“Doing the right thing”. What does this actually mean?

In the last couple of days, I have come across various organisations that have, as one of their values, “Doing the right thing”. Although, I fully support this organisational value and as an entrepreneur it’s crucial to live by this, “Doing the right thing” but Doing the right thing” means different things to different people in different organisations.

In the service industry, it’s crucial that the organisation acts in the best interest of their customers and “Doing the right thing” should be directly linked to how you work with your customers.

What does “Doing the right thing” really mean? I automatically believe that this phrase highlights that the employee is making decisions, conducting tasks and taking action, which is in the best interest of the organisation and its customers.

So, instead of making decisions that are beneficial to the employee or his/ her team, or organisational unit, all decisions will bring the organisation closer to its organisational and its customer goals and targets.

However, in many organisations, I have seen different outcomes of “Doing the right thing”, depending on the skills and experience levels of their employees, internal and external pressures, motivation levels, internal politics, etc.

Unfortunately, I have seen that formal and rigid processes, policies and procedures in a number of organisations, have transitioned employees towards adopting inefficient, time-consuming, bureaucratic practices due to team ethics, budget constraints, limited scope of the role, unclear strategic direction, and/ or micro-management, which resulted in restricting the employees to meet the challenging evolving business environment.

Although “Doing the right thing” is such a simple phrase, many employees are unable to effectively execute. The only way to execute “doing the right thing” is introducing Agile Innovation and continuously learn, validate and asses to ensure that the innovative decisions, tasks and actions are beneficial and fully supporting the organisation to move closer to its goals and targets.

Unique Excellence believes that “Doing the right thing” is imperative for an organisation to succeed. Only when an organisation lives and breathes this simple phrase can they say that it is truly “Doing the right thing”.

For more information on how to introduce Agile Innovation, please get in touch.

Read more by Micha Veen, here

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