Is growth an unachievable myth for most corporations?

Your humble

[yeah, right]

correspondent, BadConsultant, was thinking of growth this morning

[on the way to his local diner for the best low-carb omelet-fest this side of the Mississippi]

and the fable of rice on a chess board came to mind. I think it’s an old Confusciuscian

[made-up words are cool]

parable, though, knowing BadConsultant‘s luck, it’s probably that bastard Aesop muscling in again.

But… We digress.

Here’s the fable. There’s this dude, who meets another dude, who offers the first dude something amazing, and then that dude, sensing the second dude is trying to pull a fast one, tells the dude that he’ll only agree to the deal if the dude offers the dude…

Ah, screw that… I don’t even know the chinese symbol for dude.

Let’s cut to the chase. It’s a mathematical core. If you put one grain of rice on the first square of a chess board, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth, etc.

[i.e. doubling each time - for those working in corporate analytics functions]

by the time you reach the 64th square there isn’t enough rice in the world to put on the square.

[forgetting for a moment that the surface area of the square is likely only a little over a square-inch, so it'd have to be a mighty, might tall tower of precisely balanced rice anyway]

The moral of the story is lost on us, except that the simple mathematics of scale soon outstrip reality. I think, if I’m right, the number of grains of rice on that last square are 2-to-the-power-of-64 (=2^64 in Excel). It’s a very, very large number:

18,446,744,073,709,600,000

A large number indeed.

[almost as much as Wall St receives in bonuses (in a bailout year)]

And so to growth.

Stop for a moment and think of a large corporation. One you work for maybe. Or one you’ve heard of. What scale of growth are they on the record as having in their sights. Let’s say it’s a range – from the conservative 8% to the more common 12%

[because we love to say 'double-digit' - YEEHAW!!!]

to the still common 20%.

Let’s take 3 companies aiming for those growth rates: Company A ($1m base-revenue), Company B ($500m base revenue), and Company C ($10bn base revenue).

And let’s say we drop in on them at 5, 10, 20 and 50 year points:

In our fantasy scenarios, anything is possible, of course. So yes, over 50 years, Company C could conceivably grow its revenue from $10 billion to $91 trillion, but BadConsultant would suggest that as unlikely. But what about Company A growing its revenue from $1 million to $9 billion in that same 50 years? Is that any more doable? If there were that size of market potentially-available, how come Company A is only $1m at the moment?

The mythology of growth is a powerful aphrodisiac. We just love to get turned on by the illusion of momentum

[and use confirmation-biased analysis to convince ourselves that our stock purchases are anything but]

we are, after all, a progression-based organism.

[guaranteed promotion and career ladders… Anyone? Anyone?!!]

But here’s the thing, pinning your hopes and dreams on growth is a risky prospect – and, we would argue, leads to the sort of behavior that creates Credit Default Swaps, LIBOR fixing, Ponzi schemes, and every other trick that brought the global economy to its knees.

Long-term hyper-growth is unachievable

[if not simply for the fact that it assumes unlimited resources - to which, the Earth might have something to say]

and every ounce of leadership and organizational energy and commitment pursuing that myth is destined for the morass of futility, frustration and, ultimately, despair.

The only growth industries left are those that result in happiness, joy, satisfaction and enoughness

[made-up words are cool]

and the company that begins to deliver to those aims – and not the illusion of certainty that is materialistic comfort purchases – will wipe the floor with those laboring for the mythology of growth.

BadConsultant won’t be holding his breath, however.

As ever, your humble correspondent,

BC

Don’t worry, they’ll turn into us one day…

Aside from the fact that they’re still ignoring Gen X, the myth-busters snapping at their heels, Boomer HR execs seem mighty fascinated by Gen Y at the moment

[the number one indicator that the job market is coming back again]

and yet again, I heard recently:

Oh, it’s just because they’re young and haven’t had to experience tough times yet. They’ll learn.

