Beth n Rod 1,279 Report post Posted December 26, 2004 Senior Management Leadership (or the Lack of it!) "The price of leadership is criticism." - Albert J. Dunlap Corporate Abuse and the Project Manager in Turnarounds There are some incredibly stupid things corporate executives have done (and continue to do) while reengineering, restructuring, downsizing, TQM'ing, team-building, and empowering...in order to cover their ifs, ands or "buts." "Today, in good times and bad, everyone must be a Turnaround Manager." - Albert J. Dunlap, Mean Business "The facts read like a grim fairy tale. America's corporate leaders are cheered for implementing the latest management craze atop the bestseller list. Business giants are idiolized, placed on pedestals and even immortalized in film for their strategic genius. Consultants, boards of directors, academics, the business press, even the workers themselves, eagerly applaud the moves of top management, figuring that if someone is pulling in a seven-figure salary, he or she is doing something right. But no one dares to point out the obvious: that millions of workers have lost their jobs, their standard of living and their future job security. That downsizing, rightsizing, restructuring and reengineering are wiping out the work force in epidemic numbers, and wreaking havoc with the economy. Amidst the approving roar of the crowd, will anyone venture to ask, "Do our corporate leaders really know what they are doing?" There certainly is incompetence at the top levels of our corporations. It's a tale of dismal performance and gross ineptitude among senior management - and the devastating impact it's had on the work force and the economy. There are numerous examples of business failures as well as strategies, decisions and management crazes so bizarre, business people with any common sense at all must pause to wonder how our economy survives at all." - Alan Weiss, Our Emporers Have No Clothes There are solutions that one can use to implement effective leadership in dealing with the above and the project turnaround. They may be independent or closely interwoven, but there are simple and practical steps that can be implemented to undo the dysfunctional elements in both the senior management arena and on projects that are in trouble. Applied correctly, these create the atmosphere for project success. Quotes from the trenches - "The most frustrating thing is I know how to do it right. I'm good at my job. But I feel like I'm running in quicksand. What's going on?" "I just want to do the job I was hired to do and be allowed to do it well. 'I don't know what you're supposed to do and I don't want to know,' my project manager said. I'm invisible." "Everybody knows what the problems are but no one says anything. Everybody just falls in with what they think people want to hear. If you point the problems out, it's 'kill the messenger.' " "The project manager is always promising the impossible to clients. She comes back in a panic and my team has to pull it all together somehow. We're the ones who have to work through the night to make the deadlines and the numbers she commits to without knowing what is really involved." Paul's "Rule of Engagement" for Successful Project Turnaround Management "For us to really understand the situation in which we are being asked to turnaround a project, we must first get fully aligned with the stakeholders, including the project team, to whom we must look to for support , resources, and leadership, and stay aligned. If it isn't there, or is lame at best, we will have a very difficult time in being successful. Establish 'exactly' where the existing project team and the senior management (from all sides) stands in the "integrity and trust" category by requiring mutual agreement on principles below by honestly addressing the following: identify the needs for specific project turnaround success then gain/maintain alignment and manage expectations, getting real (documented) commitments from senior management & stakeholders as necessary - no CYAs or SMLs*, 'actually getting' the support that is needed, and 'communicating high up' when commitments are dishonored, 'following up' in project closure with 'lessons learned in detail' from the turnaround , 'continuous progress reporting' on situation and support quality received during the turnaround, and 'dishonored commitments' must be highly visible to all participants , and repeatedly shared with all." - Paul * CYA you know, but for those of you who may not know, SML is "Selective Memory Loss" - a disease found predominantly among project sponsors, stakeholders, lenders, project team members, and other participants when a project is in trouble. This is particularly rampant in situations where those parties have failed to honor their commitments of support or deliverables, and by doing so, have contributed in putting the project in jeopardy. Solid documentation helps in curing this disease of convenience found in untrustworthy relationships. Failures in Leadership and the Key Element in Leadership Too many project "leaders" are all too content to rule with the power of their office - and not the power of their courage, their beliefs, their personality, and their intelligence. To acquire legitimacy, you must stand for something. And that something has to be more than just your own self-interest. You must stand for principles, ideas, and the needs of others. You must stand for something greater than yourself. In the end, a leader is always a servant for a noble cause. When applied to the "turnaround" project manager that must go in and turn a project around, that noble cause doesn't have to be abstract or complex or lofty. It should be something as simple as survival (recovery) of the project. As a project manager it can be the success of a project that supports a number of families. Just believing in the cause doesn't make you the leader. A lot of people believe in things. But are they willing to sacrifice, and sweat, and risk their lives for their cause? Probably not. But a leader is willing. And that's what gives him legitimacy. If you are going to lead people who have strong and independent spirits, you can only do it because they have allowed you to be their leader. You must work for the respect of your team, and you must earn your legitimacy from them. You must win their hearts and minds if you are to lead them in battle. "When you join your organization, you will find there a willing body of men who ask from you nothing more than the qualities that will command their respect, their loyalty, and their obedience. They are perfectly ready and eager to follow you, so long as you can convince them you have those qualities. When the time comes that they are satisfied you do not possess them, you might as well kiss yourself good-bye. Your usefulness is at an end." - Major A.C. Bach, in his 1917 farewell address to the graduating officers at Fort Sheridan, Wyoming. There is no better way to win their hearts and minds - and to earn your legitimacy - than by leading from the front. It demonstrates that you are ready to give to them everything that you ask from them. The Lean and Mean Culture and the Issue of TRUST Quotes from the Lean and Mean (and Insensitive) Culture "Our parents had it easy. Once they had a job, they could expect to stay there if they wanted to, and they were valued for their years of experience