PUTTIN' COLOGNE ON THE RICKSHAW

Have you ever wondered: Why and how organizations can become dysfunctional over time and communication and teamwork decline and for all intents and purposes cease to exist? How the Fiefdom Syndrome gets started and grows into an all-encompassing feature of an organization’s culture? Why employees begin to mistrust and disrespect each other and must play interpersonal games to survive?

The latter is partially due to the “Red Queen Effect.” In 1973, evolutionary biologist, Leigh Van Valen of the University of Chicago, devised what he called the “Red Queen Principle” (also called the “Red Queen Effect”) from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. The effect is based on the Red Queen’s comment to Alice that: “in this place it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” It explains why employees feel the need to compete against each other for raises, praise and promotions.

As organizations grow, or simply age, the phenomenon of the Red Queen Effect grows stronger every day. This is exacerbated by dysfunctional management as employees will mimic the behaviors of those at the top of the organization–the neck of every bottle is at the top. In my book Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw I devote an entire chapter to the Red Queen Effect and how it changes all workplaces. The Red Queen Effect also gets assisted by what’s called Practical Drift and all organizations suffer this contagion to some degree.

So what is Practical Drift? “Practical Drift” is defined as: the slow and steady uncoupling of practice from written procedure. The theory of practical drift emerged from Colonel Scott A. Snook’s root cause analysis of the 1994 friendly fire accident in which two U.S. Air Force F15 fighter jets patrolling the No-Fly-Zone over northern Iraq shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk UH-60 helicopters. Twenty-six peacekeepers lost their lives. Snook’s conclusion tells us “the tighter the rules, the greater the potential for sizable practical drift to occur as the inevitable influence of local tasks takes hold.”

This basically means that when rules and regulations stifle the primary way through which departments of an organization communicate with, and rely on, each other the more each will evolve its own set of internal (and unwritten) rules and regulations to survive. What does this mean in the typical workplace? The short answer is that practical drift increases the likelihood of serious disconnects in organizations, i.e., disconnect in how the organization’s departments focus on the organization’s single overarching vision. It also explains perfectly how the Fiefdom Syndrome gets a foot hold and grows. In fact practical drift is the single most important basic ingredient to the Fiefdom Syndrome.

How does Practical Drift get started? Organizations rely on plans and procedures and people will always seek to find an easier, but not always cheaper, faster or better way of achieving a particular task. To say this includes “cutting corners” is probably an understatement. These “new” ways of doing things are part of the tribal knowledge that develops in every organization. This evolution of alternate ways to do things leads to the slow steady uncoupling of practice from written procedure. Over time the individual behavior that is acquired through everyday practice becomes the legitimized way of conducting business.

In his analysis Snook makes the case that the de-coupling of each organization’s procedures–in his case it was the Air Force from the Army–combined to create a disaster. He concludes his report by pointing out that the typical response to these traumatic events is for an organization to tighten procedures and increase penalties for failure. However he warns that this inevitably leads to the same pathology because in time, the new procedures will also be ignored.

Snook’s “practical drift” theory offers yet another perspective on the unpredictable nature of organizational behavior and how organizations creep into dysfunction.

According to Snook’s theory, practical drift occurs when organizational procedures are implemented with the assumption that the organization is a tightly coupled system, when in reality it’s every day functioning is loosely coupled. Coupling is defined as the level of interdependence between subunits, i.e., departments. When departments are tightly coupled, whatever happens to one department directly affects the others. When the departments are loosely coupled, no consequences are experienced when one fails to follow standard procedure or perform its function to the best interest of the overall organization.

Here’s an example: an engineering department designs a new product that is released into production. Because of practical drift (and despite wishful thinking) engineering and manufacturing have crept into a loosely coupled relationship. Manufacturing discovers quickly that the latest product released to them is not producible because of poor design. Decoupling would be evident when the manufacturing department is held accountable for not being able to produce the product yet engineering is not held accountable for the shoddy design. In this example each department has developed its own procedures, and selfish interests, that seem logical to them. This allows them to function independently most of the time thus reinforcing de-coupling. But when the relationship suddenly is required to become tightly coupled (engineering must take responsibility and work with manufacturing to fix the shoddy design), practical drift inhibits teamwork from functioning and the relationship further breaks down leading to disaster.

As Snook suggests (and I concur) the typical command and control response of increased policies and procedures, and blamestorming, will not address the core issue. Instead, he urges that management realize that the important question is not how to fix pilot error (human mistakes), crew inaction (communication) or even practical drift–it’s how does leadership nurture shared responsibility and accountability across the entire organization. Of course the typical management game of divide and conquer makes this goal difficult to achieve.

Practical drift explains how it is easy for an organization to slip into a culture of distrust and selfish motivations even when everyone in the organization has supposedly the same objective, i.e., bought into the same organizational vision. Therefore the answer to how to derail practical drift must also lie with management–the ones responsible for championing the vision and nurturing the teamwork required to achieve that vision.

However the more fundamental question is what can be done given this reality of human behavior? Practical drift begins no matter how strong the leadership–that’s why fighting it is a full-time job. As Snook pointed out above, practical drift cannot be addressed with increased and tighter rules or with cracking down on holding people accountable. That unfortunately is only a knee-jerk reaction that in the end exacerbates practical drift because it instills fear into the organization.

The key to preventing this contagion is by the leadership team practicing (day-in and day-out) the values that the organization has agreed upon and deemed representative of their true ethics. In other words they must walk-the-walk, not just talk-the-talk. The number one symptom, that this disease is taking a foothold, is the lack of trust between workers and management and (more damaging) amongst management itself. When managers don’t trust each other they nurture, maybe even unknowingly, practical drift to infect how their respective organizations operate.

In last week’s post I criticized the traditional performance review process as little better than a tool for an organization to eliminate those that threaten the status quo. That’s partially because the classic performance review process has never provided the promised panacea of organizational improvement that its proponents would have us believe is possible. So the question is this: if the performance review process doesn’t work for its stated purpose and (unfortunately) isn’t going away any time soon–how might it be changed so that it does serve the purpose of helping to make an organization more effective and successful? With that said, this post offers a proven new approach to make the performance review a useful tool–by motivating employees to better align with the organization’s vision and overall goals.

In their book, More Than A Motorcycle – A Leadership Journey at Harley Davidson, ©2000 authors Rich Teerlink and Lee Ozley explain that a key part of the turn-around of Harley Davidson was the development of a replacement for the traditional performance review process which they saw as a holdover of the old command and control management mentality. One of their overriding goals in developing their new system–the Performance Effectiveness Program (PEP)–was to align the individual efforts of each employee with the overall values and strategies of the larger organization. The new system they developed serves as the foundation for Harley’s individual performance review, compensation review and career development processes.