This from the same generation that have the temerity to label themselves the ‘greatest’ generation

[and doesn't BadConsultant just hate those adverts where the Boomers talk about their retirement plans - "when I grow up..."]

and who proudly claim the advancement of civil rights and gender equality as their cause celebre.

We loooove diversity but those Gen Y’ers are just ungrateful children.

And there’s the clue – the parents are trying to understand how to lead and manage their kids, who are all grown up and their own adult selves. And who categorically care about, and want, different things than their parents.

Honestly, sitting with a collection of Boomer execs is like being a fly-on-the-wall at a bad parent support group.

It wouldn’t surprise me to hear consideration of employment policies that included curfews, television limits and grounding.

Here’s the newsflash: every generation is great, every generation is awful, every generation thinks the following ones are lesser than themselves.

It’s called growing old and realizing the promise of your own mortality.

So, get over it Boomers – Gen X and Y

[and whatever comes afterwards]

will never be like you.

But they have the potential to be the best of themselves – that’s your job, growing performance through people.

So, quit your support group whining and act like executive leaders.

Well… Er… That wasn’t what we expected…

Hahahahaha – BadConsultant is back from an extended sabbatical, where he has enjoyed long days and sultry nights, the comfort of family and friends and complete avoidance of anything resembling a corporate 9-to-5

[you should definitely try it some time]

Refreshed, relaxed, rejuvenated.

So…

This isn’t a post about BP. Well, maybe just a little.

BadConsultant has been reading and learning a lot about randomness this past year, and the consistent delusion our fore-brains maintain that randomness doesn’t apply to us.

We kind of understand that there’s a thing called chance or luck or fate or any other term we apply to it. But, like it or not, when we sit at a roulette table in a casino watching the last twenty numbers or so on the board behind the croupier, we all see patterns – red/black, even/odd, clusters and shapes – we all do it. And then we make the cardinal error of believing the pattern we perceive in the past

[which is a delusion itself]

will extend into the future. We place some chips on our predicted number.

• It wins – our pattern was correct, we are master of the odds – we keep following the pattern, continuing disbelievingly when the pattern breaks down.
• It loses – well we’ll try just another time – because no-one wins 100% of the time, do they?

Either way, we lose money.

Because the pattern never existed.

So, to BP. Which, if you hadn’t noticed, just presided over one of the worst environmental spills in history.

The whys and wherefores of which are not the point of the post.

The point is the announcement, from January 2007, at this link: BP Announces Lord Browne Succession Plan.

Let me summarise: lengthy-tenured CEO retires, experienced long-tenured exec ready to fill the position. New guy has global, multi-divisional experience and is very shiny. To quote from the link, the BP Chairman said:

“It is a testament to John’s managerial skill that BP is blessed with having such an impressive managerial top bench to choose from and John and I are delighted to be able to announce that Tony Hayward will be succeeding him from August 1, 2007. Tony has an excellent track record and extensive knowledge of the sector and will be able to draw on John’s wealth of knowledge over the next six months.”

[Blessed, note... Blessed!]

Well, Gulf of Mexico… How did that turn out for you?

Then there’s the opinion piece at this blog: BP Plc gets its succession planning wrong.

Let me summarise: promoting from within at BP was wrong, but at the supermarket chain, Tesco, it’s ace! Tesco develops great leaders from middle-managers but BP doesn’t.

Except BP say that they do in this document: BP Sustainability Reporting 2009 Our People.

And, it would appear, Tesco did what BP did: Tesco Board Succession Plan.

I hardly need summarise, but here’s a quote:

I am delighted Phil Clarke has accepted the role of CEO from March 2011. I have worked with Phil at Tesco for many years and I am confident he has all the necessary talent, energy and experience to take the group forward. He will be supported by an outstanding team of senior executives who together represent one of the strongest leadership teams in the world of retailing.

Well, low-middle income families in the UK, how’s that working out for you?

So, BadConsultant, what’s your point?

[That's a great question, so glad you asked, let's move on to my next slide]

Both BP and Tesco are delusional, they are looking at historic experience, inferring a pattern and building plans for the future based on that pattern.

