Standing Up to Creativity-Stifling Mismanagement Will Take Courage
On Tuesday morning, Delores, who needs critical input from her supervisor, Judy, to continue on a time-sensitive project, asks for a few minutes of her time. “Sure,” Judy says, “how about 3 o’clock?”
Delores spends the next few hours organizing her questions in order to make the meeting quick, efficient and productive. At 2:15, she notices Judy rushing down the hall carrying her briefcase and hears her tell her assistant, “See you Thursday.”
Delores dashes out and asks, “Aren’t we meeting at 3?”
To which Judy replies: “Oh, I have to get on the road for that meeting in St. Louis tomorrow. Your questions can wait till Thursday, can’t they?”
Delores’ spirits fall. Now she is practically paralyzed on her project for three days, and probably longer, since Judy’s schedule is likely to be full upon her return.
Sound familiar? Clearly Judy’s behavior is manipulative, whether consciously so or not, and manipulation is all too common--and accepted--in the workplace. Since she became department head, this type of behavior has become Judy’s MO. Her employees are consistently frustrated, grumbling among themselves, and they see no solution except to go along or leave the department.
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Guy works in a public institution. When his expertise is needed in another division, he is approached by Jim, the division head, to provide consultation for extra compensation--a routine procedure within the institution.
Guy dutifully writes a proposal and Jim approves it. Guy performs the work and invoices Jim for approximately $4,000. After 30 days and no check, Guy calls to inquire. The paperwork has been misplaced. Guy resubmits the invoice. Another 30 days go by. No check. Guy calls again. This time, too much time has elapsed since the work was performed and he needs to re-invoice for “more recent work,” even though the project was completed as originally and mutually agreed to.
Guy fabricates a new invoice and resubmits. Another 30 days. No check. He calls again. This time he is told that any amount exceeding $1,500 is considered a conflict of interest and that he must re-invoice for four installments of $1,000 each, fabricating a different project for each installment. So Guy fictionalizes four invoices for four different mythical projects at amounts that hover around $1,000 each. To avoid getting caught, he staggers their submission over three months. One year after the initial proposal was submitted, Guy receives his fourth and final check.
Time is not the most grievous loss here; rather, it’s the psychological energy that could have been spent productively on projects. There is no way to measure how much of Guy’s motivation and creativity were siphoned off by the demand for deceit. Even though he had a sporting attitude about it all after 90 days, his creative energy was used to dream up scenarios in order to finesse the rules. To get paid, he was forced to feed the bureaucracy.
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What’s wrong with the picture in these two true stories? In the first, Judy is a weak person in a high place. Her skills at managing upward were mistaken for all-around good management and resulted in her promotion over others.
At some subconscious level, she may be aware that her position hangs by a thread and is threatened by the talents and skills of those beneath her. She unwittingly weakens them by placing unnecessary barriers in their way to retard the rate and substance of their productivity, thereby maintaining her visible lead in the eyes of those above her. This results not only in her subordinates’ frustration, but also saps their energy over time, chipping away at their motivation. Vibrant employees are gradually transformed into drones programmed to perform routine tasks, and the bureaucracy lumbers on at a glacial pace.
In the second story, we see mature bureaucracy in action, housing employees who feed and service its insatiable appetite. Having forgotten the constituency they are meant to serve, employee bureaucrats are focused narrowly inward rather than broadly outward. This breeds a cancerous narcissism that consumes the legitimate, honest efforts of “naive” employees by asking them to lie by layers.
Bureaucracy is like a coral reef. It builds on skeletal remains until there’s a huge monster made up of layer after layer of dead cells of deceit and inefficiency, changing the ecosystem around it. These bureaucracies are an ossified testimony to years of mismanagement.
In its early stages, when people had the chance to chip away at it, they didn’t and instead took the path of least resistance by simply adding more layers. Rather than have the courage to face facts, it is easier to lie and be a player.
Although we give lip service to breaking out of boxes, in reality we simply reinforce the boundaries of the box. It is the height of hypocrisy, and we do it to ourselves. By avoiding the short-term pain of standing on principle, we hurt each other and the constituencies we serve by saying to ourselves, “I’ll think about it tomorrow,” as Scarlett O’Hara did, and simply go along.
So what can we do? In the same way that a coral reef takes generations to form, it will take generations for an organization to self-correct--short of a revolution or nuclear explosion. Why? Because an institution is only as good--or as bad--as the individuals who inhabit it. For creativity to be sustained, individuals must come to terms with the harsh reality that making a difference may mean making waves.
What is the solution? If I could answer this question completely, I wouldn’t be writing this article. But since I asked it, let me answer with three general guidelines. First, true organization can speed the process; there is strength in numbers. Individuals must come together in their resolve to refuse to go along, and instead follow a moral compass. Their success lies in synchronicity, the merging of individual strengths in a timely way that cannot go unnoticed by the institution.
Second, stay focused on the objective at hand. Heed but don’t concede to politics. Remember, it’s just as bad not to exercise power when it is appropriate as it is to exercise power when it is not appropriate, and God help us all to know the difference between the two.
Finally, always have compassion for but expect better of people who float down the channels of least resistance--the weak or tired who give primacy to the ordinary over the extraordinary. The ones who make a difference are those who, under threat of reprisal, do not give away their integrity. They persevere on principle.
My guesstimate is that the ratio of the weak to the strong is about 10 to 1. Where are you?
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Karen Stephenson is a professor of management at UCLA.