While alignment of individual effort with the goals of the overall organization is the stated goal of most performance review systems, most fall short of actually achieving this kind of alignment. So how did Harley accomplish this lofty task?

They started with a top-down approach. I noted in an earlier post how Harley had started their top down approach not with a vision statement but with the stated values they wanted to demonstrate. They then identified the major issues facing the organization, from both a survival and growth perspective, and the myriad stakeholders that were crucial to the success of Harley. These (values–issues–stakeholders) then formed the basis for developing their organizational vision.

Once they formulated a vision that the whole organization bought into (developing it was a collaborative process) they developed the mission, objectives and strategies to meet that vision. Harley’s new system revolved around developing targeted performance measures at four major levels of planning: overall strategic plans, company operating plans, work unit plans and then personal plans. It’s this important stage where most performance review systems disconnect–if they were ever connected in the first place. Most performance review systems are developed in a vacuum divorced from the actual objectives and strategies of the organization.

The measures they developed for the “work unit plans” are the key to how their system worked. These plans were a detail of how each work unit would execute the organization’s strategy, meet the objectives and fulfill the mission. It’s these “work unit plans” that then formed the basis for developing the individual employees’ goals for the year. It was these specific plan goals that the performance review system was meant to measure.

So what did they do to the actual performance review process? Throughout their decade long transformation of Harley Davidson, management realized that the typical Performance Rating Form and it’s measures of non-specific traits and characteristics like: “effective communicator,” “global thinker,” “effective problem solver,” “gets results,” “acts as effective role model,” actually represented a real impediment to the organization reaching its goals.

As they noted, “Neither party to the review dialog could figure out exactly how to apply these measures. [For example] Which specific “behaviors” demonstrated objectively and conclusively, that an individual was an effective communicator or global thinker? If an employee wanted to improve along a given dimension, such as problem solving, what specific things could they do? No one could agree.”

This is the same problem faced by any organization that clings to the traditional subjective performance review format. So what exactly did Harley do to solve this problem? Harley believed that most typical performance review processes focus on measuring little more than the employee’s attitudes (disguised as a list of subjective “traits” that the organization feels are critical for an employee to possess to be successful). Thus Harley began a significant transition in its approach to the performance review process getting away from focusing on the individual’s traits, or “attitudes” and focusing instead on that person’s “behaviors.”

In their words, “When most companies have what they call a ‘problem employee’ they assume that the employee has an attitude problem. So the plan then is to attempt to change the employee’s attitudes.” The dictionary definition of an “attitude” is: a settled way of thinking or feeling typically reflected in a person’s behavior. Harley believed that an attitude only serves as an excuse for a behavior, thus they felt that more could be accomplished by focusing exclusively on behaviors. They believed that a person’s values drive their beliefs, which drive their attitudes which in turn drive their behavior and that the process should side-step values, beliefs and (especially) attitudes and focus strictly on behaviors.

Behavior is defined as; the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, esp. toward others, or; the way in which a person acts in response to a particular situation or stimulus. Isn’t this exactly what the workplace is all about: how an employee interacts with peers and how he/she reacts to everyday situations? On top of that, when an employee is told they have a bad attitude they get defensive. Also, no one likes to be told what to value or what to believe.

How did this new approach change the actual performance review form? Here’s an example’ of how a specific performance review “trait” was changed into a behavioral measure. The old measure: “Communicates Effectively” now comprised between three and five specific behavioral descriptors, such as “communicates in a way that permits full understanding” and “listens actively to a person when he/she is speaking.” Another key to their new system was that each specific “work unit” then added specifics that reflect priorities in their own area. Thus there was no single “one size fits all” performance review form in use across the whole organization. Each “work unit” had its own goals, measures against those goals, and its own supporting behaviors judged to be crucial to meeting those goals.

Another important facet of their overall new PEP schema was that the individual employee’s performance review, his compensation review (and adjustment), and career development reviews were scheduled on different occasions, separated by weeks or months. The reason is that they felt that when they are given at the same time they are counterproductive.

In their words, “If the supervisor begins the review session by revealing the amount of the raise, then the employee feels either pleased or displeased. In either case, he or she remains distracted by that number. Maybe he dwells on how the extra money will be spent, or he spends the remainder of the session deciding how to demonstrate his unhappiness. Even if the raise information is withheld until the end of the review the employee is equally distracted. They wonder ‘why is this being held back? How much did I get? Is it bad news?’”

They separated compensation from the performance review so that on a single target date everyone in the organization got an increase that was separate from their individual review. Of course you can’t completely divorce the two, but they were no longer tied together, driving each other. I’ve personally found the practice of giving a salary adjustment at the same time as the performance review to be a major detractor to the whole process working effectively.

Also Harley introduced a variable compensation policy. They split an employee’s compensation rate to 67% fixed and 33% variable. An employee received the variable portion of his/her pay if the “work unit” achieved its goals and if the employee met his/her personal goals established in the career development phase.

The bottom line is that while even Harley’s approach doesn’t completely eliminate some subjective measures of an employee’s performance, their approach is much more objective since it focuses on how an employee contributes to the overall “objectives” of the organization–and that’s really what’s important for the long-term health and success of any organization. Isn’t that why we supposedly do performance reviews in the first place?

Last week I talked about the famous Peter Principle and especially how managers, who have already reached “their level of incompetence,” often times don’t even know they’re at “Final Placement.” This is the “Ignorance Is Bliss Syndrome.” We’ve all come into contact with this type person in our career and I’m sure when you did you thought to yourself; “how does this person stay employed?” Despite the fact that once in management it’s usually tough to expunge an incompetent–they make the rules by which competency is judged–rest assured they do eventually fall under the knife. That’s because most Peter Principle sufferers, sooner or later, face what’s called “Hierarchal Exfoliation.” The problem is it doesn’t just affect incompetents.

In his ©1969 book, The Peter Principle–Why Things Always Go Wrong, “Hierarchal Exfoliation” is what Laurence Peter calls “the process of an organization shedding both the super-incompetent and the super-competent.” At face value it doesn’t make sense–why would an organization want to get rid of the super-competent? While all organizations have an aversion to super-incompetence, the fact is Peter is absolutely right–many organizations have the same unknowing aversion to those that are super-competent?