and knowledge. If they wanted to leave, they could usually find something else, so they weren't stuck in a situation that was killing them. Now we're told we can't expect job security, but we're too terrified to leave in case we can't find another job." - Dieter, accountant "These days, it's upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, whatever worked last year is useless this year. The minute you get used to one computer systems, they replace it. For crying out loud, I still can't transfer calls on the damn telephone without cutting people off, and they want me to learn how to do all this spreadsheet stuff on the computer. Honest to God, those things are giving me ulcers." - Lloyd, warehouse supervisor "Why can't management say what it means? Like that guy who said something about getting his gun when he heard the word "culture," I'm ready to get out my gun when I hear the word "restructuring." It means firing - everybody knows that. I'm sick of all the bafflegab. It just adds to the feeling of uncertainty and dread." - Marta, systems analyst These days many of us feel like Alice Through the Looking Glass, who found she had to run as hard as she could just to stay in one place and was told by the Red Queen that she would have to run even faster if she wanted to advance on the chessboard. In the shift from an industrial age to an information age, changes have occurred in the workplace that neither workers nor managers could have anticipated. Burgeoning technology, shrinking customer loyalty, and expanding global markets have sharpened competition, while production costs have risen. The scramble to stay on top of the heap gets more heated with every business quarter, as stockholders demand that corporate executives cut costs and show profits. In many cases the battle is for sheer survival. Competition for jobs is more fierce than ever, so the closest most of us get to climbing the corporate hierarchy is swinging from one ladder to another. Gone are the days when a young graduate signed on for life at a huge corporation. Loyalty to the firm has been downplayed by jittery professionals who have no choice but to rank building their own careers over the needs of a company that will in all likelihood offer only a temporary home. Consequently, the traditional psychological contract has been broken. Managers feel pressured to produce results at any cost while often finding their own jobs in jeopardy. They feel deserted by a workforce that seems unmotivated and unwilling to make sacrifices. Employees don't have faith that their loyalty and performance will guarantee them a job in the future. They see high-level profit-taking at the expense of thousands of jobs; they watch as fellow workers are laid off in an arbitrary fashion; they see surviving staff members overburdened with increasing workloads. And they look over their shoulders, waiting fearfully for the ax to fall. Trust is gone from the relationship, so both parties feel justified in acting in their own self-interest. "When problems start at a company, they're often traceable to a self-aggrandizing corporate royalty more concerned with its own perks that with the products the company make or the services it offers. When you must make changes, start by throwing corporate toys (and their defenders) overboard. Squeeze corporate headquarters and shrink high-priced, unproductive management." - Albert Dunlap, Mean Business "Corporate Killers" blazed the headline on a recent Newsweek cover. Under mug shots of four top executives - Robert Palmer at Digital, Albert Dunlap at Scott, Robert E. Allen at AT&T, and Louis V. Gerstner at IBM - the magazine ran the number of jobs each of them had slashed. Inside, the writer Allan Sloan asked rhetorically: "How many CEOs of big, downsizing companies sacrificed some of their pay and perks to encourage a sense of community? Did they apologize publically to the people they fired? Did they take any personal responsibility for mistakes that helped cause the problems they're solving with lay-offs? No way, that's not macho." At the core of the "downsizing" dilemma is the issue of trust. Trust is the central, unspoken element in the relationship between an employer and an employee. This relationship is the "psychological contract" between employer and employee. In the 1950s or early 1960s the psychological contract was paternalistic in its nature: It placed the welfare of the employee in the hands of the employer. Employees agreed to put in "a good day's work" on a continuing basis and to show loyalty to the company over time. In return the employer agreed to pay a fair wage and provide certain benefits. It was understood that raises would be forthcoming based on seniority and performance. If people stayed and didn't botch the job, they were assured of a place until retirement. The advancements and rewards they reaped along the way were determined by the quality of their work and the degree of their loyalty. That form of contract was swept away, first by the wave of mergers and acquisitions in the 1980s, then by the recession and downsizings of the 1990s. Now all bets are off. When a company is undergoing structural abuse, the stress comes from fear of the unknown and of the future. Nobody knows what is going to happen; all anyone knows is that it won't be pretty. Fear becomes the only motivation for action - or inaction. In companies undergoing radical change, every corporate announcement is greeted with suspicion. Globilization means jobs go to the Third World and people here get fired. Takeovers means somebody else benefits from all our hard work and the people who built the company get fired. Automation means that computers do jobs that humans used to do and people get fired. Restructuring by definition means people get fired. The trouble is, most of the time these suspicions are correct. They don't have to be, but they often are. Firing people is a lot easier and quicker than retraining them, redeploying them, or empowering them, so management tends to fire people at the first sign of trouble. Those who are spared often wish they'd been let go too, because in an abusive company they have to do several jobs without any increase in pay or support. This is a lose/lose situation. "I made the first announcement that job cuts were coming to Scott Paper during a thirty-minute meeting for 1,600 general headquarters staff in the largest of our two cafeterias. I said, "We can't continue running this corporation the way it's been run in the past," and I laid out the problems. I expected those people would be deeply concerned and they were. But when I got done, they clapped! When I got back to my office, I said to Basil Anderson, "That was amazing!" "These people," he said, "are desperately looking for leadership." - Albert Dunlap, Mean Business What is the cost of such wholesale elimination of jobs? What can executives learn about implementing cutbacks that will make the gains outweigh the costs? There are no simple answers to these questions, but one thing is certain: Knee-jerk reactions hurt everybody. Besides the disastrous effects on individuals - those who are fired and those who survive as the working wounded - they reduce equity in the company. Downsizing should always maximize performance both for those staying and for those leaving the organization. A good deal of structural abuse is avoidable. Although downsizing