Wouldn’t it be nice if your employees always did what you asked them to do, when you asked them to do it, to have the effect you told them it would have? Well it wouldn’t be nice at all. What’s unfortunate, however, is that there are leaders in organizations who truly believe this is possible – that it is a worthy goal to pursue. It’s not; it’s a fool’s quest. And even if you did get this to happen (to get your employees to be absolutely compliant) you would be very disappointed. Why? Because the worst possible thing your employees can do is to do exactly what you ask them to do.
OK hold on. Before you get caught up in managerial self-righteousness, think about it. You have employees who are customer facing, you have sales people who interact with clients and prospects every day; you have back office people. You have a team of employees whose job it is to make the organization successful. And yet somehow you think you know more than they do. Interesting.
So let’s examine what happens. You walk into a work area, find what you believe is inefficiency, tell the employees to stop wasting their time and then you proceed to tell them exactly what they should be spending their time on – then you leave. Or in an executive team meeting you express dissatisfaction with organizational performance and you proceed to tell each executive what they should be doing to improve their area – adjourn the meeting, and then you leave.
What have you accomplished? Actually the best answer would be nothing, but unfortunately that is not what happened. What you have done is create what is referred to as the “shadow organization”. That is the unofficial organization that has it’s own hierarchy, leadership and network. Its primary form of communication is “whispering”. And after your pontification, you just activated the network, initiated a new whispering campaign that spreads your outburst throughout the organization and not in a complimentary way – and it works faster than email (employees can text, tweet, instant message, or worst of all, use social media channels).
When we talk with executives about this, a phrase we often hear is: I don’t have time to waste explaining the obvious. Obvious to whom? Certainly not your staff. Change by fiat rarely works and the time you save telling them what to do, you lose in productivity as they complain to one another about you and why it can’t be done. Bright, competent and talented employees do not take well to input based on the absence of facts. Sure it takes time to change, but change that employees understand and can buy into on the front end is meaningful change that makes the organization better. When you spend time on organizational improvement – spend it on the front end.
In this week’s Quick Tips we will provide ideas on how to avoid feeding the “shadow” organization.
Copyright 2010 Kubica and LaForest
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