Peter contends that most organizations will “exfoliate” the super-competent in the same manner as the super-incompetents–like throwing the baby out with the bath water. Why–because to those in management, who have reached their “Final Placement,” the super-competent are seen as a threat to them and their status-quo. Brings new light to the oft over used recruitment catch-phrase of wanting to hire the “best of the best.”

According to Peter, “in most hierarchies, super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence.” Their presence “disrupts and therefore violates the first commandment of hierarchal life: the hierarchy must be preserved.” It should also be noted here that simple incompetence doesn’t necessarily mean the employee will be exfoliated–that’s why many organizations are still rife with incompetence (at all levels) despite Hierarchal Exfoliation.

According to Peter, employees in both the two extreme classes–the super-competent and the super-incompetent are alike subject to elimination. We all know the super-incompetent are those on the lay-off list and will be expunged the next time business conditions warrant a reduction in force (RIF), but for the super-competent–i.e., the best-of-the-best–it’s a different process.

There are two ways the super-competent are eliminated. The first, and most frequent way, is for them to leave on their own. When hired, they expect to be part of an organization in which they can grow their career and if the organization is dysfunctional (which most are to varying degrees) and laden with incompetents at their final placement it becomes very difficult for them and thus they get frustrated and make waves, or leave of their own accord. They see the incompetents as blocking their career path. Peter calls these “Super-Incumbents.”

Of course if the super-competents make waves they’ll find themselves on that same RIF list with the super-incompetents. Remember you don’t disrupt the hierarchy.

The second way the super-competent are removed is through the infamous yearly Performance Review. If you’re seen as a threat to a boss who’s reached Final Placement the Performance Review will be the weapon of choice for him/her to “Exfoliate” you. I make the point in my book, Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw that, despite your being in the good graces of a high level management incompetent, it only takes time until you’re seen as a threat and they must get rid of you.

There’s a way you can tell if this is being done to you. Recall last week’s blog post re; testing if your boss has reached his Final Placement…well performance review time will also shed some light on whether your boss has reached his/her career peak.

Peter explains it best: “If the superior is still at a level of competence, he may evaluate his subordinates in terms of the performance of useful work, e.g., the supplying of services or information, the production of [something] or achieving whatever are the stated aims of the hierarchy. That is to say, he evaluates output.

“But if the superior has reached his level of incompetence, he will probably rate his subordinates in terms of institutional values: he will see competence as the behavior that supports the rules, rituals and forms of the status quo. In short, such a superior evaluates input. In such instances, internal consistency is valued more highly than efficient service: this is called ‘Peter’s Inversion.’ [Meaning the boss] has inverted the means-end relationship.”

If you’re a super-competent working for a competent boss (and he’s a true leader) you’ll probably be judged fairly, but if the boss is incompetent there may be no way you can win in performance review roulette. The other problem is that the performance review format itself forces bosses to review employees through “Peter’s Inversion.”

Peter makes an interesting observation that I’ve found to be quite true; “…one reason so many employees are incompetent is that the skills required to get the job [i.e., be hired] often have nothing to do with what is required to do the job itself.” There’s actually another facet to that statement: what it takes to do the job many times is not at all what employees will be measured against once they’re absorbed into the organization and given their yearly performance review.

Once you’re hired, the organization switches focus from basic job competency to that of measurement against the subjective personality traits that make up most of the typical performance review criteria. Despite popular organizational rhetoric about valuing results above all else, performance reviews are typically focused more on the intangible, highly subjective soft skills that, many times, have really nothing to do with what’s required to actually perform a particular job.  So regardless of job competence–in this case super-competence–employees will often times find themselves being judged not on competence to actually do their job but how they fit the “mold” into which the organization is trying to force them. And all it takes is the incompetent boss to rate the targeted employee subpar on these criteria and he/she immediately joins the ranks of the incompetent and is a candidate for exfoliation.

The idea behind most employee performance evaluations is that, if you give employees accurate feedback about their weaknesses, they will be motivated to eliminate the weaknesses and thus perform better. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Einstein once said: “If you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” That’s the underlying effect that the modern performance review process has on people in the modern workplace.

The irony is that performance evaluations given to people who have achieved their “Final Placement” only serve to fuel their delusions of competence. But to super-competent people they will see the Performance Review process as an arbitrary device used to hold them back from achieving what they’re truly capable of.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the renowned Peter Principle? It was formulated by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their ©1969 book, The Peter Principle–Why Things Always Go Wrong which, if you haven’t read, I highly recommend. In the book Peter introduced us to what he called the “salutary science of hierarchiology,” something that I touched on in my previous two blog posts. It wouldn’t be fitting to talk about hierarchical organizations without including the Peter Principle in the discussion.

If, by chance, you’re not familiar with it, “The Peter Principle” states that: “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Peter’s also introduced a corollary which states “that in time every job in a hierarchy tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties.”

There’s always been the old joke floating around the halls of business that most people, having reached their level of incompetence, are promoted into management where they can do no more harm. There’s a bit of truth to that statement and we all can probably think of people from our past that we’ve thought were incompetent for the position they held. Many times we make that distinction about someone based on our gut feeling about them, however Peter provides specific detail on how you can recognize and confirm that someone you suspect has reached their level of incompetence.

So the question for all the readers is: do you work for a boss that has reached his level of incompetence? If your boss (or anyone in your organization) exhibits one, or more, of the “traits/behaviors” that Peter details in his book, then he/she has reached, what Peter called: “Final Placement.” Here’s Peter’s list with a few that I’ve added:

• Substitution – here the boss repeatedly substitutes something else for what really needs to be done–usually some inconsequential issue becomes center stage–this includes your typical pyromaniac who will start fires keeping his team perpetually in the “student body left” mode
• Perpetual Preparation – here the boss concentrates most on preliminary activities, i.e., planning instead of just performing the task–these are bosses who will repeatedly bring up old issues that were thought to be put to bed
• Side-Issue Specialization – here the boss consistently looks after the molehills and lets the mountains take care of themselves–whether (by luck) a good or (by negligence) bad outcome. If a good outcome he takes credit and if a bad outcome he will be the first to find someone to blame
• Convergent Specialization – this trait takes the previous one to a new level in which the boss will take all issues and stall them by always needing more and more data before a decision can be made, i.e., pedanticism
• Image Replaces Performance – here the boss exhibits self-righteousness behavior–obsessed with his credentials and letting everyone know his accomplishments and how good he was in previous jobs–his motto: “an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance”
• Utter Irrelevantist – here the boss will focus on some completely different task from what is required of the job–much to the amazement of his subordinates–different from “Substitution” in that here his focus is on something not related to the job
• Micromanaging – similar to the “Convergent Specialization” behavior where the boss micromanages every detail of his subordinate’s work–a dead giveaway is when the boss’s critique is focused more on form than substance
• Workaholism – this is where the boss will put in ungodly hours yet not accomplish much in moving the organization forward or becoming more effective–used as a psychological ploy to attempt to convince his boss that he’s dedicated and working hard for the organization
• Game of Divide and Conquer – the practice of the boss pitting employees against each other–done because he knows and fears his subordinates are better suited to do his job than he is and he sees them as a threat–by keeping them at odds with each other he deflects focus on his inability to manage or lead