The primary delusional indulgence of succession planning?

What’s succeeded in the past will bring success in the future.

Now, believe me, there is every reason to weight that as a high probability. But it’s not an absolute. And profiling existing leaders’ historic success so that the same capabilities can be developed in the next wave is… erm… delusional.

How many succession plans are built with a variable set of

[spit]

competencies based upon possible future scenarios? What weight is given to those possible future scenarios?

When Tony Hayward was selected for succession, 1) where was the assessment of his capability to deal with a major environmental breakdown?; and 2) what was the likelihood placed on such a breakdown happening?

I’ll help you out: 1) probably didn’t happen; and 2) less than 1%.

Because when they looked at Tony Hayward’s track record – maybe pulled up his performance reviews and ratings, or spoke with his HR rep – everything in the past was hunky-dory; and, besides, anyone with a history of having a cataclysmic failure – even if successfully handled – wouldn’t ever have a hope of becoming CEO, now would they?

So to BadConsultant‘s question of the day – when you look at your succession plan, how robust is it to things that you can’t predict? More importantly, have you ever asked yourself that question?

Or are you just building another delusional data set that supports the illusion of hunky-doryness?

Peace Out

BC

Podcast: The BadConsultant introduces ‘Destruction HR’

As sitting to write is painful right now, BadConsultant is pleased to share a stream of conscious introduction to ‘Destruction HR’.

More soon.

BC

A New Remit and Mandate for HR/OD: Human Results through Organization Destruction

BadConsultant has been sojourning on a small island off the coast of somewhere warm, enjoying mojitaritas

[® BadConsultant, 9th August, 2010]

and reading many upon many books.

And we’ll start this post by being very clear, you are currently taking a first look at a concept that will become a book within the next year

[which you will scan and turn your nose up at when walking through airports - but that, 3 years' later, you'll be claiming you'd been an early reader of - and that's fine, BC will get the royalties eventually]

The book’s working title is “Destruction HR” – though that will likely change long, long before it’s published.

First, some reference points which you need to read to have some sense of where BC is standing:

1. “The Future of Management” (Hamel w/ Breen)
2. “Beyond HR” (Boudreau, Ramstad)
3. “Ishmael” (Quinn)
4. “The Black Swan” (Taleb)
5. “The Drunkard’s Walk” (Mlodinow)

[NOTE: in all the above, I've edited out the post-title sentence all these books carry for brevity's sake]

From all of the above, and BadConsultant‘s inordinate opinion and experience, we contend:

Human beings have, for centuries, been diving deeper into the delusion that it’s a) possible to live in a rational universe; and b) that human beings can create rationality through the power of their brains alone.

Note that word, per Merriam-Webster online:

Delusion (noun)

Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin delusion-, delusio, from deludere

Date: 15th century

1 : the act of deluding : the state of being deluded

2 a : something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated b : a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs

[Bold courtesy of BadConsultant]

Fast forward to now, a century into the mythology of the modern organization. Most people who enter the workplace every day are trapped in the delusion – organizations perpetuate the myth that they are somehow rational; that things occur in line with immutable and forecastable laws.

They are not. And things don’t.

HBR case studies, best practices, business books – they all sell on the basis that the delusion can be maintained. That it’s possible to live in rational times.

[The first line of the book will be "This book does not contain a single best practice" - in fact, if BC has his way, it's the only time those two words will appear together in the whole text"]

It isn’t. We are human. We are programmed to exist and survive through

[and therefore create]

randomness.

As BadConsultant has written many times, the illusion of hunky-doryness, is largely driven by the need to perpetuate delusional rationality.

And the corporate functions are the keepers of the hunky-dory, and therefore the keepers of the delusion.

So, why a new mandate for HR/OD?

Because the organization that succeeds in becoming completely irrational, completely human, will succeed beyond the wildest dreams of competitors. The Human in Human Resources is increasingly being proven to be the pivot point; the R of HR is increasingly demanding to be thought of as Results – i.e. what comes out of the sausage factory, not what goes in

[pig lips! I need pig lips!]

A new remit for HR: Human Results.

But what about the OD? While BadConsultant would love it if the concept of organization – pre-ordained structures, departments, roles, responsibilities – quietly slipped off this mortal coil and went to meet its maker, that’s not about to happen in the next few

[billing cycles]

decades. So, the O remains Organization… simple enough.

But it’s the D that needs radical change. It’s the D that will demand a new mandate.

Because over the years HR/OD have become addicted to a) keeping leaders happy and self-contained in the illusion of hunky-doryness; and b) adding things to the organization. Removing things is one of the great holy grails of HR/OD.

• We’ll be more strategic when we lose the transactional stuff (that never goes away)
• We need to focus only on work driven by the strategic plan (but if a leader asks me to do what I did yesterday as a favour, I’ll salivate)
• We need standard processes, but my client group needs it done their way (so we’ll help them create a shadow system)

Nothing ever comes off the conveyor belt.

It could. It really could. But the current D in OD – Development – means additive development.

As a profession, we are now introducing fixes for the fixes that were supposed to fix the fixes that were designed to fix the…

Don’t believe ye olde BC?

Take a long, hard look at your performance management process. If it isn’t a lash-up of 5 or 6 legacy processes that bears no relation to business performance, we’ll be very surprised. If it is pristine, clean and simple, understood by every manager and deployed without deflection from business performance, then a) congratulations, you’ve achieved the impossible; or b) sorry that you are so far into the delusion of rationality that you believe that.

So, BadConsultant argues the the D must change. Radically.

The new D is for Destruction.

Destruction as in tearing down global career families and losing job titles. Destruction as in giving managers complete control of their budgets, including compensation and demanding on-budget, results-based management. And once that’s in place, Destruction meaning no salary bands, no calibration, no norm distribution, no across the board merit increases – just Managers paying their team what they believe they’re worth based on the measured results they’re achieving.

[How many managers? Many fewer than currently - of course]

Destruction as in removing every policy that protects against the worst behaviors of a small minority by legislating the behavior of all. Destruction as in firing people who consistently under-perform, not moving them sideways to spread cancer elsewhere in the organization.

Getting the BC drift yet?

The shape and scope of that word – Destruction – will be the shape and scope of the book.

And there could be no better function than HR/OD to lead the future – but it won’t be the HR/OD of today.

It’ll be “Destruction HR”.

With a new remit and mandate:

Human Results through Organization Destruction

We rather think we’re starting a movement, so drop BC a line if you want to be part of it.

’til we meet again, may the mojitaritas(®) flow freely,

BC

Paleontologists – best or worst recruiters in the world?

BadConsultant has been a little busy recently, bringing his non-evil-twin back to life in the virtual community. Now, that’s all underway, BC is free to cast his discerning eye over the business landscape in search of nuggets of wisdom, observation or just sheer lunacy.

Which brings us to paleontologists.

Can there be a single academic discipline in the world that is better at building a ready pool of available, willing talent than paleontology?

Early in BadConsultant’s own career planning, paleontology featured pretty heavily. As a child, visiting Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight over several summers, BC was taken by the life-size models of dinosaurs. I knew ALL the names

[and, yes, at the age of 6, BC could spell archaeopteryx]

however once I entered

[the social conditioning factory]

school, that dream career very quickly went by the wayside. The subject of paleontology just did not feature in any core, peripheral or otherwise organized curriculum in the UK.

One dinosaur-crazed kid was lost to paleontology.

Fast forward a few more years than BadConsultant would care to mention.

As part of our long-term, strategic workforce plan, BadConsultant has currently engaged two intern BadConsultants, one at 8 years-old and the second at 5. This exercise in talent development appears to be proceeding to plan, with a net depletion in current assets based upon our belief in the potential for future ROI.