and restructuring are often necessary, they don't need to be carried out in a way that humiliates those who are laid off, traumatizes those who stay, and fails to achieve efficiency and responsiveness. There are companies that manage to treat employees well even during downsizings and that work hard to keep up morale in tough times. It is possible. "All bad precedents began as justifiable measures." - Julius Caesar We all know it exists. So why has so little been written on the subject of corporate abuse? Why does the problem seem almost invisible? The answer is simple: throughout history, abuse has been the norm, not the exception, in work relationships. Our capacity to accept abusive behavior can be measured by the extent to which we can justify it. This formula has been proven in the past and continues to be valid today. However, once we remove the justification, either on philosophical or practical grounds, we can expose abuse as harmful, unacceptable, and counterproductive. Psychological Abuse The mechanization of work marks a turning point in our journey through the history of abuses suffered at work, away from the physical and toward the more subtle abuses of the soul. For although factories advanced to be more efficient and productive, employees were still given very little respect. Rather than seeing them as people with dreams and needs, bosses considered them as little more than bodies to push and pull the job to completion. "If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin." - Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle The attitude that workers are lesser beings shifted from the shop floor to the office tower. Even though we have witnessed the decline of the traditional industry over the last twenty to thirty years, the working models from the old industries have survived and can be found in even our most modern businesses. The Technologies of Control Psychological experiments in brainwashing and the treatment of prisoners of war and members of religious cults have provided some terrifying lessons in controlling and modifying behavior in the workplace. They have proved that by destroying human reference points and undermining confidence, those in control can reduce people to obedient, unquestioning, unthinking automatons. "In matters of taste, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson Abuse and the Corporate Lifecycle Sometimes abuse can be hard to recognize. You feel something is wrong, but you can't put your finger on the source of the problem. You are stressed, but you don't exactly know why. There are no obvious bullies, no clear villains. Sooner or later you begin to think that you're the one who is out of step and that it is your fault. At about this point you begin to feel uncertain about your ability to do the job. You start questioning your own decisions and conclusions. Your energy flags and you can't seem to generate anything brighter than a low-watt idea. You just aren't as creative as you used to be - maybe you were deluding yourself and the company all along. Jurassic Organizations Corporations grow, mature, age, and die, just like people. And just like people, some of them age more gracefully than others. There are crusty old codgers and spry septuagenarians, wonderful senior citizens and tiresome old so-and-sos. Those that have not aged well we call Jurassic organizations. These corporations are more concerned with maintaining the status quo than with trying new directions that might increase market share. Playing it safe has long since replaced taking risks. For all intents and purposes, these corporations are at the end of their useful lives. That's not to say they are on the point of disintegration, but certainly they are on the path to extinction. Unfortunately, Jurassic organizations can keep going for years, propped up with creative accounting, favorable legislation, and infusions of government money. The emphasis in all of this, however, is on useful life, the creative stage of an organization's existence. Ichak Adizes has compared growing companies and aging companies in his book, Corporate Lifecycles. Growing Companies Personal success stems from taking risk Emphasis in on function over form Everything is permitted, unless expressly forbidden Problems are seen as opportunities Political power is with the marketing and sales departments Responsibility is not matched with authority Management drives the momentum Sales orientation Value added goals Aging Companies Personal success stems from avoiding risk Emphasis is on form over function Everything is forbidden, unless expressly permitted Opportunities are seen as problems Political power is with the accounting, finance, and legal departments Authority is not matched with responsibility Management is driven by inertia Profit preoccupation Political gamesmanship The Management-Theory-of-the-Month Syndrome In a Jurassic organization, the only hope for change is a radical shakeup. No individual can single-handedly move the mountain. The best course for any bright spark is to move to a younger company where ideas are valued and the systems do not squash innovation. Beware. Some companies that say they value innovation are simply spouting the latest jargon. "Empowerment!" they cry, "Quality! Teamwork! Vision!" These companies will claim to value change and innovation yet never really succeed in making more than superficial adjustments to the way they work. They will flirt with ideas like employee empowerment, but they never practice what they preach. Cultural Antibodies Resistance to change often takes the form of "cultural antibodies" that search out and destroy innovation and change. Antibodies in the human body help fight disease, but they can also cause the body to reject essential remedies such as blood transfusions or certain medications. Antibodies protect the status quo in the human body, sometimes at the expense of life itself. Similarly, cultural antibodies can keep a company on track in good times by perpetuating systems and attitudes and warding off digressions, but if a company has stumbled into crisis, cultural antibodies can thwart necessary change. Resistance to change is normal. After all, asking for change implies there is something wrong with the current state of affairs. When someone suggests you should try cutting your hair or maybe having it permed, you assume that it's because your current hairstyle doesn't suit you. In fact, it may simply be that hairstyles have changed, but you still feel the sting of criticism. Nobody wants to be told that the way they work is no longer effective or that the structures and systems they have set up aren't appropriate to today's business environment. They feel is is a criticism, even though it may be that times have changed and what worked perfectly well before is now out of date. This reaction is to be expected. However, when the resistance seems to come from the system itself, it's important to ask who takes priority: the system or people? Globilization Panic The new global realities have got a lot of companies running scared. The borderless economy means that people can compete with unknown and unseen counterparts on the other side of the world. There is nowhere to hide in the global economy, no protection for unprofitable operations or outdated methods. No matter how fast you run, there may be someone whose name you don't even