One of the most amazing things in my experience in the business world is the people responsible for millions of dollars of business and hundreds of people but incapable of making a decision or setting a priority. It is so common that it has become a cliché in business writing and the popular imagination. Decision-making and prioritization are central to success, so why are many business leaders so bad at it?
In college, I was eager to graduate because I wanted to work with the mature grown-ups of the business world. I was deeply disappointed by some businesspeople's emotional maturity and self-reflection. In fact, I soon discovered that a contemporary corporation has many of the same characteristics as a high school. You have jocks as part of the sales force and leading important teams because they look the part. I have experienced plenty of mean girls who become awful women in marketing and human resources. Band and theater kids gravitate to customer-facing roles, while the more nerdy contingent makes a living among the technology staff. If he were still alive, John Hughes could make a great movie about the contemporary office.
Unlike high school, a corporation does not have teachers or administrators to reign in bad behavior and raging hormones. The students are running things, so tribal and personal bias plays a big part in who succeeds and who fails. Leaders prioritize being likable to their peers over getting things done. A popular person is likelier to be promoted than someone despised. It forces ambitious people to be uncontroversial. It means saying yes to everyone they can above them and being pleasant to a fault. It is the behavior known as "kiss up and kick down," which business professor Robert J. Sutton defines as an asshole.
These individuals do not need to make decisions; they must be cute or charming to their superiors, keep their peers from hating them, and keep the people they serve busy. As time passes, they rise in organizations and act like cholesterol, slowly choking the life out of the organization. When asked to accomplish something, they often take credit for someone else's work or find a helpful scapegoat for failure. Being in an environment like this is why productivity is low and worker engagement is poor.
The harsh reality is that Collin Powel is correct when he says leadership means you will piss people off. Deciding to do something or setting a priority for work will make enemies. Unfortunately, skillfully getting the job done is not enough; you must be likable. Thus, these ineffectual people wind up in leadership.
The good news is that agile forces an organization to see itself as it is and confront ugly truths. It is then up to the organization to decide if these ineffectual people should remain in leadership. Nothing is worse than two equal priorities colliding and creating an organizational train wreck. So setting priories is the first skill that all leaders need to perfect. It is simple to do in practice; develop a list of things that need to get done and then number them with no two items having the same number. As items get completed, then review the list and re-prioritize it. It provides you with flexibility and communicates what is getting done. It will still create enemies and cause conflict, but the information's transparency ensures that all controversy will be out in the open instead of getting whispered behind your back.
You cannot change business people's feckless and immature nature, but you can create incentives where people set priorities. A workplace where work gets completed is better than one mired in dysfunction. Each of us in the agile profession needs to be transparent and clear about priorities and decision-making. Otherwise, we are reliving the worst aspect of high school.
Until next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment