My husband and I were interested in purchasing a condo when we found out there was a lawsuit against the condo association. We really liked the condo, so we hired an attorney to help us understand the risk. After asking a multitude of questions over the course of several days, our attorney suggested we look elsewhere. “You just won’t be comfortable no matter what,” was his rationale. He was wrong.
My clients, readers, and audiences complain frequently about getting dragged into issues that ought to be resolved without their help. Every time an issue is escalated one, two, three, even more levels, the cost is significant. “Why can’t people just solve these problems themselves?” they ask. Well, you can’t eliminate a problem without eliminating its cause so here are the 10 most frequent causes of unnecessary escalation. 1. Unclear Priorities Employees can’t make decisions without understanding the factors that should govern those decisions. Sometimes those factors are project specific – requirements, customer expectations, cost/schedule trade-offs – and sometimes they are company wide and involve strategic priorities – priority accounts, product life-cycle plans, customer service expectations, quality/schedule trade-offs, etc. Without clarity, employees often need to escalate what could be simple decisions.
Both the New York Times and Inc. have written about Zappos’ holacracy recently. Why isn’t it working? Order is essential. You can’t work with other people to produce anything, especially anything of significance, without order. I don’t care if you are throwing a dinner party or building an airplane. Decisions must be made, responsibilities assigned, and plans laid. In a traditional hierarchy, “the boss” drives the decisions and assignments. A holacracy is an effort to replace the traditional hierarchy with a more flexible, organic, network so different people can assume different roles, including being ”the boss,” depending on the circumstances and their skills and interests. In theory, it sounds great. In practice, not so much and this is why:
When I opened the refrigerator this morning, the space normally occupied by 100% natural orange juice was taken by an alternative. The unnaturally long list of unrecognizable ingredients and pledges of less sugar and calories raised my hackles almost as fast as my pause raised my husband’s defenses. He thought we could try it. I thought he had flipped. In some marriages, this could be the burnt toast that breaks the camel’s back. Why? Because we shop the perimeter of the grocery store. Our cart contains little other than fresh fruit, vegetables, chicken, and seafood. Since we don’t squeeze our own juice or keep a cow, we venture into the center aisles for things like juice and milk. However, the criteria that drive our selections remain constant. The brand of juice and milk matters little; the length and contents of the ingredients list matters a lot.
If any of the following sound like your performance management system, you aren’t improving performance. You may think you are, but you aren’t. 1. Employees are crushed if they aren’t “Truly Outstanding” or at least “Exceptional.” In an era where “all the children are above average,” especially in companies with outstanding employees, how do you accomplish anything by putting people in boxes that do nothing but confirm their preconceptions or shatter their illusions? And why do you want to put managers in a position where those are their choices? 2. The main take away is a rating and a salary change.
When your car gets a flat, you fix the tire, not the transmission. Why don’t you do that with your business? While working with clients of all types, I frequently see examples where a few difficult people, one bad outcome, and/or an obvious lack of clear communication and understanding involving one process triggers broad pronouncements and substantial changes in the environment – the equivalent of overhauling the transmission. For example:
I’m sure you have employees who produce excellent results and whose behavior is exemplary. These are obvious keepers! You probably also have employees who produce excellent results but whose behavior is objectionable. They may destroy trust, create anxiety, and undermine other employees. They may require constant attention or damage control. Or they may whine incessantly. Whether these employees are toxic, more trouble than they are worth, or energy suckers, they are not keepers. So why are you keeping them? Everywhere I turn there seem to be executives and managers who suffer, and let their organizations suffer, because they won’t bite the bullet and terminate employees with bad behavior. Common excuses include: “But he is so good technically.” I doubt he is irreplaceable, and if he is, what would you do if he got hit by a bus tomorrow? It is time to start the replacement process. “He isn’t that bad all the time.” That’s not what you were thinking when you read the second paragraph of this article. That’s not what his co-workers would say if they felt they could speak honestly. Ask yourself how relieved people would be if he quit or was moved to another division tomorrow. Don’t delay. You owe it to your other employees to remove objectionable behavior. “I can’t fire him; he’s in a protected class.” No one has the right to make others miserable. If you can see and define the difference between good behavior and bad behavior, you don’t have to put up with the latter. When my clients make good behavior a job expectation and unload the trouble cases, they invariably breathe a sigh of relief and wonder why they waited so long.
The air and light in my tropical hotel room this week reminded me of a morning long ago when I noticed a foot-wide, solid black stripe on the wall behind the bed that wasn’t there the night before. It was a stripe in horrifying motion. Like a rainbow, it traveled down the wall and into my little sister’s secret pot-o-gold on the nightstand – a three week supply of candy to protect her sweet tooth from anticipated deprivation while traveling with our ultra frugal and pragmatic parents in Mexico. I hurled the little leather purse into the bathtub and washed ten thousand ants down the drain, much to my sister’s distress over the candy and the purse. Sometimes that is exactly what you need to do in your organization. Too often, people lack the resolve to throw the purse into the bathtub despite swarming evidence a foot wide and ten thousand deep.
My recent business trip to the South Carolina coast featured many alligators and even more warning signs. With both in sight of my balcony, I also saw a ridiculous number of people feeding and attracting said alligators. What part of danger don’t they understand? And do the sign posters really expect compliance? People will behave as you desire only if they see the value in doing so. While WIIFM (what’s in it for me) may top the list, most people are also influenced by understanding the impact of their actions on family, friends, colleagues, the organization, the community, and beyond. This warning sign imparts none of that understanding. Those who posted it were dreaming in the fields of “if you write it, they’ll succumb.” Either that, or they think this is adequate protection from a lawsuit. Let’s listen in on the thinking of these tourists as they approach the alligators with insufficient knowledge and insufficient respect. “How dangerous are these guys? Floating lazily. Paying me no mind. Still no reaction, as I move closer. Just a bit closer and I’ll have a great photo!” Meanwhile, I am picturing eighty razor-sharp teeth leveraged by a foot of jawbone on 1,000 pounds of quick-twitch muscle. “Don’t push your luck, buddy!”