know who is running just as fast - maybe even faster. That, at any rate, is the fear. The international division of labor means that, in theory at least, a corporation can locate different functions in different countries: low-skilled work in a country with cheap labor, research and development in a country with good universities, computer operations in a country with reliable telecommunications, and so forth. Meanwhile, money can be moved around electronically and invested in any country via stock exchanges from New York to London to Tokyo. The optimists see globilization as an opportunity to get into new markets and expand; the pessimists can't see beyond plant closures and layoffs. Both are right - but both are oversimplifying a very complex process. Also, both may be using globilization as a stick for beating employees to make them work harder and faster. The effects of globilization are uneven across industries, and there are many locally based businesses and institutions for which globilization is essentially irrelevant. After all, in the average city, it is estimated about three-quarters of all jobs are in the sectors that provide services to local residents. As one city planner puts it, "Most of us are employed taking in each other's washing." In other words, most of us work for our neighbors in one way or another, not for faceless millions around the globe. A lot of stress caused by bandying the word "globilization" about comes from poor communications. Too often employees are left to assume the worst. If a company is planning to compete globally, employees anticipate overwork and intense pressure to compete. If the company is likely to lose out, employees expect job loss for the front-line workers while the executive officers sail away on golden parachutes. A company that fails to state its position clearly can create a lot of free-floating anxiety. Restructuring Marathons "Restructuring - a simple plan instituted from above in which workers are right-sized, downsized, surplused, lateralized, or, in the business jargon of days of yore, fired," says reporter Erick Schonfield from Fortune magazine. In theory, restructuring should mean redistributing power, resetting priorities, and reorganizing basic systems. In practice, however, corporations often resort to surgery rather than long-term therapy when times are tough. It's the top-down way of doing things: Cut first, ask questions later. Downsizing is often carried out without considering the consequences and without adequate preparation and backup from systems. As Manuel Werner notes in Business Horizons: "Flattening the organization has become a very popular pastime. By itself, however, it is probably worse than no solution at all. Without the wherewithal to empower, flattening only overburdens the manager while slowing everyone else down, because they still have to have approval all that they had approved in the past. Flattening has erroneously been wielded as a tool when it is, in fact, an outcome or by-product of empowerment." Fear of Technology Like mergers, takeovers, restructuring, or globilization, technology seems to be an uncontrollable factor in corporate life. It has a momentum of its own; it is unstoppable and human beings are subject to it. It invades the corporation like an alien species from another planet. None of this is true, of course, but this is how people in corporations experience technology because of the way in which technology is designed by its human creators and because of the way it is introduced into the organizations. For many people structural abuse comes in the form of pressure to use new technology. Technology is often frustrating because it makes skills obsolete very rapidly. Just as you get the hang of the new software system, it is upgraded and you have to learn a new set of commands. This creates an enormous amount of stress as workers struggle to keep up. Meanwhile, the use of technology to cut downtime increases the volume and pace of daily work until workers are exhausted. It is not possible for humans to work at the pace of machines without time for replenishment, but they are often expected to. This is not the fault of the machine, however; it is a management decision. Even where employees are in control of technology, there is a compulsion to use technology just because everyone else is using it, even if it doesn't seem relevant to your job. If everyone else is surfing the Internet, you feel you have to do it, too, or risk becoming hopelessly out of the loop. Moreover, you find yourself doing things because you can, not because you need to. Technology's bells and whistles can waste enormous amounts of time and make us feel overworked, even as our output decreases. We make draft copies look as good as published documents; our weekly reports are as petty as our annual reports. Standards rise, expectations rise, and soon we are expected to make memos look like minor masterpieces. Even more frustrating is the added burden of technology used inappropriately. Do you have colleagues and business associates who leave a five-minute voice message when they should have sent a memo? Who clutter up your e-mail with long documents you'd rather read in print? Who inundate you with faxes that are not at all urgent and could be sent through the mail? The urge to use the latest technology for absolutely everything can backfire and turn even techies into Luddites. And, of course, technology is often cast as the spy. Big Brother's watching you. Video cameras, electronic monitoring of workers at computer terminals, tapping into employees' e-mail and voice mail, smart badges that track employees' locations at all times are examples of the way technology can be used to abuse workers. Surveillance invades the privacy of employees and creates a climate of suspicion and unease that can fragment the workforce. Who can employees trust is no one trusts them? We have seen many instances of employees suffering nervous breakdowns from the pressure of having their work monitored too closely or too often. MIT professor Robert Thomas has looked closely at technology in the workplace and come to some important conclusions about the way in which technology is designed, adopted, and used. He points out that technology is chosen either to reinforce or to change the power structure in the organization. Think about the technology in your workplace. Who really benefits from it? Whose work does it save and whose does it increase? Who does it include and who does it exclude? Has it changed the reporting structure? Whose status does it enhance? Thomas also notes that those who design the technology rarely ask for input from those who are the objects of change, which is why most employees experience technology as something imposed from outside over which they have little control. We have to remember that technology is designed by humans, chosen by humans, implemented by humans. It doesn't come from outer space; it is a human creation and an instrument of human political power. Because we live in a technological age, we tend to assume that if machines can't do it, it is not worth doing. Donald A. Norman at the University of California contrasts the human-centered view of the world with the machine-centered. This is the machine-centered way of looking at life: People Are... Vague Disorganized Distractable Emotional Illogical Machines