Most bosses who have reached “final placement” usually suffer from “The Ignorance Is Bliss Syndrome.” This is where the person never fully realizes he/she has reached Final Placement. He/she continues to practice one, or all, of the above behaviors fully believing they’re great leaders and managers and that they are responsible for the success of the organization. Peter would contend that this syndrome is good for an employee because “he keeps perpetually busy, never loses his expectation of further promotion, and so remains happy and healthy.” However its bad for the organization as the above behaviors are also the symptoms of a dysfunctional workplace.

To make matters worse, most hierarchies, by their very command and control nature are so encumbered with rules and regulations, traditions, politics and oppressive culture that even high-up “Final Placement” managers do not have to actually lead anyone anymore–not in the sense of pointing out the organizational vision and setting the direction the organization will go. They simply follow precedents, obey rules and regulations, and move at the “head of the crowd.” As Peter would say, “Such employees lead only in the sense that the carved wooden figurehead leads the ship.”

As a relevant post-script to this subject readers might want to look into the “Paul Principle.” Proposed by Paul Armer in 1970, it reaffirms Peter’s corollary. It states, “People become progressively less competent for jobs they once were well equipped to handle.” Armer claimed his principle is becoming more relevant in today’s high-tech, knowledge based organizations, where the complexity of the jobs grows faster than the people doing them. People once fully competent to perform a job find themselves being out paced by technological advances and also by the way most organizational cultures become stagnant to accepting change.

The Paul Principle may be little known but should serve as a wake-up for readers in understanding how essential it is to protect and prepare yourself in your job so that one day you don’t find yourself suffering The Ignorance Is Bliss Syndrome.

In last week’s blog post I chronicled the beginnings of the modern organizational chart prompted by the rise of the middle management ranks. This was a path that lead to the modern hierarchical vertical organization structure that I believe is at the root of many management and workplace dysfunctions. I also promised that in this week’s post I’d detail a new way to think about organizational structure that is really “out of the box” and not like the conventional organization charts that have developed over the last 150 years.

However first, lets’ review the different types of organizational charts we typically see in today’s business environment:

• The classic Vertical Hierarchical Chart
• The Matrix Chart (which is still hierarchical in nature)
• The Flat, or Horizontal Chart

Without going into detail on each of these suffice for me to say that all of these are the result of, and result in, the command and control mentality that makes up the way most modern organizations are managed. So what are the options if you manage an organization and don’t want to follow the herd? Here’s an interesting approach…

I’m sure everyone has heard of the miraculous turn-around of the motorcycle maker Harley Davidson back in the 1980s and 1990s? The turnaround was needed because of their dire financial condition exacerbated by the introduction to the US of Honda and their line of top-quality inexpensive motorcycles. The two instrumental in the turn-around were CEO Rich Teerlink and organizational consultant, and coach, Lee Ozley who created a new and interesting approach to organizing the company.

In their book More Than a Motorcycle (©2000), Teerlink and Ozley chronicle Harley’s journey back from a barely alive company to a new kind of organization, that at its core recognizes people as a company’s only sustainable competitive advantage.

Before the miraculous turn-around the classical vertical hierarchical organization was in place and obviously not helping the situation, i.e., it was incapable of facilitating any new thoughts or ways of doing business. If I was to guess I’d bet that the fiefdom syndrome was alive and well in the old HD organizational culture. This is what Teerlink and Ozley faced and if you’ve ever worked in an environment that’s teetering on the edge of extinction you’ll know that changing the status quo is a monumental task. What’s interesting about the HD story is that the organization chart was an instrumental part of the company’s resurrection.

Instead of clinging to the classical hierarchical organization, Teerlink and Ozley conceived an organization that was displayed as three overlapping circles: a “Create Demand Circle,” responsible for marketing and sales, a “Produce Products Circle,” for engineering and production (I find this marriage of manufacturing and engineering an interesting approach to eliminating the natural tendency for these two functions to be at odds with each other), and a “Support Circle” for all other functions. In the center, where all intersect, stands the “Leadership and Strategy Council (LSC),” a small, innovative group that identifies the business issues that affect the entire organization (e.g., strategic plans, human resource policies, and operating budgets) and coordinates “cross-functional interdependent activities.”

See diagram of the way these circles interface with each other.

In addition to the top level Leadership and Strategy Council (LSC), at the three intersections of the circles we find smaller, more focused, LSCs that oversaw the interface and coordination directly between each pairing of groups. The premise was that the overlapping areas represented and emphasized the interdependence between groups. An interesting facet of these LSCs is that the members were elected by the groups not assigned by the upper LSC. This flies directly in the face of how command and control management assigns middle management.

At the heart of the circle organization’s success was something which I’ve preached many times and is the single most missed management concept: values. Teerlink and Ozley realized that this new circle organization was doomed without clear, concise and practiced values. “What’s interesting is that I put vision after [values],” Teerlink notes in his book. “Unless I have the first, I can’t really talk about vision.” Then once they had the vision solidly in place and “bought into” by all the stakeholders in the organization they developed their business strategy and then the organization to affect that strategy. This is the exact opposite to how most organizations develop either of these–usually the organizational structure is charted long before the vision and strategy and without concern for either of them.

The philosophy behind their circle organization was to get the right people, together at the right time, to do the right work, right the first time. Teerlink and Ozley wanted teamwork to flourish without the formal forced teams. They wanted natural work groups that were centered on specific work elements. The circles where identified as the core processes that were determined to be the minimum core processes deemed instrumental in running a successful business. They felt this would be a more accurate representation of shared leadership and cross-functionality.

Ideas, problems, and complaints that typically went “up the organization” were now encouraged to be worked out at the lowest levels–a goal preached by many a management team but rarely realized. Decisions were required to be made as close to the source of the problem as possible. People who had previously held hierarchical command-and-control management positions were transformed from “commanders” into facilitators and coaches. They still existed, but their jobs became more of mentor, rather than directing the daily minutia.

