Laughing Out Loud – Crying On The Inside
“A Paradox – Why Dysfunctional Organizations Thrive and How to Survive Them”
By David J. Koehn, Ph.D.
Do you ever feel lost working in an organization? Do you feel like you do not belong there? Do you find it difficult getting up in the morning and going to work for an organization that does not appreciate you? If you resonate with these questions, read how to deal with these negative feelings?
Early in my career as a psychologist I observed and worked with people who were neurotic, psychotic, and developmentally disabled. While these people carried complex burdens, most were still able to somehow cope with their maladies and survive, albeit not typical of what society would recognize as being normal coping behaviors. Their behaviors were often self-destructive but they found ways to adapt and get through their day and the daily grind by reducing their emotional/physical pain, stress and anxiety.
Today, many organizations that exhibit similar behaviors are known as dysfunctional organizations. You may have witnessed signs of these organizations across multiply industries. Have you ever observed or experienced any of these absurdities or travesties….
Client service personnel mistreating or abusing patients
Doctors too drugged up to know what level to get off of the elevator to provide service
Organizations who do not care about their employees and treat them as commodities
Companies who have no strategy, marketing plan or substantive value proposition and do not care to have them
Firms putting poor quality products into inventory and then selling them to some other unsuspecting company
School counselors taking advantage of students
Discipline policies teaching staff how to use a paddle to provide punishment
Consulting firms, large and small, that provide the bare minimum and less than adequate service to government agencies
People stealing goods from the firms they work for or attempting to buy jobs from superiors
Personnel doing more of their personal work than the work of the company
Management letting unions dictate to the company so that poor quality performers get supported.
Such crazy making experiences are a small sample of those I have seen throughout my 36-year career across the health and human service world, manufacturing, public education, nonprofit, consulting, and federal/state agencies. The question that befuddles me is why these organizations that are so dysfunctional stay afloat, especially since they do not exhibit anything that I have learned and read about necessary for becoming high performing organizations. In fact, they do the opposite of what you would expect of high performing organizations!
To unveil the mystery of why dysfunctional companies thrive, we need to look at what constitutes new science principles – see Meg Wheatley’s work on “Leadership and New Science”. In particular, all organizations are living systems. Organizations are made of people relationships that are interrelated through formal structures and informal networks. They are not inanimate objects but biological systems and thus qualify as living systems. The key factor of a living system is that it is self-organizing, constantly adapting and finding ways to exist. Thus, while negatives abound in dysfunctional organizations, they find someway to adapt and to survive, albeit sub-optimally. If they survive “crazy making” and operate sub-optimally then what facilitates their sustainment and subsistence?
Answering this question will almost appear blasphemous. We must look to the customer’s willingness to tolerate mediocre even subpar performance.
Let’s examine the federal government and the companies that provide goods and services to the federal government in testing out this premise of customer acceptance of mediocrity. Some conundrums that provide evidence are:
The Federal Government typically advertises for “A” standards, pursues “B” capabilities and but accepts “C” level competence. Since customer demands are low, consulting firms deliver poor quality services and their “cash cow” continues to pay. There are no incentives to do any better while the money keeps coming in.
Solicitations typically have little to do with competition, but more on what relationships the contractor has previously developed with the targeted federal agency. Many solicitations, often written by the bidding contractor, are won by them; no surprise. Most procurement evaluations offer no useful guidance to the losing contractor. For both small and large systems integrators that lose bids, protests are unusual because they know they more than likely will get the next one — so the game goes on.
Society would rather see the indigent be ostracized and kept out of harms way. Federal and State Governments that fund nonprofits and other health/human service agencies do so at a “bare bones” level. The “big white elephant” that does not get openly discussed is why this is accepted. The primary reason surrounds society’s attitude of caring more about themselves than helping those in need, especially those who they think can never be contributing members of society. More exploration of this phenomenon will be addressed in a future article.
Commercial ventures small or large demonstrate questionable ethical behavior while pushing the envelope towards decreasing quality to increase profitability. Many customers get “hoodwinked” into thinking they are getting an acceptable product or service through manipulative advertising. This appeals to their emotional decision-making – see Jonah Lehrer’s treatise on “How We Decide.” Intriguingly, our federal government came to the rescue of our financial and auto industry through bailouts without requiring major changes in their performance culture.