Are... Precise Orderly Undistractable Unemotional Logical All this is quite correct in its way, but it puts value on the machine's way of doing things and discounts the human way of behaving; When you frame the same categories in a different way, the comparison looks like this: People Are... Creative Compliant (flexible) Attentive to change Resourceful Decisions are flexible because they are based upon qualitative as well as quantitative assessment, modified by the special circumstances and context. Machines Are... Dumb Rigid Insensitive to change Unimaginative Decisions are consistent because they are based upon quantitative evaluation of numerically specified, context-free variables. Same categories, different value systems. Corporations often get hijacked by engineers and technocrats who have a machine-centered view of the world, and employees find themselves at the mercy of apparently impersonal forces they do not understand. The Terrifying World of Change Globilization, takeovers, restructuring, technological change - it's scary out there, all right. The normal human reactions to such changes include confusion, unrealistic expectations, and a variety of coping strategies ranging from the severely dysfunctional, including substance abuse, to acceptance and adaption. What really hampers our ability to adjust is the fact that we do not have a legacy of capable organizations that can respond adequately and intelligently to the challenges of change. Instead, we have de-skilled workers using scientific management methods, so that they depend completely upon their role as a cog in a machine; they have forgotten how to think for themselves. We have trained managers who can crunch numbers but who have not risen up through the ranks, so they have no idea what life if like for the front-line workers and they cannot understand the social consequences of economic decisions. Top management is often completely out of touch, preoccupied with political games, status, and perks. Hardly anyone in the corporation is equipped to deal sensibly with change. The result? Abuse. From ignorance, from fear, from knee-jerk reactions to perceived threats. Individuals who are on the receiving end of corporate abuse are struggling to survive in a workplace that has become uncivilized. It doesn't have to be like this. Corporations are the creations of human beings, and human beings can reinvent them. Unfortunately, some of the biggest obstacles to needed change are human beings. We cannot overlook the fact that certain kinds of abuse are personal, carried out by individuals who for one reason or another find it necessary to mistreat the people around them. In her book Bullying at Work, Andrea Adams reveals that bullying is often seen as a more crippling and devastating problem for employees and employers that all the other work-related stresses put together. It includes destructive behaviors that range from the use of abusive and vulgar language and humiliation to stealing ideas, sabotaging efforts, and failing to promote and reward. Ten Ways to Recognize a Bully Displays uncontrolled anger, often shouting and using vulgar language. Humiliates others in front of colleagues or in private. Persistently criticizes and uses sarcasm. Deliberately ignores or isolates people and excludes them from taking an active part in discussions. Sets impossible deadlines and changes instructions without consultation, for no other apparent reason than to make life difficult and failure inevitable. Has difficulty delegating because of a belief that no one else can do the job to the required standard. Takes credit for other people's ideas and success but never shoulders the blame when things go wrong. Repeatedly refuses reasonable requests; cancels holiday leave at short notice. Continually undermines others' authority. Blocks promotion. In addition to the straightforward havoc that bullies can wreak on the workplace, they generally do considerable damage to our souls. The soul is the citadel that houses the essence of who we are. It is our vital core from which our emotion, action, and energy emanate. Our self-image and our self-esteem, how we think of ourselves, all live at the center of our soul. Our work and our place in the work community play an important part in making the connection between our souls and the world around us. Doing our work well nurtures our soul. Earning respect from doing good work feeds our self-image and our self-esteem. By their actions, tyrants negate the value of our work and ultimately our sense of self-worth. They dispossess us of our rightful place in the community at work. Reporting an abusive boss means breaking the taboo of going over the boss's head. It is difficult and not always successful. Going after a bully is a troublesome process, even for the bully's supervisor. Yet it must be done. Otherwise the bullying will never stop and everyone in the company suffers. A bully's stock in trade is sniffing out vulnerabilities and capitalizing on weaknesses. That's why they strut and shout and broadcast messages like "If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen." This makes us feel ashamed to admit we cannot cope. We are afraid of confrontation, so we avert our eyes and let them get away with it. So they do. And the bullying goes on. As Edmund Burke is supposed to have said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Budget Busters Bullies are the most obvious form of abusive individuals, but there as other types who make life miserable for those around them. Consider the tightwads. The miserly spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge (before the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future visited him) lives on. Scrooge was at least consistent: he was miserable and stingy in his home life as well as on the job. However, there are more upper managers than we like to think about who scrimp on their employees while paying themselves lavish bonuses. The employees get understandably angry and resentful. You can be certain that if they have a good idea or a new way of doing things, they aren't going to waste it on a stingy employer. They will flush it down the toilet sooner than hand over another profitable or cost-saving measure to their bosses. Summary of Abuse These, then, are sources of abuse: the persistence of outdated systems that take precedence over human needs, which we call systematic abuse; the wrenching changes in industrial and economic structures that put an entire company under pressure, which we call structural abuse; and the dysfunctional behavior of individuals, which we call deliberate abuse. Shining a light in the face of the monster brings the issue of abuse into focus, but there is still one question to address before we move on to solutions: why, when we hate what abuse does to us and to our companies, do we still allow it to occur? Why do We Tolerate Abuse? We know that many corporate tyrants are hired and their behaviors sanctioned in a misguided attempt to rescue the failing business (or project), but why do we, as individuals, tolerate abusive people and abusive working cultures? Much of the answer to this lies in our individual and social conditioning. Just as children learned how to cope with abusive parents, adults modify their behavior so they can tolerate abusive bosses in the business world. It's simply a question of survival. The imbalance of