Teerlink and Ozley expected each circle to operate as an empowered work group and encouraged that leadership would be a shared responsibility. “Shared leadership, individual management” emerged as the HD organizational catch phrase.

So what do you call this new “circle organization?” In my mind it resembles the “Panopticon” that was developed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The concept of his circular design was to allow a watchman to observe all inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. The concept was used in the construction of prisons and mental institutions.

The dictionary.com definition of organization chart is: diagrammatic representation showing how departments or divisions in an organization are related to one another along lines of authority. The Panopticon flies in the face of this definition and my hope is that its acceptance starts a quiet revolution in how organizations organize themselves.

Harold S. Geneen once noted: “Every company has two organizational structures: the formal one written on the charts and the everyday relationships of the men and women in the organization.” It seems to me that the Panopticon circular organizational structure accomplishes the perfect melding of these two, sometimes conflicting, agendas.

Have you ever wondered how and why the modern hierarchical organization chart got its start? We’ve all seen them, and if you work for living you’re probably represented on one, maybe not by name but by job function. We’ve all been affected, both good and bad, by them whether we know it or not. Regardless, we all know where we stand on one and learn to guide our career choices based on that hierarchy–more importantly where we want to be in that hierarchy.

The Egyptians are thought to be the first people to use charts to illustrate the division of labor employed for large projects like the building of the Pyramids. The French Encyclopédie, published in the mid-1700s, defined one of the first organizational charts–the grouping of an organization into divisions and connecting subordinates to managers and managers to higher managers via a set of unidirectional arrows.

You might be surprised to learn that before the advent of modern middle management there was really no need for an organization chart. As late as 1840 there were no middle managers in the US, that is, there were no managers who supervised the work of other managers and in turn reported to senior executives who themselves were salaried managers. Prior to this the traditional business firm has been a single-unit business enterprise in which an individual, or a small number of owners, operated a shop, factory, etc. out of a single office or facility.

In the United States the organization chart first appeared in the mid-1800s and has been credited to Daniel McCallum of the Erie Railway. In 1855 McCallum created an organization chart to keep track of men and resources in what was the largest railroad in the world at the time.

McCallum’s organization chart was spawned partially due to horrendous head-on train crashes on the nation’s railways at the time. These crashes caused the State of Massachusetts legislature to launch an intensive investigation into the operations of the railways. The solution outlined in the legislative committee’s “Report on Avoiding Collisions and Governing the Employees” was to fix “definite responsibilities for each phase of the railroad company’s business, drawing solid lines of authority and communication for the railroad’s administration and operation.”

In response, McCallum’s goal was to create an organizational chart with clear division of responsibilities, power conferred on bosses in the chain of command, channels of communication to report on whether job duties had been carried out and the means to allow top management to have a clear view on what was going on throughout the organization and the power to act on it.

Also due to this legislative report the railroads put in place a large number of salaried managers, to oversee the railroad’s daily operation. They established offices operated by middle managers, commanded by top managers who reported to a board of directors. Thus the railroads were the first to build large internal organizational structures showing departments with defined roles of responsibility and authority. It was the railroad industry where middle management got its foot in the door and grew to the levels we see today.

The Civil War also contributed to the advent of middle management and the associated organization chart. An example is the US army’s Armory at Springfield Massachusetts; the first works to develop extensive internal specialization and because it was in the metalworking industry this is where the techniques of the modern factory management were first to appear. The management structure, organization and controls developed at the Springfield Armory are still evidenced in American manufacturing to this day.

Years later, another man named Alfred Chandler continued to develop and promote the concept of management hierarchy and organizational structure in the workplace. Born in 1918, Pulitzer prize winner Chandler was a Harvard graduate turned professor. In his book, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business, ©1977, he theorized how implementing a hierarchal structure in an organization could increase productivity and ultimately lower costs. However, I think the jury is out on whether the layering of middle management actually increases productivity and lower costs.

So it was, starting in the mid-1800s, the new overnight phenomenon–middle management and the organization chart–swept business. As a result of this management explosion, the managers themselves started to look on their work as a job function, in and of itself, and thus a lifetime career. This is when the problems started.

With the industrial revolution (up until about 1920) our rural-based economy began to take second place to the urban-based businesses that began to expand into multi-facility and vertically integrated enterprises. With vertical integration came the need for more middle management and thus deeper organizational charts. Also with this expansion, de-centralization within companies became the norm and thus the need for even more management grew. Managers were now needed to manage managers and the organization chart got deeper and deeper and complex. Once this managerial hierarchy had been formed the hierarchy itself became a major fixture in business and the power, and politics began to fester to the point where even small start-up firms believed they have the need to have a classical vertical organizational chart. Thus all organizations, however flat they are when they start, will ultimately develop into a hierarchal organization structure.

In this way the modern business organization took on a life of its own–each with a distinct (functional or dysfunctional) culture and the associated struggle of the workers wanting to rise on the organization chart. The need for people to strive to raise their position on the chart begat the need for all the interpersonal organizational games (that I describe in my book Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw) that are played out daily in the modern organization.

Rarely in the history of the world has a business practice–the organization chart–grown to be so important and so pervasive in so short a period of time. It overshadows all the management fads that have come and gone since like Quality Circles, Total Quality Management, Six-Sigma and Lean Manufacturing. Little did McCallum know he was unleashing probably one of the most widely used yet potentially detrimental pieces of paper floating around the modern workplace?

The organization chart also created a new type of bureaucrat–the hierophant. A hierophant is defined as: “a person who brings religious congregants into the presence of that which is deemed holy.” This describes how the organization chart bestows the lines of power from the lowest in the hierarchy up to the top person in control. Today’s modern management is obsessed with organizational structure, i.e., they have become hierophants. This explains why many organizations become little better than kingdoms.

Dr. Laurence Peter (The Peter Principle – Why Things Always Go Wrong, ©1969, Laurence J. Peter) calls this obsession “Rigor Cartis.” Peter described it as: “People, or organizations, suffering Rigor Cartis have an abnormal obsession with the construction of organization charts and a stubborn insistence upon routing every scrap of business in strict accordance with the lines and arrows of the chart, no matter what delays, or other maladies [e.g., fiefdom syndrome, gamesmanship, etc.], may result.”

I’m sure that all of you work in an organization where the organizational chart is one of the most cherished management tools and thus it would appear that the organizational chart and the hierarchy it begets appear here to stay. However, I believe that modern management needs to wake up and shed the conventional thinking on organizational structure and think outside the box–to use the trite buzz-phrase that today’s management loves.

