All Posts in Organizational Effectiveness

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Recently I described some research I bumped into 20 years ago about a parrot that appeared to understand both the meaning of the words it mimicked and at least some elementary rules of grammar. Not having heard anything more about it, I concluded the research didn’t pan out and parrots are mere mimics after all.

My thanks to dozens of IS Survivalists who set me straight on this subject. Dr. Irene Pepperberg and Alex, her African Gray Parrot, are alive and talking to each other. It’s fascinating research. Bop over to http://www.cages.org/research/pepperberg/index.html to learn more about it. My apologies to any parrots I may have offended by likening them to the wrong class of human beings.

Offending human beings is OK, though. It’s your turn if you’re one of those who insist on giving the company what’s convenient rather than what’s important. You probably don’t recognize yourselves. To help you sort it out, you’re the ones most likely to explain that anytime you deliver something that’s inconvenient, it’s really a violation of IS standards that will further increase maintenance costs, cause PCs to require rebooting five times a day, and besides, the company really doesn’t need it anyway, regardless of what the person doing the work says.

The history of the PC is excellent evidence of this attitude, as an IS Survivalist who asks to remain anonymous pointed out in a recent letter: “Since the IS organization ignored us, we bought PCs to do our work, until the IS organization woke up and discovered their mainframes were dinosaurs.

“So the IS organization went to our management and took over our PCs and then demanded money to manage them. They then complained we used them for things other than functions their mainframes used to do, and since they never tried to understand what we do with them, they mismanaged them.

“The costs for PCs skyrocketed because of this mismanagement, so CIOs were invented to keep us from buying anything. Then the CIOs discovered our computers were becoming obsolete (because they wouldn’t let us replace them) and they mandated we replace them, but we had no money because we gave it all to the Information Systems people who squandered it on lousy PC support contracts.

“Instead of finding out what we need to do our work, and providing tools for us to use and standards for us to follow, IS people now dream up misguided, grandiose, expensive projects to do it all for us and leave no money to do the things that need to be done. And we, the user organizations, end up doing all the computer planning ourselves, developing our own standards, and inventing workarounds to the cumbersome system set up by the IS organization and the CIO.”

Overly harsh? Maybe. For example, I don’t think CIOs were invented to keep end-users from buying anything. That’s what corporate controllers are for. CIOs were invented to be comforting to business executives who had trouble relating to technical managers whose sole excuse for holding their jobs was that they got things done.

The first PCs to enter businesses were bought to enhance personal effectiveness. They lacked the really stupid features of the 3270 interface and they made end-users independent of IS (a huge factor in their popularity). If somebody sold software that would be worthwhile to the end-user, that end-user could simply buy the software, install it, and enjoy the benefits.

This is InfoWorld’s 20th anniversary year, and in those two decades IS has gained control of the “personal” computer. In doing so we’ve tried our best to make it as impersonal as possible.

When I attended the University of Minnesota, its management tried to encourage the use of mass transit, not by making mass transit more convenient but by reducing the number of parking spots. Students, faculty and administrators, however, preferred the device they could personally control — the automobile.

We can talk about how PCs are an enterprise resource all we want. We can’t, however, change human nature, and end-users don’t want an enterprise resource on their desks. They want a personal device that provides access to enterprise resources.

Comments

|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

“John” was given to meetings. He liked to deliver bad news with witnesses.

I reported to John once upon a time. I was running a small account and had offered a position to the company receptionist, who had been planning to leave the company to find a better career opportunity.

The meeting consisted of John, two witlesses … uh, witnesses … and myself. I was on one side of the table, the other attendees on the other side, and the question to be addressed was how this violation of procedure had happened.

Since there were no other possible internal candidates and the receptionist had been planning to leave the company, there was no real issue that needed discussing. The point of the meeting, which I was deliberately too dense to understand, was that I should be afraid of John. Since I didn’t become afraid in that meeting, John held others periodically until I got the message.

Fear is a potent motivator, as mentioned before in this column. (See “The best and worst motivator,” Oct. 7, 1997.) When the situation calls for a sense of urgency, with dire consequences for inaction, scaring an employee can be exactly the right thing to do.

There’s a big difference, though, between scaring someone because of the situation they face (“Shark attack!”) and being a bully who rules through intimidation. The former helps people survive and get the job done. The latter helps nobody, including the bully.

Seem obvious? Maybe, but if it’s so obvious, why do so few bullies recognize themselves? For that matter, why are so many victims of bullying seemingly oblivious to their situation? And are you sure you’re neither bully nor victim yourself? Read on.

Bullies don’t lead employees, although they think they do. Fear of the bully leads the employees, and that’s different. When a person leads, that person sets direction. When fear leads, there is no direction. There is only scurrying around as everyone tries to avoid provoking the boss. Since the boss is a bully, though, the boss’s anger is a given, so attempts to avoid creating provocation are doomed before they start.

Bullies think they’re leaders, because their victims follow orders quickly and without argument, do things the “right way,” and always keep them in the loop so they always know what’s going on.

The bully/bosses are wrong, though. They aren’t leading. Their employees are victims who follow their sense of fear, not the leader. This has several unintended consequences:

  • Victims don’t make decisions if they can help it. Any decision is a potential provocation. Better to wait and ask the boss.
  • The decisions victims do make are usually bad ones, because decisions aren’t about helping the organization move forward. They’re about second-guessing whether the boss would want anyone else to make the decision and, if so, what the boss would do in this situation.
  • Bully/bosses and their victims end up forming an unhealthy, addictive symbiosis, in which the bully/boss depends on the victims to provide an outlet for their continuing need to feel dominant while their victims rely on having the boss’s temper as an excuse for every failure.

Are you still sure you neither are a bully nor report to one? That’s great if it’s true. Being a bully isn’t binary, though, so your management style may include elements of bullyhood without your ever being aware of it.

If your employees ever make decisions by asking, “What would John do in this situation?” you have some warning signs. If they ever say, “We’d better not do that because it would tick John off,” you’ve gone beyond warning signs to the display of active symptoms.

Your manner of interacting with your boss may include an element of victimhood as well. It’s easy to tell. If, in your interactions, you’re more worried about potential criticism than hopeful for potential praise, you’re the victim of a bullying boss.

What should you do?

If the answer isn’t obvious to you, that’s another clear warning sign, because the answer is obvious.

Leave.

Comments