Editor’s note: Andy Drake is owner of The Drake Partnership, Newbury, England.
Organizational health exists when a company is both smart and healthy. And while I believe it’s important to all industries, I would argue organizational health is even more vital to the insights industry as it is defined by smart people, intellectual rigor, technical methods, processes and platforms – and sometimes self-induced complexity.
The inherent technical focus of marketing research can ‘smother’ thinking about the underlying issue of how companies and people are and should be behaving. So, while the insight industry cries out for clients to become more consumer centric, it should also work internally on becoming more people centric.
There are several reasons why I believe organizational health is the most important business challenge. In this article, I’ll work to describe the top reasons.
We are in a time of “people crisis” in the workplace. Technology has created an always-on working culture, and a life-changing global pandemic has affected working styles and space. But perhaps the most significant change is that people are now reevaluating what they want from work. There are some revealing and, I believe, deeply disturbing U.K. stats:
This data is a wake-up call. Leaders have both a vested business and societal interest in addressing the issue. Not every company suffers from lack of health but pockets of unhealthiness can exist in otherwise good companies. Leaders often have blind spots or knowingly accept they are part of the overall culture, which I think is a fatal mistake. There is a significant positive multiplier and dividend effect of health and trust, just as there is a negative tax when things are not right.
Employees also want their company to be ethical and purposeful, to do the right thing, to truly endorse areas like diversity and inclusion and corporate social resp...