power between employer and employee, or boss and subordinate, puts abusive bosses in control and sets up employees in docile, submissive roles. Underneath the contradictory messages lie a variety of reasons for abuse. These beliefs and motivations are at the root of abusive systems, guide the design of abusive structures, and are used to justify abusive behavior. A genuine or perceived crisis Ambition or greed Abusers were abused themselves Abuse is cheap Managers don't know how else to manage Abuse conceals ignorance Abuse is a traditional management strategy Managers have unresolved personal problems Rigid management systems are easier to maintain Uncertainty creates fear Abuse is the prevailing norm in a corporate culture. Corporate Cultures - Three That Kill Ideas the Culture of Sacrifice the Culture of Win/Lose the Culture of Blame The Culture of Sacrifice does it by exhausting and depleting employees' resources until they have nothing left to give. The Culture of Win/Lose kills any idea that can't outshout, outgun, and outmaneuver the competition. The Culture of Blame kills ideas by the direct approach: Anything new is hammered down like a nail that sticks up in the wrong place. The Employee in an Abusive and Dysfunctional Organization For a great many employees, dominant corporate cultures are a security blanket. They want to belong, and if that means putting up with rules, discipline, and a lack of privacy, then so be it. By complying, of course, they are sending a message that this kind of corporate behavior is OK. Companies that fit this profile often claim that employees accept the culture as one of the conditions of work. Abuse? Not us, the companies say in hurt disbelief. "No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character." - Robespierre In fact, this is abuse at its most insidious - manipulative under a sugar-coated guise of caring. The family atmosphere is really a sham to control employees. It is interesting to see how closely the observation from people working at the "Rat" fit in with Robert Subby's description of manipulation and denial in the addictive family system. Nine Rules for Dysfunctional Families It is not OK to talk about problems. Feelings should not be expressed openly. Communication is best if indirect. Be good, strong, right, and perfect. Make us proud. Don't be selfish. Do as I say and not as I do. It is not OK to play or be playful. Don't rock the boat. In the context of the dysfunctional corporation or organization, the nine "rules" might look like this: do not discuss the undiscussable; feelings are undiscussable in the workplace; never say exactly what you mean to the person who most needs to hear it; one mistake and you're out; we'll take credit for your good ideas and punish you for your failures; everything you are belongs to the company; do as we say and don't ask questions; you're not here to enjoy yourself; you're here to work; don't try to change anything "If winning does not matter, why does anyone bother to keep score?" - Adolph Rupp, Legendary University of Kentucky basketball coach Details of Three Cultures That Kill Ideas (AND PROJECTS!!) The Culture of Sacrifice, in which excessive demands are made of employees. Over the last decade the restructuring of companies has left many holes for the remaining workers to fill, leading to the abuse of overwork. Often these organizations operate in a continual "crisis mode," and employees are expected to make great personal sacrifices for the survival of the company. Employee burn out, and absenteeism and high stress levels take their toll on business sooner rather than later, resulting in poor performance levels. These all-or-nothing workplaces demand such complete identification with the work that nothing is left of the individual. Employees can work as hard as they like as long as they don't think for themselves. The Culture of Win/Lose, in which employees are forced to compete with each other for pay, promotion, and perks. Abusive cultures can even come out of national values that have shaped countries. In North America, the competitive spirit is so highly valued that many companies have created teams of individuals to compete with one another in the same organization. But the competitive spirit can make people forget who the real competition is. In the process competition can damage lives and whole industries. It is time the explode the myth that the best man or woman wins. It is the best at winning who wins, and sometimes winners' ideas are real losers. The Culture of Blame, in which somebody is always at fault. Typically in this culture the company rewards or punishes individual performance rather than group effort. This type of company is likely to operate day to day on an informal "star and demerit" system that puts a number of behaviors in motion. From the employee's point of view, the objective is to be seen as the person doing the good work or conversely not to be seen as the person who has made a mistake. If the Culture of Blame is in place, scapegoats are found and employees spend a great deal of time protecting themselves from the inevitable finger-pointing that ensues. Conforming and following rules becomes the order of the day - no matter whether the rules make sense of not. "Any fool can keep a rule. God gave him a brain to know when to break the rule." - General Willard W. Scott Checklist of Factors Mitigating Against Intelligent Planning and Results Systems are established which camouflage accountability by permitting dual sets of numbers, unverified assumptions, lack of close monitoring, poor feedback on performance, etc. Cultures are created which avoid confrontation, emphasize harmony over discord, place harshest scrutiny on lower levels, permit a "victimization excuse" ("If we had marketing support, we could've made those numbers")., and don't reflect actual performance in evaluations. Egos of top people do not permit "failure" and preclude personal responsibility for poor results. What usually occurs in bad times is that the "books are cooked," by such devices as changing the fiscal year, selling assets, deferring expenses, taking credit for sales to be delivered in the next year, and/or brutalizing customers to accept what they don't need before they might need it. Ineptitude prevents even effective systems and cultures from performing up to potential, as when managers give artificially high performance ratings, financial planning is not understood because of an inability to grasp profit-and-loss statements and balance sheets, support systems aren't utilized correctly, and so on. Management Excuses - Using the worker as a scapegoat Historically, blights on the planning process have created poor results that have, in turn, been "blamed" on the American worker. The bromides have included: Productivity is not as high as our foreign counterparts because of a "me first" attitude and an absence of loyalty to the company. (After all, why should massive layoffs make people disloyal?) Workers are not as quality conscious, and we provide inferior manufacturing and services. (If you believe that, compare our service mentality with that in Europe, where the typical hotel concierge believes that you are a guest only through his good graces.) Our work force isn't culturally diverse and reflects an "old boy" mentality that doesn't understand customers. (In reality, the U.S. work force