Organizational Climate and Process Reliabity

Organizational Climate and Process Reliability

Denise L. Miller

Saint Leo University

Influencing Expectations

An organization’s climate is very important to its long-term success.  Climate is determined by mutual feelings and opinions about leaders, and the organization’s programs and or policies.  In fact, it is said that a positive climate leads to increased employee satisfaction and productivity levels in an organization.  The goal of every organization is to foster a healthy climate and a unified team.  Although a goal, many organizations do not achieve a strong climate.  An organization’s climate can be affected in many ways; however, majority of the time the climate is determined by the level of trust, confidence, and how well the organization’s top official communicates.  According to Yukl (2013), “The CEO of an organization usually has more influence than other individual managers, but the corporate culture reflects the influence of many different leaders over a considerable period of time” (p. 287).

Over the years, I have been attached to several commands and each climate was different from the previous command.  Some command climates were exceptional, and some climates were extremely poor.  In commands with good command climates, Sailors were extremely motivated and fully engaged in daily operations.  On the contrary, those commands with poor command climates, Sailors were very unmotivated and detached.  In addition, this type of climate fosters poor teamwork, poor communication, and job inefficiencies.  

During one of my shore duty tours, I was a part of a command with a very poor command climate.  Not to my surprise, the hostile working environment was attributed to the top official, the Officer in Charge (OIC) and his practices.  The OIC had a meeting with all of his First Class Petty Officers to discuss evaluations and his baseline that would be used for their rankings that upcoming November.  As such, he laid out several qualifications and milestones that these First Classes should achieve if they wanted to receive a “good” evaluation.  As good leaders are prone to do, each person took notes and by the end of the meeting, each FCPO had a positive outlook because they knew exactly what they needed to do to be competitive amongst their peers.  An inspired First Class decided to do something that would be beneficial to him as well as his peers.  He designed a pamphlet that would serve as a readily available reference for all First Classes that could be easily carried around.  Once complete, he showed it to the OIC and that single pamphlet led to the generation of 200 copies and a huge poster that was posted in the main passageway of the command.  

From that moment, everything was great among First Class Petty Officers.  Their motivation was high, and they had extra pep in their step.  That was until November 15th, the day E-6 evaluations are due.  During debriefs, some Sailors were happy, and some were extremely disappointed.  It turns out, despite pamphlets or a huge poster, the OIC did not stand by his word.  Sailors were not ranked according to the guidance provided.  One Sailor, in particular, IT1 Hooper, the Sailor that created the pamphlet experienced the ordeal firsthand.  IT1 had every single qualification and milestone listed; however, he received a Must Promote vice an Early Promote contrary to what the pamphlet depicted.  It would’ve been one thing if everyone else ranked above him had the same accomplishments, but they did not.  In fact, several were not CWO qualified, a qualification imperative to the IT rating.