Archive
Saving Face
In CLORGs, the act of saving face by individuals and groups always takes precedence over the health of the organization has a whole. Actually, this behavior defines a CLORG, because without it, the assemblage of people wouldn’t be a freakin’ CLORG. It would be as Charlie Sheen sez: “winning“.
If an org is well led, its leaders will be skilled at detecting, exposing, and squashing face-saving behavior when the long term health of the org is put at risk. Sadly, those same people who should be diligently eradicating selfish, face-saving, behavior from their orgs are the greatest practitioners of it. D’oh!
Shhhh! Be Quiet
If you’re having fun on a project, don’t let anyone outside of your team know that’s the case. You see, others will become jealous and they’ll start reacting like you’re a lazy ass slacker. The unconscious thinking behind the reaction is that if they’re not having fun, you shouldn’t be having fun either – verboten!
In true FOSTMA fashion, you’re required to be stressed out with your nose to the grindstone at all times. This is especially true for those who don’t understand the work but can never admit to it because they might be perceived as being “fallible” by other more important “infallibles“. D’oh!
Cakeless
Assume that you have two product development teams toiling away. One finishes early and the other blows right past its schedule – finally finishing the work waaay downstream.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by – Douglas Adams
Do you think that managers at DYSCOs ignore the early finishers and reward the laggards with a cake party for the team’s “heroic effort down the stretch“? Either that happens, or all projects finish behind schedule and over budget….. and nobody gets any cake. Bummer.
Undetected Course Change
Every organized system of interdependent parts has a primary purpose – otherwise the conglomeration wouldn’t be a “system“. Assume that at T=0, a hypothetical system whose parts are an assemblage of people and machines is placed into operation. As the figure below shows, the system will start moving toward the achievement of its purpose.
Over time, assume that our fictitious system “loses its way” because of ineffective control actions. In hierarchically structured systems, the likelihood that the internal system controllers will detect the derailment and steer the system back on course is pitifully small. That’s because hierachical forms of human organization tend to instill a false sense of infallibility and hubris in those who control the system’s trajectory. Thus, via the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance and the inability to admit mistakes, the controllers will continue to shepherd the system away from its primary purpose toward a different, and most likely less noble purpose – all the while espousing that “we are on course to achieve our objectives“.
Quietly From Behind?
An anointed (not elected) leader once told me: “sometimes it’s best to lead quietly from behind“. Of course, leadership has many facets, and “leading quietly from behind” can be one of them. But is it?
The concern I have is with the word “quietly“. Unless one knows what’s going on and communicates clearly what needs to be done, which implies being “unquiet“, how can one lead from behind without telepathic powers? It reminds me of the general who stays in the warm tent 100 miles behind the front lines where the grunts are busting their asses for god and country. But, since I’m not a leader (boo hoo! and waaaah!), don’t listen to me. Plus, I certainly ain’t the quiet type – except when I’m in situations in which I’m engulfed by fear. D’oh!
How about you? What kind of leader are you? If you are a lowly in-duh-vidual contributor, what kind of leader would you be?
Rising Inequity
While stumbling along the jagged trail of life, I tripped over this FastCompany.com post: Infographic of the Day: 15 Facts About America’s Income Inequality.
For instance, did you know that the average CEO’s pay is 1,039 times more generous than that of the average worker? And it’s not as if we’ve always lived that way. Forty years ago, CEOs were only being paid 39 times that of the average worker. Some companies these days are tying CEO pay to the pay of the least compensated employee at the same company. Clearly not that many.
And though GDP has risen, wages have remained stagnant (except for those CEOs), which has contributed to the top 10% of the wealthiest Americans controlling nearly three-quarters of all the money in America.
Note that over the decades between the inequity measurements, control of the federal government has flip-flopped back and forth between the democratic and the republican parties. So much for blaming one side over the other. The only equity in this post is that both parties are equally inept at running the country, no?
It doesn’t have to be yours, of course, but BD00’s opinion is that no matter what type of “ism” system of governance is used to tie people together, when some critical threshold of top-to-bottom inequity is exceeded, a revolution by the governees against the governors is sure to follow. In the grand ole USA, do you think we are close to the precipice?
To Prevent Asking, Simply Don’t Ask
One of the dudes that I follow on Twitter is Don Harkey. His handle is “LeaderBook“, and he’s got a neat gig going on. When he tweets, it’s always a phrase or sentence from a book on leadership:
If you have a culture where your employees don’t even think about asking for, let alone actually asking for, a projector, a white board, a second computer monitor, a professional membership, a training class, or (heaven forbid) a tool that costs money, you get what you deserve.
So, how do you get a culture of “non-asking“? It’s so easy it comes naturally. There’s no work required – and that’s a good thing for work-averse managers. All ya gotta do is “lead by example” by never asking your employees what they need to do their jobs better. To really discourage the practice of employees from asking for things to help them do their jobs better (because employees can’t be trusted and they’ll take advantage of your goodwill, of course), you can ensure that the acquisition process is an unknowable labyrinth littered with approvals required by bureaucratic little Hitlers. See, I said it was easy.
Take Me To Your Ruler
CORKA, The Killer Whale
In case you were wondering, CORKA stands for CORpo Kiss-Ass. In DYSCOs (frequent disclaimer: not all companies are DYSCOs), the CORKA density is a function of the level one operates in within a corpricracy, no?
Jokingly Funny
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