Needless to say both our senior and junior interns are dino-crazy

[partly because BadConsultant is engaged in formal knowledge transfer, of course]

because every kids television channel from commercial-centric Disney to publicly-funded PBS runs several series based upon dinosaurs. Dino-toys are everywhere – from the cheap plastic, to the plush fluffy.

It’s fair to say that the market for dino-interest pre-high-school is as saturated and energetic as it can be

[like soccer]

Our 8-year-old intern proudly proclaims that she will be a paleontologist on graduating from college.

Yet, it is a fairly safe bet that the subject of paleontology will not feature in any core, peripheral or otherwise organized curriculum in the US.

And two dinosaur-crazed interns will be lost to paleontology.

By the evidence in hand, BadConsultant would have to conclude that paleontologists are the worst recruiters in the world for failing to convert such a ready, willing pool into practicing professionals.

However.

A quick google on the term ‘talent shortage paleontology’ reveals that paleontology just doesn’t seem to get the focus that other sciences do when talent is under discussion, suggesting that there is no problem filling the pipeline of paleontologists.

Maybe paleontologists are the best recruiters in the world after all?

However.

A secondary google on ‘shortage of paleontologists’ turns up a question as to whether there is an impending shortage of industrial paleontologists – an excellent paper on ‘Paleontology in the 21st Century’ from a conference in 1997 suggests that there isn’t enough being done to prepare for a demographic cliff facing industrial paleontology.

So, it would appear that paleontologists are the worst recruiters in the world after all.

So what’s the point.

There isn’t one.

Though imagine someone in 150 million years’ time trying to draw logical conclusions as to what BadConsultant was one about.

If there are still paleontologists to recruit, that is…

Wishing you all a nice sedimentary resting place,

BC

The Illusion of Hunky-Doryness – Part II: As luck would have it, I’m bulimic

The latest in our line of mythology illumination…

• Part I

BadConsultant really should have learnt his lesson

[denial, avoidance, resistance... anyone... Anyone?]

by now. But sure enough, a moth to the networking flame, I found myself doing the circuit again a couple of weeks back. Margartias were quaffed, nachos nibbled and… erm… well there was much conversation and mutual distribution of business cards. All in all, a fun and successful week.

So why my dismay?

Well, let’s start with the obvious: HR in its current state is rapidly becoming obsolete, almost a parody of itself. So, an HR conference was always going to make me go ‘Hmmmmmm…’ more than I normally do. But that wasn’t it… If anything, I was reassured that while the function’s leaders may be missing the point, there is talent deeper in the function that is ready to emerge

[and for whom BadConsultant will be writing a book later this year]

and reinvent the future of talent and organization capability.

No. It was simply this. Being an organization culture

[groupie, geek, nerd, guru, observer, catalyst]

student, I was pleased to see the word culture appear in at least one presentation title

[did I mention that many HR leaders are missing the point?]

until I got to the session. Which was OK. Really. It was OK. BadConsultant didn’t grind his teeth once.

It was slide 3.

Slide 3.

Which repeated the homily:

“Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast”

[funny, when you type it with capitals it looks like a newspaper headline - Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast, police are searching for a bloated bureaucracy addicted to manipulating financial reports that maintain the perception of double-digit growth]

Turning to my ready reference source, Google, I get 4,640,000 hits on “culture eats strategy for breakfast quote” – and even in the first page worth of links, I see it attributed to several sources.

[obviously, the management quote just appears fully formed... like paperclips - c'mon have you ever purchased one?]

Some inventive spark had even extended the concept by suggesting that culture also ate strategy for lunch.

[though no-one had yet suggested that dinner was on the menu - a nod to work-life balance, perchance?]

Hence my dismay at the conference. Here was somebody preaching to the supposedly enlightened about a subject that IS the future of the function, leading with a phrase just about as hackneyed as something about someone being someone else’s ‘greatest asset’.