What do I think the alternatives are you ask? In next week’s blog post I will present a new concept for organizational structure that I think has a lot of promise. Until then, keep in mind what Dale Dauten reminds us in his book The Gifted Boss: How to Find, Create and Keep Great Employees: “You can’t get to better without going through different.”

Last week’s blog post detailed the 20 things that employees “don’t” want from their boss. It was meant to be a different take on the many lists floating around of things that employees supposedly “want” from their bosses so they can be happy and engaged on the job. Most advice is geared toward what will supposedly motivate an employee, but my list details what can demotivate the employee. Most lists tell what “to do” if you’re the boss, while my list tells what “not to do.” The reason I think that this is important is because of what’s called “The Two-Factor Theory.”

The Two-Factor Theory states that there are certain factors in the workplace that cause job satisfaction, while a separate set of factors cause dissatisfaction. It was developed by Frederick Herzberg, a psychologist, who theorized that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction act independently of each other. Herzberg, a behavioral scientist, proposed “The Two-Factor Theory” back in the late 1950s’.

Another way to look at the theory is that not only are there some job factors that result in employee satisfaction; there are equally important job factors that “prevent dissatisfaction.” Preventing dissatisfaction was the goal of my list of 20 things employees don’t want from their boss. Since most management teams fail to realize, let alone take into account, this Two-Factor reality of employee motivation this will present them with a definite challenge–to change their approach to motivating their employees.

According to Herzberg, individuals are not content with the satisfaction of lower-order needs at work, for example, those associated with minimum salary levels or safe and pleasant working conditions. Rather, individuals look for the gratification of higher-level psychological needs having to do with achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement, and the nature of the work itself.

Many may remember Maslow’s theory of a need hierarchy. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Maslow used the terms Physiological (lowest basic need), Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization (highest basic need) to describe the factors that affect motivation. While he admits that all these overlap he primarily believes that people progress from the lower level basic needs to the higher ones as each need is achieved, i.e., you begin to strive for Belongingness and Love only after achieving your Physiological and Safety needs. Maslow’s theory suggests that the most basic level of needs must be met before the individual will strongly desire (or focus motivation upon) the secondary or higher level needs.

However, Herzberg added to Maslow’s work by adding a new dimension to this theory by proposing his “The Two-Factor Theory” of motivation. To Herzberg, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not on the same continuum with one increasing as the other diminishes, but are independent phenomena. His theory suggests that to improve job attitudes and productivity, bosses must recognize and attend to both sets of characteristics and not assume that an increase in satisfaction leads to decrease in dissatisfaction.

Even if all the factors that are proven to provide job satisfaction to employees are in place an employee can still be dissatisfied with his/her job because the “demotivators” are also in place. Thus the boss’s job is to increase the satisfiers while decreasing the dissatisfiers.

Job characteristics related to what an individual does, that is, to the nature of the work he performs–are proven to have the capacity to gratify such needs as achievement, competency, status, personal worth, and self-realization, thus making the worker happy and satisfied. However, according to Herzberg, the absence of such “gratifying” job characteristics does not necessarily lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

Dissatisfaction results from unfavorable job-related factors such as oppressive company policies, dysfunctional or command and control management, technical problems that preclude the employee doing a good job, strained interpersonal relationships on the job, and bad working conditions–i.e., general workplace dysfunction. All these things will lead to dissatisfied employees, regardless of what other motivators are in place. This is why my book Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw is an important book for bosses to read as it will teach them the dysfunctional behaviors that are probably causing their employees to be dissatisfied and not engaged in their work and the success of the company.

S0, if management wishes to increase satisfaction on the job, it should be concerned with the nature of the workplace itself, i.e., the level of dysfunctionality in the company’s culture, politics, management, and working conditions. In other words, management must take the challenge and strive for a workplace environment free of all the games people play, negative command and control practices, general disregard for the values the organization supposedly holds dear, and finally (and most importantly) the myriad dysfunctional management behaviors that are detailed in my book.

I call these the “non-dysfunctional” demotivational factors, i.e. those factors that when “not dysfunctional” will result in the least chance for there to be dissatisfied workers. These factors describe the job environment and symbolize the psychological needs the individuals wanted and expected to be fulfilled when they took the job. The “non-dysfunctional” factors include:

• Company Culture, Politics and Policies: this includes the level of bureaucracy present. The company policies should not be too rigid and oppressive. They should be fair and clear. This should include the strict adherence of management to the values the organization holds dear, e.g., work-life balance, trust, respect, etc.
• Technical Problems and Working Conditions: the working conditions should be safe, and free from technical problems, e.g., equipment in disrepair, bad product design, or insufficient resources, that preclude the employee from doing a good job and thus taking pride in their work efforts
• Command and Control Management: management must nurture an environment of trust, respect and shared accountability, e.g., not practice “blamestorming” and “plausible deniability.” Servant leadership is a good place to start for management to change their workplace environment
• Interpersonal Relations: the relationship of the employees with their peers, superiors and subordinates should be one of trust and respect. There should be no conflict or humiliation present. Games like “Thrown under the Bus” and “Divide and Conquer’ should not be played by management and should be squelched if others play them
• Job Security: management should provide job security to the employees to the best of its ability–it should not preach that the employees “should be happy to have a job.” Although if the organization is repeatedly having lay-offs this is a tough problem for management to overcome

Herzberg would undoubtedly agree the above factors alone cannot necessarily result in motivated employees. The “motivational” factors also have to be in place to yield positive job satisfaction.

So the bottom line is that if management wants engaged, happy employees they need to not only look to maximize the “motivational” factors, but minimize the “demotivational” factors, i.e., they must actively seek to create a workplace free of dysfunction in all its forms–and this is where my book can help.

There are many articles out there floating around detailing all the things that employees want and expect from their bosses. One article, “The Top 10 Things Employees Want from Their Boss: Keys to Employee Engagement,” July, 2012, by Rick Conlow, I found especially interesting. The article details some recent statistics on employee satisfaction that I think you’ll find as interesting as I did.

The article tells us, “Unfortunately, according to management derailment studies, 50% of today’s managers fail…55% of employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, which is a record high. And, the # 1 reason employees dislike their jobs is that they hate their boss.”

Most articles, as does this one, go on to detail specific guidance to bosses on what they “should do” to be better bosses and foster a happy workforce. However, this article, like most of them, doesn’t detail specifically why employees “hate’ their boss. I believe there’s a difference between what makes one worker happy, and like their boss, and what makes another person unhappy and hate their boss.  My point being that I believe there are certain boss behaviors, that are not on all these lists floating around of good things for bosses to do, that can derail all the best intentions of a boss. These I’ll call the things an employee “doesn’t want from his/her boss.”

