Friday, April 20, 2018

leadership dot #2135: integration

I bought a new computer and was so excited when it arrived yesterday. When I took it out of the box, it struck me that the hardware itself is nothing without the software to run it.

The impact of components beyond the hardware even more apparent when I had my first conference call on my shiny new machine. Even though the most up-to-date software was installed on a brand-new computer at the particular moment of my call, the internet connection was unstable. Thus, my picture only transmitted as a static shot, not video, and my voice kept cutting out for them. Grr!!!

Think about the equivalent of the hardware/software/connection in your organization. You need doctors, nurses and administrators to run a hospital. You need faculty, professional staff and support staff to run a college. You need management, front-line workers and facilities staff to operate a plant. The spotlight may be on the doctors/faculty/managers, but none of it works without the other components working well.

We often forget about the support in the background and focus instead on only one aspect of the operation, but it is actually the integration of elements that creates the power.

No comments:

Post a Comment