Are You Willing to Take the First Step Needed Now to Achieve Organizational Health and Balance?

Organizational health and balance is an important foundation for organizational success. It is the pre-condition necessary for all parts of the organization to function at peak performance. Achieving healthy balanced organizations that operate at peak performance requires the co-operation and investment of two parties: leadership and the individuals within the organization.

The first party is leadership. When leadership attends to organizational health and balance there are many tangible benefits that affect the bottom line. The gap between potential and results gets narrower.

The second party is the individuals within the organization. The individuals within the organization must also attend to their personal health and balance, not only for personal benefit but also for the benefit of the organization(s) to which they belong. Healthy, balanced individuals are more creative, inspired, innovative, productive, solution-focused, collaborative in teams, and waste less energy on such things as complaining.

Individuals attending to their health and balance but working in an unhealthy and unbalanced workplace or actively participating in an unhealthy and unbalanced organization have great difficulty in sustaining personal health and balance. Unhealthy workplaces can literally cost individuals their lives and their quality of life through stress-related illnesses.

Leadership attending to organizational health and balance cannot sustain health and balance if the individuals within them do not also attend to personal health and balance. Unhealthy individuals in great enough numbers can literally cost the organization its life.

Is There Commitment to Health and Balance?

Don’t Assume That the Will or Commitment to Health and Balance Is Present in Leadership or in the Individuals Who Participate in the Organization

The questions that must be asked before going on are “is there a commitment on the part of the organization to attend to organizational health and balance? Is there a commitment from the majority of individuals involved to attend to their individual health and balance?”

As a consultant, I have found that this is where the big stumbling block is regarding both organizational health and balance and individual health and balance. I have learned never to assume that the will or commitment is there. The will to achieve and sustain health and balance must be there and must be stated as a commitment for success to be achieved.

Establishing if the Will is Present and if the Commitment Can Be Made

The first step is to understand your own assumptions about what health and balance is in an organization and whether or not you believe there is any benefit to investing energy into organizational health and balance. You might want to list the behaviors of individuals within a healthy and balanced organization. Can you list benefits to the organization of investing in health and balance? Would you like to work in a healthy and balanced organization?

If you believe that it is worthwhile to invest in healthy and balanced organizations, work out

1. who needs to be involved in the discussions
2. how in your situation you can establish that your organization wants to be healthy and balanced and is willing to commit to working toward health and balance
3. how to have this same discussion with the individuals within the organization to determine if they have the will to work on individual health and balance and are willing to commit to it.

At this stage, don’t worry about HOW to achieve health and balance. It all begins and sustains itself based on getting a commitment. The will must be there and it must be stated.

Are you willing to take a first step towards organizational health and balance?

_{Photo by Ev on Unsplash}