Data Vs. Feelings - An organisational Battle

It is said that you should let your biases be known upfront, and here is mine – feelings win all the time. Here is my point: even data creates feeling. The way we perceive data; it creates joy, defeat, awe, suspicion and I can go on…

Yet it is data which wins in any modern organistaion most of the time. I am sure that there is a logic (and data) for this, it might be that it is easier to make a point and other people understand data rationally, objectively. It is not far long ago that English ruled almost half the world and did it for a long 200 – 300 years without computers, data flying across continents in milliseconds. Ships traveled across the seas (in much longer time although). Are we going to measure the progress of humankind by the amount of data we have created or will keep on creating?

Even the most cold hearted person on this earth feels the cold in his heart. All the modern organisation theories want us to look at data. We want to convert feelings into data, convert the non-tangibles into tangibles. Imagine a story based on data, it is like Martin Luther King saying, “Of the 1 million and 4 thousand dreams I have had since my childhood the one which I dreamed on 13^th May 1950………”, you get the drift. Will you be motivated by this?

Are you going to argue about the date and the time this dream was dreamed and how/under what circumstances this dream created the vision he wants to implement, how fast and how early the success could be?”

Feelings stir us and prompt us to action, data is damp and squid, it triggers a thought but does not make get us into action.

Action is created by feelings and feelings which can stir us.  

Purpose and Engagement in an Organisation

I have been tinkering with this thought for the past few days. In my opinion organizational success is created through the pureness of its purpose. The thought of many people rallying for a cause is bigger than the idea of profits for a few sharerholders.  What causes people to give their best for an organisation is not few rupees but the notion of working for a cause (it may be their own cause).  That is the reason why progressive organisations allocate time to employees to follow their own causes and passion (in turn creating new opportunities for the employer).

I am sure that this is not an original or new thought but here is an equation which we can mull over:

Purpose of an organisation ~ Engagement of employees

The higher the purpose, the higher the engagement, lower the purpose, higher the disenegagement. Purpose cannot be for a few employees in the top management, it has to be transmitted and adopted at a faster rate than the loss in its transmission. This can be very challenging in a large or a growing organisation.

Purpose can be easily lost in the day to day transactions of an organisation, it can be lost in the very transactions which are needed to bring it alive. It can easily be lost in the turf wars of implementation. It is lost on the new employees who are walking in consistently in a growing organisation or are being hired to replace the ones going out.

The organisation has to find reasons to reiterate, weave stories and communicate it back to the employees at frequent intervals, where the vehicles chosen to communicate are different while the message remain same. The purpose has to define the activities of an organisation, whenever an employee asks a question to himself, ‘ Why am I here’, “What am I doing”, it is the purpose which should bring her back and keep her focused on the job. Once that question gets answered the employee is back on the job with her mind and the heart.

If the purpose is important and the employee has to consistently be reminded of it, who should be doing this job, do we need a Chief Storyteller in an organisation or is the CEO one?