Organisational Chaos

Organisational chaos is real! Let me tell you more about it.

It started way back in the early 1990s with the ISO 9000 standards. The benefits of implementing the standard in an organisation were of course obvious. And many industries and commercial entities in Singapore wasted no time in going for ISO 9000 certification particularly when it became a business pre-requisite. And then came along the ISO 14001 and much later the OHSAS 18001 standards. These were, in turn, also implemented by various industries.
Having a structured organisation framework makes sense and the benefits are many-fold. The industries could ensure and assure their customers that they could meet pre-determined quality parameters.

The problem started when the civil service organisations decided to jump blindly into the fray led and pushed along by the authorities which promised them pecuniary rewards if they could achieve the various ISO certifications. One often wondered how many of them were actually really interested in improving their internal systems rather than obtaining certificates for gold-plating. It did not help when another government authority started promoting excellence frameworks with the honourable intention of helping organisations attain so-called world-class status.

Another mad, helter-skelter rush to implement these frameworks started. And organisations now needed greater expanse of walls in their offices to display all the certificates they were accumulating.

But did all this really help the organisation? If the primary focus was on getting the certificate and shaking hands with some important government official while receiving the certificate, then it was simply that - another certificate! And the bulk of them fell in this category.

While the certificates accumulated on the walls, the various systems were seldom integrated and well established, leaving the staff confused and bewildered. Staff spent more time implementing frameworks and less on doing their jobs. Organisations went into various stages of stagnation and then the management could actually wonder why?

The focus was on looking good rather than doing good. And, sad to say, that is the focus of many governmental organisations in this small city-state.

That, in a nut-shell, is organisational chaos.