Like it or not, while BadConsultant is pleased to note that there is at least awareness that culture is eating strategy for breakfast, he can’t help observing that most corporations keep feeding new strategies to the beast in the hope that it’ll get full and stop stuffing its face. Truth is that it doesn’t… it quietly nips to the bathroom, pukes up the last strategic solution it sampled and returns to the table for more.

And there’s the problem. We’ve created another myth that supports the culture of averageness, where failure is acceptable so long as it doesn’t do too much damage, so long as the illusion of hunky-doryness is maintained.

Organization culture is bulimic. It binges, pukes, binges, pukes, on and on in a continual cycle

[and it has REALLY bad teeth]

and the one group of people who are able to see it for what it is, has even the closest appreciation of what makes it so and, some would argue, already have political permission to act upon it, choose not to do so but instead – because they’ve been indoctrinated to believe that a seat at the table comes from being a ‘Strategic Business Partner’ – collude with the self-destructive behavior.

So, if organization culture is bulimic, why aren’t we treating it as such:

1. Intervene
2. Introduce self-awareness of the situation
3. Identify automatic thoughts
4. Encourage behavioral experiments
5. Structured, controlled rebuilding of identity

BadConsultant would argue that we’ve actually got pretty good at steps 1 and 3 – well, those of us running organization surveys may have done if we’re not just using a framework off the shelf, however the very last thing that HR

[heck, let's be expansive: Corporations!]

will do is encourage experimentation in order to rebuild identity. That might destroy the illusion of hunky-doryness. It might erode the slavish HR belief structure that leaders have all the answers

[clue: they don't]

that it’s possible to make everyone behave in predictable ways

[clue: it isn't]

that a corporation can protect itself from all risk

[clue: it can't]

That’s the mythology that is the illusion of hunky-doryness.

So.. Bottom line…

The next time your business leaders offer up a strategic solution to your current business challenges, start watching your culture closely. If it goes quiet and politely excuses itself from the table, it may be time for you to knock on the bathroom door and say “it’s time we had a talk”.

And that knock may be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

With love,

BC

Innovation isn’t just for things – Part VI

As if there’s any point in providing the history:

Part I – Part II – Part III – Part IV – Part V

From your exhaustive re-reading of all the preceding parts, you’ll know that we have three questions:

1. Who is your ideal employee?
   

   A: Those employees most likely to maintain and grow their productivity in the future and who have the most potential to increase value for our future customers

2. What proportion of your workforce could be classed as your ideal employee?
3. How do you increase that proportion?

In Part V, we were beginning to build the answer to the second question, by looking at how to derive products

[yes, and services]

from a simple customer value proposition

[BINGO!]

and identifying 5 areas of work most critical to bringing that product to life:

• Innovation
• Production
• Brand
• Face
• Culture

So, there you have your answer… R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales and… er… HR?

Except.

Not really. The answer to question 2 isn’t simply that those organizational functions are important, despite the

[claims of the respective leaders of those functions trying to avoid budget cuts]

mythology of corporate abnormality holding them near sacrosanct as it perpetuates the illusion of hunky-doryness .

You see, we know those functions and there’s a panoply of individual contribution within and across them. We’re not talking about performance – we’ve got that covered in the answer to question 1. The contribution we’re referring to here is that of making the future look different to today. Yes indeed, even amongst the home of the future(®) that is R&D, there are more folk intent on keeping things just the way they’ve always been than those who truly want to break new ground.

Even R&D is populated with

[geniuses, geeks, nerds, robots... delete as appropriate]

people. And without a catalyst or

[cattle-prod]

leadership, the majority of people will seek to maintain an uncomfortable status quo rather than leap into the unknown.

So, one way of answering question 2 is simply:

Those employees who are willing to be your ideal employee

but that’s somewhat circuitous logic

[which BadConsultant would only use if being paid for this contribution]

and wholly unsatisfying.

So let’s try and construct a more detailed and nuanced answer to question 2 – What proportion of your workforce could be classed as your ideal employee?

