It is evident that organizations face challenges throughout their business excellence journeys. Affecting the behavior of the employees who perform the daily tasks, communicate with customers, and affect the output of the firm is the most complicated task for the management. Organization’s culture affects the behavior of employees, as well as their personal experiences and view of the mission that the business has, and it is the task of the leadership to communicate the need for change and implement new processes, for example, training, that will help enable the change.
According to the EFQM Excellence Model, leadership has an impact on people, strategy, partnerships, and resources as an enabler. Hence, the main challenge is to affect these elements in a way that will help change. Moreover, the key results that arise from operations can serve as a source of learning and innovation for leaders, and it is vital for them to be able to evaluate the outcomes of their work correctly. The communication between the leadership and the employees allows ensuring that the changes are implemented.
Achieving excellence is a matter of chance, and there are three key challenges a business faces on this path are engagement, pre-conditioning, and tools. Engagement is a matter of understanding the new content that employees must learn to change their behavior, which will ultimately affect their work and the output of the organization. If misunderstanding arises or the employees are unable to grasp the new information, it is likely that their engagement will decrease, affecting the quality of outcomes.
Pre-conditioning is the past experience of an employee or the organizational values that persisted over the years, which may be difficult to change because they are the core of organizational behavior. In some cases, an organization’s leaders may choose to hire people with no experience because they will not have the pre-conditioning in case they want to make significant changes to the organization’s culture and operations. The tools that leaders use can be a challenge because they create a framework for how a change can be implemented correctly.
As such, leaders can use approaches such as EFQM or ISO to map out the results they want to achieve and the changes they will have to make. The question of a leader’s qualities is the final aspect of the excellence journey. The EFQM clearly addresses the importance of leadership in managing these processes. The task of the leader is to empower the employees for the change and align the vision they have with the work. This requires specific skills such as effective communication and personal characteristics, for instance, charisma.