Organizational behavior is, as simple as possible said, the representation of people’s dynamics in an organized environment: company, public sector or NGO = a collective person.
Dynamics, in physics, is the study of the causes of motion and its five variables: momentum, force, potential energy, pressure and power.
Momentum is a product of mass and speed. What makes momentum important for an organization is the purpose of each and every individual in it. The “public” purpose is the creation and delivery of goods and services to the customer, profit, doing something good for others. Only that the fundamental purpose of any individual is survival.
Why the purpose of an organization should be any different? It is not!
Force is the capacity of an organization to change the momentum, the direction in which is going full speed. No matter how rich in resources is a company, it needs effective teamwork. That is why management is an art while leadership is just a trait. And the supreme art is change management.
Potential energy refers to the liveliness of a company at one moment in time, its positioning next to the external environment. You do not need a scientific analysis to determine that. Just look at the employees’ faces and you will know if the company is live and kicking or a soon to be corpse.
Pressure is the force the company manifest on every individual. Motivation! This determines the quality and quantity of the work done. Employees will choose how much effort they will put into it and how long it will take to finish the task. They are not machines and often they are not even conscious of the underlying reason of their behavior.
Power is related to the manifestation of the energy over time. A strong organization benefits of a personality (organizational culture) and some social skills.
These social skills are no different of those required from any of you:
- The ability to remain relaxed so your reactions are understandable by others
- Listening skills
- Empathy with and interest in employee’s situations
- The ability to build rapport, whether natural or learned
- Knowing how, when and how much to talk about yourself