Those employees who willingly and consistently flex our innovation, production, brand, face and culture to develop and deliver products and services that release unseen potential for our customers

OK, let’s throw that against the wall and see what sticks.

[yes, this stuff really is as easy as cooking pasta]

Taking the first two answers together, we have increasing individual productivity to meet future customer needs by willingly flexing innovation, production, brand, face and culture to release unseen potential. Or:

Performer – Customer – Potential

And yes, there are those who will say that Customer should always come first, and to those commentators BadConsultant would say

[bad luck, we're writing this]

this blog doesn’t make it easy to draw venn diagrams but, if it makes it easier for you:

The answer to question 2 is, therefore, those employees who use innovation, production, brand, face or culture willingly and consistently to stay in the red ‘sweet-spot’.

Alles klar? We’ll be back soon to transition from question 2 to question 3 – What can you do about it?

Stay cool,

BC

This and That – Part II: So now you’ve got them, what do you do with them?

• Part I: The basic error of who you ask to manage

You know, BadConsultant always provides us much linkicity

[made up words are cool]

as he possibly can, but all the while remains conscious of the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that his executive readership clientele are simply too important and busy to actually spend time absorbing information

[unless it's in Arial font, 48-pt bullets on the very last page of a powerpoint presentation]

in order to drive better, more considered decisions.

Yeah right.

So, we’ll summarise as we always do – aiming to please, and keen to at least get past the introduction – the essence of Part I:

Most of your management population entered that role by accident because they, and the modern organization they work in, wanted more of their individual contribution. By the time this fundamental error was realized, it was too late to reverse and compounded by the ‘climb, climb, climb’ myth. Bottom line:

You have way more managers than you need, most of whom aren’t interested in the role and are doing the minimum necessary to not be demoted or fired for dereliction of duty.

OK.

We’re patient.

We’ll wait for the apoplexy to die down.

…

…

…

Calmer now?

Because, really, we want to help. This is for your own good.

A couple of weeks back, we posted a section from ‘The Strengths Springboard – is your organization ready?’ entitled ‘Checking in, not checking up’

[we know, we know... you're too busy and important to read other posts]

which basically illuminated the fact that in most modern corporations, a manager of 10 or more direct reports is running a multi-million dollar value portfolio. And that would be People Value(®) as opposed to Human Capital

[a terminology designed to perpetuate 20th century industrialized manufacturing expansion thinking]

Let’s see now… So, you have multi-million dollar value portfolios being managed by people who never wanted to grow value and who have only the minimal skill to protect against value loss. Doesn’t exactly speak to growth, does it? In fact, BadConsultant might hypothesise

[and would happily submit a statement of work for an in-depth study]

that much of the culture of resentment is bred by the presence of this perma-bear attitude towards People Value.

And as there’s no way on earth that there would be any performance management of any but the most disastrous of managers

[performance management? hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha]

you’re left with a simple challenge: how to move the bears to a more bullish frame of mind?

[not too much though, we wouldn't want to let them loose in the china shop now, would we?]

Or in other words: What do we do with all these managers?

And here’s where the second error of the management chain comes in.

All managers can be great managers

Erm…

No.

They can’t. Like everything in life

[as measured by statisticians]

you’ll find a normal distribution.

But still you’ll believe the error – it’s what the modern organization excels at doing, finding mythologies that fit the status quo, refusing to validate or measure those myths, and presenting them as absolute truths. In this case, the status quo has been built on the mythology that people higher in the organization hierarchy are superior to those below, and therefore

[it's almost painful to type this bunk]

have fewer/less weaknesses than those below them. The mythology feeds upon itself until senior execs are considered infallible.

[which may sound similar to another organization you've heard of?]

All managers can be great managers

Sheesh!

The fall-out from this second error is huge and, as this post is getting long already, BadConsultant will be back soon to cover it in much, much more detail…

Byeee

BC

This and That – Part I: The basic error of who you ask to manage

The corporate abnormality that is the modern organization could well carry a sticker

created by managers for managers

A system that extends beyond natural social patterns – which is precisely what happened in the industrialized expansion of the twentieth century – requires energy to prevent it from regressing back to its natural state. In the end, the unnatural status quo comes to focus almost solely on keeping that energy flowing.