is becoming one of the diverse in the world, even if we might have speeded the process up a bit. The Japanese culture is highly exclusionary, and European managers transferred to their American parent or subsidiary companies have a hard time understanding the premium we place on multiculturalism. The first thing many such managers try to do here is surround themselves with compatriots.) In fact, the U.S. has regained the productivity lead, and we are far ahead of Japan in the service sector, largely because the Japanese tend to assign their surplus labor to the service sector. The gross daily productivity per employed person in the U.S. is currently about $53,000, as compared to about $50,000 in France and $37,000 in both Japan and Britain. It's not the worker - it's management that has been falling short. Downsizing as the Holy Grail This brings us to the final example for now from the world of the private sector. One of the worst of all of the fads and formulas to be implemented by top management is the great panacea called downsizing (or rightsizing by the politically correct and reality-avoiders). My observation is that executives, desperate to show their slowly awakening and uncharacteristically sentient boards some action in the face of poor results, have determined that quick, dramatic moves are the most "macho." (Forgive me, female readers, but most of these people right now are male, although many of the consultants leading downsizing efforts are women.) So, with chests being pounded and charts of a slimmer organization unfurled, these strong men show the board that they will take the tough actions required to renew the bottom line. Of course, there are only three things obviously amiss here: It was these same executives who allowed the organization to get as fat as it has, assuming that it is in that condition at all. The tough work to be done involves making life tough for someone else, namely, the people being put out onto the street, and even that is usually directly handled by a hired gun, a lower-level manager in personnel, or the intercompany mail. The bottom line is being renewed through expense reduction and not real productivity gains. Unless you change the nature of the work itself, simply removing people does nothing except worsen productivity. Those people who were let go were doing something. They weren't sitting around playing canasta or Super Mario Brothers; they were working. If the work wasn't necessary, then removing them should cause no disruption, but it almost always does. Changing the nature of the work - whether one calls it reengineering, restructuring, reorganizations, or architectural occlusion - requires some actual planning, diligence, insight, and transition management. Simply throwing people out the door does not. Yet it's the latter, not the former, that most executives engage in when they pursue the Holy Grail of downsizing. A report from the Center of Economic Studies at our own beloved Census Bureau, covering 140,000 plants over 10 years, reveals that operations that increased employment (upsized?) created as much productivity increase as did those that lowered employment. Further, the Arthur D. Little consulting firm reports that only 16% of executives reported "progress in change" in their reengineering efforts, 45% were "partially satisfied," and 39% were "actively unhappy." Given the cost and disruption of reengineering, when 84% of the executives who ordered the interventions report less than adequate progress, there's a reason to believe you're on to something, and it's rotten. Management guru Peter Drucker says that "We are seeing way too many amputations before the diagnosis." My experience is that the board and particularly the investors (especially institutional investors) are overjoyed at the short-term prospects to the extent that stock prices go up even before the first person is fired, such is the salivating that accompanies the mere announcement of downsizing. Senior management is instantly rewarded for the initiative. The problem is that the productivity of most organizations immediately plummets upon that same announcement. There is a very specific reason for this. Any enterprise can call upon no more than 100% of the skills and talents of its people. No one can really work at 110%, no matter what her or his performance evaluations or what Anthony Robbins claims. Thus, the equation becomes one of where those talents are deployed: outwardly, toward the customer, product, and service, or inwardly, toward politics, turf, and self-preservation. In the healthiest organizations I've seen, as much as 90% of that talent can be focused externally, with only 10% consume by the inevitable office politics, concerns about who will get the next promotion, and other esoterica. Companies like Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and Southwest Airlines seem habitually to function that way. In discussing Southwest Airlines, Herb says " Take care of your employees, and they will take care of the customers. The street can take care of itself." or something along that line. Anyway, he is one hellava CEO. He doesn't dance for Wall Street. The employees and the company's customers love him and the airline. When is the last time you saw a pilot help clean up an airplane so that they can keep schedule. I have...and only on Southwest Airlines. Love ya! But I've also seen organizations that function in the reverse. I once worked for a company that was about 75% focused internally (or was it 90%?), meaning that clients were garnering about a quarter of our actual potential i.e., even when folks were assigned to project teams and fully reimbursable, their productivity was much less than it should have been due to all the "internal rubbish" - thus cheating clients out of the full value for their dollar spent. When you're treated rudely by a reservations clerk, or receive the wrong shipment, or can't get a rapid response from an organization, it's often because the employees are consumed by a more important priority - their own well-being. When a downsizing - really a massive firing in any sane person's terms - is announced and implementation begun, productivity plummets for the indefinite future for these reasons. No one knows who will be next, so all employees keep their heads down and take no risks. These cutbacks seldom focus on solely poor performers or lowest seniority, so no one perceives himself as safe. Consequently, everyone "ducks." Most intelligent people provide themselves with a backup, so that "paper hits the street." Resumes are released like ticker tape. The people who will be the most successful at finding new jobs will be ( a ) those who get there first, and ( b ) those who are the best performers. So the best people will strike quickly and will be seized by competitors. The best will tend to go; the mediocre will tend to remain. Those who do remain and are solid performers will feel guilty about their colleagues who have been let go. There is remorse, both on the part of the manager who had to fire subordinates, and on the part of employees, who wonder why it was the person next to them, who was a valued colleague and, often, a friend. No one ever believes it's "over," even when it truly is. Another quarter's bad results could spark more executive chest pounding and more investor bliss over reductions. Once it happens, no one feels "safe" for a long time, no matter what the company says or does. The contract of loyalty has been broken. Where close calls between family and work often were decided on behalf of the company (a half-day on Saturday won't kill me), those calls are now either made the other way or are begrudgingly made. (I'll have to put in an appearance on Saturday, but I'll sneak away Monday afternoon to make up for it.) The company no longer deserves "the benefit of the doubt," and employees look after themselves first. The energy equation goes into vertigo, and increasing amounts of talent and energy are absorbed internally, directed to one's own welfare, office gossip, undermining, and resentment. Downsizing isn't just a benign fad whose time will come and go; it's an abomination that has permitted weak management to escape the consequences of its own incompetence and that has penalized hundreds of thousands of blameless workers. It is the amto-da-fe of the late 20th century, and many CEOs have become Torquemada. Paul's Advice to Senior Management (who want to be viewed as "real" leaders in a downsizing). Any plans to downsize must include specific plans for the outplacement of all people affected, regardless of level, with appropriate compensation packages. Any gains to the bottom line made through expense reductions which are not accompanied by revenue increases will not count toward any incentive compensation goals. No executive should be able to enrich him or herself by denying a living to employees. No downsizing may be undertaken without a detailed plan to change the nature of the work itself, which explains how fewer employees will be able to support the key dimensions of the business and maintain service standards. Executives are held accountable for what transpires on their watch. They are expected to resign - or are terminated - for preestablished transgressions, which should include fraud, financial manipulation, and the deliberate release of unsafe products. Every executive involved in planning must have taken a company-approved program in strategic planning and financial management, and undergo a refresher course every 3 years. Vision and mission statements must pertain to the pragmatic business goals of the company, and all top-level decisions must use them as a template. No executive is hired from the outside who has thrived in a culture that violates or is not consistent with the tenets above. Project Success or Failure Through People You may believe that some of the above does not apply to projects. I'm here to tell you that ALL of the above is applicable to projects, especially projects in trouble. You need to be fully aware of behavior that can undo the very best efforts in reaching successful turnarounds. What is absolutely important to lead a project turnaround is the ability to convey integrity and trustworthiness. You cannot behave as some have in the past as discussed above. As a turnaround project manager, one of the critical elements of success is being able to diagnose the project team's organizational dynamics, and create a high-performing team. It is very difficult to do so when your senior management is in the process of downsizing the organization. The importance in how they deal with and manage the people are critical in your being able to get the support to do what you have to do to make it successful. Sustainable competitive advantage has proved elusive for companies in the 1990s. While making enormous investments in technology, research, and state-of-the-art marketing, many of today's managers continue to ignore the single most important factor in achieving and maintaining competitive success: people. It is said, and has been validated in survey after survey, that "success or failure of a project is "at least" 95% people-related and 5% technology-related. IF this then is known, why do some continue to ignore this key to gaining success? Companies (and projects) with a highly committed work force (project team) repeatedly outdistance their rivals in both profits and returns (and project success). Indeed, the five companies whose common stocks had the highest returns between 1972 and 1992 - Southwest Airlines, Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods, Circuit City, and Plenum Publishing - were in industries with few or none of Michael Porter's five strategic forces in their favor. What they did share was a genuine commitment to their work force. As all evidence indicates, the source of competitive advantage is shifting from technology, patents, or strategic position to how a company manages its employees. Why is it that though we KNOW that a loyal and intelligent work force is now the critical element of sustaining competitive advantage, why are so few companies cultivating one? Traditional factors associated with strategic success - such as product or process technology, protected and regulated markets, access to financial resources, and economies of scale - are no longer sufficient to sustain a competitive advantage. Why are the barriers to change still there? Why do managers fail to take responsibility for improving relationships with their people? The reasons are found in a complex web of factors based on perception, history, legislation, and practice that clings to outdated notions of management thinking. By exploring the history of labor relations, one can see a developing legacy of distrust and confrontation between firms and their workers over time. Also, one can see long-disproved theories of human behavior still woven into the fabric of many corporate cultures, undermining the manager/employee relationship even today. It is the responsibility of managers to overcome these obsolete, yet prevalent, practices. There is no room for these outdated practices in the project turnaround arena. http://members.aol.com/AllenWeb/culture.html Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
John Doherty 126 Report post Posted December 26, 2004 I spent 15 years in corp America, and most of the problems with downsizing are created long before the event! The problem is usually uncontrolled and mismanaged growth! If you have a poor plan when things are going well, you will have a much worse and more drastic plan when things go bad! As an employee at any level you must see yourself as a contractor, not an employee. The company owes you nothing and it has has been proven time and again that you will get nothing. It is a simple contract, you give your best efforts and in return you are compensated (pay, benes etc), period! I can not understand the mentality of people who think they are 'entitled' to something more. As contractors we see it all the time, our customers have a bad year, they may reduce expenses, the monthly contract becomes quarterly, they go out of business, or how about if a new facility manager comes in and gives the work to a buddy. The economy goes bad and people wait a year for a house wash or deck job. What do we do as contractors? We hustle and get more business, or perish. A career is a business and if more people realized it the better off they would be! No one is gauranteed a job, just as we are not gauranteed to get business. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
newlook 265 Report post Posted January 6, 2005 That is a very interesting read Rod & Beth. Thanks for sharing it with us. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