So here are my 20 things that a boss shouldn’t do–i.e., what employees “don’t” want from their boss.

1. Don’t listen to me with that distant, distracted, I’d rather be somewhere else, look in your eyes–at least fake that you’re interested in what I have to say
2. Don’t be an alarmist…don’t jerk the student body left as the least little problem arises–don’t tell me to drop everything and DO THIS NOW!–no student body left exercises
3. If you have a problem with something I’m doing, don’t read me the riot act in public…call me aside and deliver your scolding in private
4. Don’t micromanage me…if you think I can’t or won’t do the job correctly replace me but don’t pick apart everything I do–let me take pride in my work
5. After not having talked to me much over the year, don’t pretend at annual review time that you’re on my side and fully understand my motivations and daily challenges and problems
6. Along the same vein–don’t wait until review time to tell me I’ve either done a good or bad job–tell me during the year, even if the situation doesn’t call for any celebrating–even if we’re mired down with problems tell me how I’m doing–say thanks every now and then
7. Do share the accountability for success “and” failure with me…don’t just pin failures on me–act like we’re all part of the same team and that we’re all in this together
8. Don’t skimp on the resources I need to do my job–if you can’t provide me with something, explain why and then don’t hold me accountable for things I have no power to accomplish–that includes withholding information that would make my job easier
9. Do not make destructive comments to me about any of my peers–don’t put me in the middle of your divide and conquer games
10. Don’t make comments about me to my colleagues either
11. Do not react to my suggestions with “no” or “but” or “however”–at least feign interest–if I hear those answers I won’t be likely to make any more suggestions–is that really what you want?
12. Do not play favorites–treat everyone under you the same
13. Don’t give me that tired old cliché of “don’t bring me problems–bring me solutions”–many times I don’t know how to solve a problem and need your help and guidance–don’t punish the messenger. Maybe it’s something that only you can solve? Maybe it’s a plea for you to talk to me more often?
14. Don’t preach work life balance when you truly don’t believe in it–don’t hold it against me because I can accomplish my job in eight hours when others on your staff must work 10-12 hours to get anything done
15. Don’t be condescending about how smart you are–even if true it degrades all who work for you and it degrades you
16. Don’t continue the command and control management style–it’s not becoming any longer
17. Don’t raise your voice to me–I don’t like being yelled at
18. Don’t be unavailable and inaccessible–if you have an open door policy leave the door open and encourage people to come talk to you
19. Don’t believe for a minute that pay is the only thing that truly motivates me–yes it’s important but I’m much more complex than that
20. Don’t partake in the games that I explain in my book Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw–actively try to curtail them if others are playing them

Remember: If you want your people to be better, you have to be better as a leader. The above no-no’s will help you to increase the respect your people have for you and lead you to achieve true employee engagement. Leadership is a high-contact sport. It takes time and effort.

The best leaders take all the above to heart because they care about the attitudes and thus motivation of their employees. When people know and see that you care, they will do almost anything for you. What’s the payoff for following through on these actions? All of the benefits listed below. Which are you interested in achieving?

• Higher employee satisfaction
• Lower employee turnover
• Better teamwork and communication
• Increased employee morale, commitment and engagement
• Improved productivity and quality
• Your own career advancement and success

The bottom line is that how you act as a leader determines how your employees react. You, as the leader, set the tone for your organization–only you can change it if it’s not working. On top of doing the “right” things to be a good leader you must also keep from consciously doing the “wrong” things. They are distinctly different. In next week’s blog post I will analyze why that’s true when I cover what’s called “The Two-Factor Challenge,” which explains why the things that make employees happy can be completely different than those that make them unhappy.

The Groupthink Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group environment, in which there’s an overpowering need for reaching consensus which results in snap judgments and decision-making without proper research. In the group’s overzealous goal to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision they will many times ignore critical data, and alternative ideas or viewpoints, and by doing so become ineffective at their given task.  A major reason for this phenomenon is due to the fact that all people are somewhat conflict averse thus they will avoid any potential controversy by not voicing their true opinions. This failure of the members to question the path the group might be taking or to bring up new alternatives is what dooms the group to ineffectiveness. Unfortunately, Groupthink can affect all levels of organization from teams on the manufacturing floor to executive management teams.

Groups infected with the Groupthink Syndrome see loyalty to the group as their number one duty and as such will avoid any situation that jeopardizes their inclusion in the group. Pleasing the group is the path of least resistance. In groups such as this the result is a loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking and thus the chance for any new ideas to cultivate.

Groupthink is just another of the many dysfunctional behavior patterns that can affect the modern workplace. It can overtake meetings or any group get-together that has convened to decide on a course of action or to make a decision. Many times one person will take control and their opinion/views will become that of the group without challenge from anyone.

There’s also a more damaging side to this syndrome. The dysfunctional group dynamics at work in this syndrome produce in the members an illusion that they are above criticism and that their decisions are the only right ones. Groupthink can cause the group to significantly overrate their own abilities thus falling prey to “The Halo Effect.” When exhibited in the senior management ranks it is the most damaging to the overall organization’s health.

Is your organization prone to groupthink? Here are few symptoms indicative of an organization where groupthink can take root:

• Management overestimates the organization’s capabilities or has illusions of their invulnerability which create excessive optimism about the organization’s future–this causes irrational risk taking without proper vetting–this mindset then trickles down through the organization
• Management is closed-minded and unable to take criticism that might challenge their power and authority; people are not encouraged to speak up for fear of their jobs–there is a censorship of any doubts in management’s abilities
• Management’s market-driven requirement to focus almost exclusively on short-term financial performance at the expensive of the future growth of the organization. They choose paths that do not detract from short-term financial performance, and ignoring one’s that may cost more but benefit the organization more in the long-run
• Protected or group fiefdoms exist which are provided sanction by the top management of the organization and as such can do no wrong–all others in the organization are treated as second-class citizens. Whatever the protected fiefdom does, or decisions it makes, by default become the organization’s gospel
• An organizational culture of blame in which people are chastised if they speak up or question the organization’s strategic plan
• Organizational Amnesia–the organization seems forever doomed to repeat many problems/situations over and over without ever really resolving the root-cause. They do the same thing over and over somehow expecting a different result.
• Performance Review process–employees are held to arbitrary standards that do not encourage individualism, creativity, risk taking or empowerment. They become incapable of thinking outside the box

Groupthink can be spawned by any of the symptoms listed above and the result is defective decision-making at all levels in the organization. When groupthink plagues a workplace, decision-making becomes almost a game that paralyzes the organization from growing and reaching its vision. The organization never learns from their mistakes and will continue this pattern until the organization will eventually cease to exist–their relentless race to the bottom.