Management is the fuel, the process and the outcome of the modern organization.

So, if management is a necessary construct of any modern organization that insists on maintaining its corporate abnormality, we might expect to see a near-clinical focus upon spotting, selecting and placing the very best managers in position to

[reap the benefits of others' work]

do what they do best.

BadConsultant is willing to bet that you just rolled your eyes. And you wouldn’t be alone in that. Because one of the greatest factors of corporate abnormality is that it is largely un-self-aware

[we'll say it again, misused hyphens and made up terminology is cool]

and certainly often delusional.

Were we being paid by the word for writing this, we might extend into the psychological roots of why that delusion prevails – but we’re not, so we won’t. We’ll stick to the subject in hand. The basic error of who you ask to manage.

Most managers enter the role by accident; and it happens when this becomes that.

We’ll explain.

Think of a human being, working on a task. We might call them an individual contributor, a team member, a performer, a colleague, an employee or

[Heavens forbid]

a worker. Now let’s make them really good at what they do. We might call them a high performer.

And now, reaffirmed by all the labyrinthine complexity of the annual performance review and compensation cycle, our high performer receives the message loud and clear that:

We love it when you do this

Insatiable for higher levels of achievement, and noticing that other people aren’t able to replicate the performance of our high performer, the message is refined through the objective setting process, becoming:

We love it when you do this, and want to give you every opportunity to do more this

The high performer, who likely enjoys the strokes s/he is receiving and relishes the opportunity to receive more, who may even be fundamentally wired to the achievement motive, shoots for the moon and gets the moon. And probably keeps getting new moons for a few performance cycles

[we wouldn't call them months, quarters or years now, would we?]

until… well… there are limits to how much one person can do. The high performer hits breaking point and the organization, sucking up all this productivity like a black hole, quietly and un-self-aware-ly

[cool]

panics. How can it get more this, when the person who does this can’t do any more this?

And now the basic error.

Let’s get an assistant for the high performer. The message is revised once more:

We love it when you do this, and want to give you every opportunity to do more this, so we’re providing you with a way to extend your thoughts and actions to do even more this

The assistant is thought of as an extra pair of hands, a mindless appendage that doesn’t think for itself, does just what it’s told to by the super-brain of the high performer

[can I get a 'Taylorism rocks!' - sing hallelujah!]

and, while the assistant is learning, it works just fine. But sooner or later, maybe even through the performance review process, it becomes clear that the assistant isn’t a robot or Taylorist work-unit. It speaks, it thinks, it feels, it…

You know how we loved it when you did that? Well, we need you to do this now because the assistant wants to do more of that…

This and that.

The high performer has become a manager, simply by being hooked on growing her own performance. Stroked, recognized and rewarded for delivering the goods, suddenly he’s adrift in unfamiliar seas. This has become that.

And right here is the point where the error is either corrected or compounded. And most modern organizations miss the point completely

[did we mention the words delusional and un-self-aware?]

It’s a simple question

This is your new this – do you want to do this? If not, you can go back to doing that with no penalty – no harm, no foul. Which this works best for you?

Of course, we know the answer.

And it isn’t pretty.

Because the modern organization sells the myth of climbing the ladder, of colonialists overseeing empires, of bigger is better, of being the energy that holds regression at bay, of… Well, most people trapped into management by accident find it very hard to answer the ‘which this’ question honestly – bigger paychecks, social recognition and elevation in the tribe are addictive.

By the time the ‘which this’ question gets asked – if it does at all – it’s mostly too late. The basic error gets compounded.

So, if it’s so hard to correct the error later, it stands to reason to intervene at the point where that basic error is introduced.

And, indeed, we’ll be diving into that in the next post in the ‘This and That’ series.

‘Til we three meet again,

BC