and religious organizations all operate based on systems.So what is a system?Most organizational systems are either a report or a meeting. Think about it. This is a very simple, yet extremely profound distinction.Most organizational systems are either a report or a meeting!It may be a morning meeting in which your organization has to discuss the priorities for the day. It may be a review meeting that is supposed to be held at the end of every project. Or, it may be a religious service that is held at a particular time and on a particular day of the week.It may be a report that is supposed to be submitted whenever a customer makes a complaint. It may be an expense report that is supposed to be made at the end of every month. Or it may be a financial report that is made quarterly to the shareholders.At the end of the day, most systems come down to either a meeting or a report, or a combination of the two.So the question is how disciplined are you and your organization at actually carrying out the reports and meetings that define how you operate and keep you on course?How consistent are you?The best organizations in the world live their systems as if they were a religion. Their meetings are held on schedule, people report on time, and the tasks set out in the strategic plan get executed without fail.The best organizations live their systems as if they were a religion—in a word, they have DISCIPLINE!What happens in your organization, if anything, when the report is not filed or the meeting is not held or the required behavior does not take place?Does your organization effectively reinforce the behaviors, reports, and meetings that it has established in advance?Most organizations are woefully undisciplined.People behave mostly as they want, when they want, with no immediate or significant consequences whatsoever.But you are no longer going to run your life or your organization that way!