Have you felt as if you are a hostage to some of your own people?
Organizational leaders, whether “for-profit” or “not-for-profit” are subject to many external challenging personalities and forces; as powerful as they may be, they may not be an organizations greatest threat. Sometimes the greatest challenges can be the personalities of its own people.
These personalities, acting actively or passively, can threaten success, stand in the way of progress, discourage development of other people, and destroy morale for boards, entrepreneurs, leaders, managers, and any other people working for the organization. This issue can affect any organization, large or small, successful, or unsuccessful.
How does it happen?
Usually quietly, gradually, and without attracting any attention. Successful organizations, in my experience, where principal leaders are very busy may be susceptible to losing control of their people because their attention is diverted from day-to-day realities.
People with strong personalities, often at least initially with the best of intentions, step into voids of responsibility and leadership and gradually assume control of routine activities. Typically, it can happen in support roles such as with managers of office and warehouse staff. Over time their activities become more regimented, inflexible, and defensive. Existing leadership, preoccupied with “big picture” issues and because an organization is successful allows the situation to develop because there doesn’t seem to be an issue on the surface. Management doesn’t take corrective actions as a result and the problem grows.
Systems and processes are allowed to stagnate and tasks are not subject to cross-training. Soon the dominant personality is the only person who knows and understands key responsibilities, they become the “gatekeeper” of knowledge, their entitlement can grow, as does the dependence of the organization on them.
Equally dangerous can be charismatic people, either in leadership or subordinate roles who attract attention. On the surface they seem to be very knowledgeable to senior management and boards. Unfortunately, in some instances, these people are not in fact capable as their only real skills is in selling upper management on their skills. The danger gradually manifests as an organizations staff sees their capability gap leading to resentment and underperformance. Upper management can make this scenario worse by unknowingly supporting these people building even more resentment because the staff and “worker” increasingly see the gap.
In either situation, new ideas and solutions are stifled, good people leave, and positions are filled by people who do not challenge the dominant personality. When senior management finally realizes their problem, often the organization has suffered considerable damage to credibility, morale, and performance.
How realize your organization is suffering?
If an organization is relatively successful or leadership is focused on “big picture” macro-level activities, this issue can remain hidden for long periods, especially if the organization does not have a large amount of turnover. Ironically, I have found this problem to be worse in organizations with average or good performances. In weaker organizations the need for fresh thinking and new solutions are easier to implement because everyone from the top to the bottom recognize the need for change. However, in “good organizations,” it is only when performance begins to suffer, and/or new people join the organization do the signs of rigidity and unwillingness to adapt or change become glaringly obvious.
New leadership or key staff will notice signs such as many key functions being tightly control by one person. This person operates with little or no current documentation on systems or processes and reluctant to provide them for training. Any initiatives for change are met with passive or active resistance as these people undermine the need for change, often commenting, “We have always done things a certain way,” or “Our customers or clients don’t like change.” Worse, they may even actively try to persuade other staff to resist change as well.
For issues that accompany a charismatic personality, senior leaders can realize too late the person may be taking the organization in an undesired direction or may have “destroyed bridges” to industry or community partners because of their ego or inability to work collectively.
What can be done?
This problem is cumulative and will take time to correct. These situations are the result off senior leaderships lack of attention, lack of controls, atrophying systems and processes, lack of cross-training, and dependency on those difficult personalities. Undiagnosed too late, an organization become a hostage to the will of these dominant personalities.
- Start with acknowledging your organization has an issue.
- Review your current people, their skills, and abilities, taking stock of the resources available.
- Realize some people, particularly those dominant personalities may not be able to remain part of your organization.
- Make plans for finding replacements, either internally with people who have and trust, or externally. Make contingency plans.
- Start to build documentation on your current systems, including soliciting input, if possible, from the person(s) who are the issue.
- Engage in conversations with your key people and staff to acknowledge issues and begin taking ownership of the direction of your team.
- Begin taking a larger role in the day-to-day activities.
- Insist on cross-training and developing other people in your organization.
- Understand and prepare for dominant personalities sabotaging your plans either directly or indirectly. Prevent any bullying or intimidation of your other people and ensure that you document any insubordination or difficulties your people and organization encounter.
- Obtain legal and employment advice to be prepared for having to dismiss the problem personalities. Usually, the dominant personality people are long-tenured, very intelligent, and will fight if terminated.
Prepare/Expect
Regaining control of your organization will not be easy.
If the dominant personalities react poorly to losing their powerful and influence, the effects on your organization in the short-term may be significant. Equally costly is the fact problem personalities may leave without notice, undermine your client/customer/supplier relationships, and actively encourage others in your organization to leave as well. Create contingency plans for this situations.
As your systems and processes may be overly dependent on that one person, your organization may have to start over and rebuild everything that person did for your organization.
Prevention
The best way to prevent these types of situations is to be actively involved, ask questions, listen, monitor performance, look for organizational and procedural bottlenecks, and encourage and develop your people.
Good organizations constantly review the performance and operation of all aspects of their activities. They have regular meetings with their people, encourage and listen to their feedback, complaints, and suggestions. All leaders should watch for the signs of entitlement and hoarding personal control of systems and processes.
Good organizations strive to have backup people for every task and duty to prevent reliance on only one person. They use Red Teams, people assigned to look for weaknesses and suggest improvements for new processes and services. These Red Teams also regularly test “how your organization functions” to find weaknesses, redundancies, and better and more efficient methods of accomplishing your goals and objectives.
Good organizations recruit people who build those people around them rather than hire individuals who try to outshine their subordinates. A great tool is having a “living team charter” combined with using elements of “Agile” management system to deliver results early and often through ongoing learning and regular “lessons learned” sessions.
Additionally, the leadership of good organizations have a good understanding of all functions with the ability to step in and help when required.
Finally, remember good people and leaders take pride in how their organizations function when they are absent, rather than valuing themselves because the organization cannot function without them.
Successful organizations are more than the sum of their individual people.
Over time, people will join, contribute, and leave; multi-generational organizations live and breathe through the contributions of their people.
It is a truism that the role of leadership is to look after those people who make the organization function; done well, an organization will grow and thrive indefinitely, done poorly, the organization will whither and die rapidly.
As leaders, we should be involved with our people, develop them, guide them, hold them accountable in positive ways for building everyone people, and be aware to take action early when some try to build personal kingdoms.
Good luck,
Paul.