Congress operates purposely as a strong bureaucracy with all the associated foibles of risk avoidance, slowness and myopic interests. It at best reinforces mediocrity. Our democratic process requires a transformation. We need to reconstruct and modernize our form of democratic government. We need to take a look at other democracies, for example, how Germany operates — Feds determine policy, the States set budgets; people are selected some based on their own popularity vote and/or others are placed by the winning party by their subject matter expertise to deal with issues of the day. Without a dramatic shift towards a more modern version of democracy we cannot expect anything more than ongoing inefficiency and ineffectiveness.
Given these conundrums, dysfunctional organizations still survive and maintain themselves – see Kegan and Lahey’s work on “Immunity to Change X-ray.” It’s like they have one foot on the brake that represents their dysfunctional commitments and the other on the gas pedal that represents good intentions. They may neither grow nor prosper but they can “hang in there.” Upon reflection, the dysfunctional organizations I have worked for or with are still in existence and still operating like they always have — dysfunctionally. Now that we understand the basics of why dysfunctional organizations survive, let’s turn our attention to what we can do as individuals if we find ourselves caught in this debacle.
There are always things you can do if you find yourself caught working in a dysfunctional organization. Things you can do to maintain your sanity, positive energy, enthusiasm, passion for excellence and/or physical well-being are:
Have daily dialogue with colleagues outside the organization who can help you cope with the crazy making. Encourage them to remind you that it is not about you!
Make sure you have outside interests and hobbies that help you maintain a perspective and a sense of balance
Start a job search before you lose your job. Only apply to organizations that meet criteria for being a “high performing” organization. Some of the key criteria to consider are those organizations that:Know how to balance and link investment excellence and operational excellence – see “Taming the Ticker” by Al Naqvi
Concentrate on people development (coaching, leadership, education, on-boarding)
Have a business domain (specific type of industry) that interests you personally and supports products and services that reinforce your professional capabilities (abilities, knowledge, and skills).
Do not short-change yourself and accept something less.
Do physical exercise at least three times a week if not more to minimize the negative stress that is wearing on you.
Do not “bad mouth” the organization at work. Find something positive and talk it up. Be friendly to others in the company; they too are probably frustrated.
At least once a week, do reality checks on what’s happening in the organization. Offer one positive idea to senior management per week. Seek them out – do not let yourself get isolated even when they make it difficult to interact with them.
Within the organization, find others who share your perspectives on high performance. Percolate ways of slowly introducing these ideas to others in upper management.
Be on the watch for “burn out” where you become emotionally drained to the point of exhaustion. Be careful not to fall into the trap of “rusting out” where you feel disenfranchised or hopeless. Find an outside mentor to keep you positively focused, emotionally and spiritually centered and self-motivated.
Leaving one dysfunctional organization for another is not helpful. Going to a new organization that is high performing is wise. Making your current organization into a functional organization is challenging.
There is no doubt that no one wants to work in a dysfunctional work environment but given the number of dysfunctional organizations you will probably find yourself working in one sometime in your career. Using some if not all of the aforementioned nine points will help you cope with the situation. You will more than likely not be able to change the dynamic of such an organization and morph them into a positive organization without first transforming their leaders – see Robert Quinn’s work on “Building the Bridge as you Walk on it.”
Such a transformative effort is an enormous undertaking and has risks to your survival in that organization. To those that undertake such an effort, my respect goes out to you. An honest conversation with your leadership is needed to determine the temperature gauge of their willingness to make the daunting changes to grow and to prosper, not just exist. Based on a positive reading, get them to sign a commitment specifically outlining their game plan going forward. Without it, you will be better off starting your job search again and find “nirvana”, if you can. Good luck and happy hunting no matter which course or path you choose.
Please share your dysfunctional working experiences and how you are coping with them to: koehndj@me.com.
Dr. David Koehn has 15 years of specific experience as a Chief Learning Officer. In this role he spearheaded the formulation, design, and implementation of personal and organizational learning strategies and programs. His CLO experiences are complemented with 20 plus years holding senior leadership positions in the field of learning services building teams across a variety of profit and nonprofit enterprises with a background of successes in banking/finances/insurance, rehabilitation, teaching, manufacturing, human/health service, quality assurance, quality control, technical management, research, marketing, logistics, and systems analysis.
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Aug.16,2010
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