Groupthink is at work when management teams are thoroughly convinced that their strategy is the only way forward. They will define their vision based on faulty presumptions of who they are, their core competencies, and where they want to go. They then build plans to operate in that universe which ultimately becomes the recipe for failure. After repeated failures at achieving success, they begin to blame external (and internal) forces as the reasons for their failure–this is where a blame-oriented culture finds its roots.

The organizational chart itself can contribute to Groupthink as functional groups are encouraged to have strong group allegiance, seeing themselves as single entities, where cavorting with the enemy (any other group) is frowned upon. The isolated groups begin to make decisions based on their own internal and external world viewpoint, and it’s many times counterproductive to the overall goals of the organization. This behavior is at the heart of what’s called “The Fiefdom Syndrome.”

At the very heart of the Groupthink Syndrome is the irrational concern on the part of the members of the group for the feelings and needs of others–remember “The Co-Dependency Syndrome.”

For an organization to break free of this dysfunctional syndrome change must start at the top levels of management. Top management must set the example by not placing stress on the organization by being fixated on the short-term and on the quick fix for problems that arise, i.e., they must cease constantly preaching and judging the organization on its sense of urgency. This “sense of urgency’ is something that I write about in my book Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw. It manifests itself in what I call the “Chicken Little Syndrome.”

Management must also encourage employee empowerment to make new and innovative suggestions and to constantly question and challenge the organization’s status quo. And to avoid the organizational amnesia curse they must be patient in problem solving allowing the organization to find the best solutions to problems. In business there’s usually no quick fix that solves any problem for good. Management must nurture in all the groups within the organization the need for thoroughness in all that they do and in all the decisions that they make to find the best solutions possible. This will stop groupthink from ever getting a foothold.

Do you work in a dead end job yet too afraid to leave? Is your boss a bully yet you keep telling yourself it’s not that bad and “what doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger?” Are your co-workers back-stabbing yet you silently tolerate? Do you keep asking yourself “why me?” Or worse yet, do you stay in your current hellish job because you’re convinced there’s nothing better out there, or that no one would hire you anyway?

If you answered yes to any of these you’re probably suffering from “The Co-Dependency Syndrome.”

While co-dependency is defined as a psychological condition, it’s really a relationship, in which one person lets themselves be controlled or manipulated by others. On the other side of the relationship the controlling parties are people with their own psychological condition, e.g., narcissism and, by their very nature, have the need to control others. Unfortunately this is the typical sort of personality that migrates to the top levels in management.

When these two personalities meet it can become a lethal mix for the person being controlled. The relationship becomes one of love-hate between what can be called the oppressor and the oppressed. This is the essence of The Co-Dependency Syndrome.

It should be noted that in a co-dependent relationship, the oppressor and oppressed are usually not on equal ground (in the organizational hierarchy) and thus there is an imbalance of power in all aspects of the relationship. This makes it tough for the oppressed to break free of the syndrome–the oppressed may consciously want to stop the relationship but they find themselves powerless to do anything.

The oppressed will withhold their true feelings for fear of rejection by their oppressor. They harbor hidden (often fantasy) expectations about their relationship with the oppressor e.g., that the oppressor is really on their side or looking out for them with best intentions. They then resort to resentment and passive aggressiveness, or depression, when their (unexpressed) needs are not met. Typically the co-dependency relationship has a dysfunctional, or one-sided, communication pattern, i.e., communication flows only from the oppressor to the oppressed.

Despite it taking a certain mindset to become the victim of this syndrome we are all vulnerable to falling prey and becoming co-dependent on someone. Typically the affected person is forced to place a lower priority on their own needs, while being excessively expected to service the needs of another. This is the heart of the syndrome and explains why workers feel the need to constantly please their bosses.

As mentioned above, and especially true in the work-a-day world, the relationship is really only a one-way dependency–that of the workers to the boss. The sociopathic upper levels of management are only dependent on their subordinates to the extent that they need them do the work so as to make the organization (and thus them) successful–0ther then that they have no need for the dependent person. This helps to understand why lay-offs are the action of choice in the business world when times get tough.

Co-dependency is one of the least recognized but still dangerous areas of dysfunction in the modern workplace. People become dependent to the habitual dysfunctional behavior patterns of management which inhibits their freedom of choice–their ability to reach out and find a new job. Workers see their managers almost as parental substitutes and develop an unnatural obsession with pleasing them despite getting little in return.

People suffering from co-dependency do not challenge the dysfunctionality and by doing so provide unspoken approval for the inappropriate behaviors of management or co-workers. This explains why once dysfunction sets into an organization it becomes near impossible to purge.

The irony (if you can call it that) is that in the face of widespread management dysfunction, workers often believe the “system” will protect them. They believe that management must represent the good guys and thus be on their side. They miss the point that the dysfunctional management “is” the system. They believe this all the way to point when their name pops to the top of the lay-off list.

There are a couple reasons why people become co-dependent. The first is insecurity. Even emotionally secure people with high self-esteem will develop a co-dependency after prolonged exposure to a dysfunctional organization and command and control behavior patterns of sociopathic management.

The second reason people behave co-dependently is fear. A fearful or dysfunctional workplace nurtures co-dependency in its members. And remember, fear is a key component of the typical command and control management style in use in today’s workplace. Command and control doesn’t work without widespread fear.

Bullying (in all forms) is also an enabler of co-dependent behaviors. The co-dependent becomes so convinced of their inferiority (reinforced over time by the management bullying) that they begin to believe they cannot find another job because they are not worthy and thus must “stick it out,” or worse yet begin to believe they somehow deserve their treatment.

In the end the co-dependent spends their miserable time dreaming of how work life could be different rather than focusing on the reality of the situation–the need to leave the harmful organization.

This syndrome has an effect on the oppressor also. Too often dysfunctional management teams mistakenly believe they’re “leading” because they think they have followers. Unfortunately their followers are really only the co-dependents they have created who have no choice. Remember the old leadership adage: “if you turn around and find no one is following you then you’re really only out taking a walk.” Management teams seeking to establish shared accountability and employee engagement need to self-assess whether they are nurturing followers or an army of co-dependents.