Is company culture serving as a platform of control or
as a platform of empowerment for employees? Part One of a Two Part Special…
Ever wondered how the
guy who spends all his time backbiting every honest soul that was unlucky
enough to cross his path ends up becoming the success story and poster boy for
the company that you love? We often attribute such a success to an unforeseen
factor that propelled him to stardom, maybe he “has what it takes” or maybe
management have being fooled by a clever operator who knows how to manipulate
his way to the top!
Regardless of the
reasons, it would not be possible if company culture did not support such
behaviour. Let’s map the behaviours out in this use case:
Exhibit
A - ‘The Hotshot’: A
narcissistic taker type who has only time for himself and feels no fellowship
with his workmates nor empathy towards them. He is expert at feigning concern
when it is useful to achieving his own ends and makes some employees who are
more ‘warm hearted and caring’ very nervous for reasons they cannot really
explain.
Exhibit
B - ‘Management’: They are
a mix of old and young that are all ambitious, uncomfortably trusting of each
other and locked into a common goal of running a company to make the most money
possible. They share in a command in control mentality and are very harsh with
neigh sayers, problem raisers and independent thinkers whom they view as ‘trouble-makers’
and a threat.
Exhibit
C - ‘The ‘ordinary’ Employee’:
They are a mix of personalities whom are attracted by the paycheque and being
disengaged, they stay for the paycheque. Any other personality type just
doesn’t cut it at the firm. When something unethical happens that offends their
sensibilities, their first thought is “oh, glad it was not me that got it”
rather then “how dare they do that to my fellow workmate”. The ordinary employee
is disengaged and does exactly what management asked for without question but not
an iota more. Learned helplessness aka ‘oh, what can I do about it?’ is a
common coping mechanism for workplace issues, which allows them to ‘let it go’.
So, Exhibit B
(management) sets up a workplace culture that allows Exhibit A (hotshot) to
prey upon Exhibit C (everybody else) gaining favour with Exhibit B (management)
allowing Exhibit A(hotshot) to become more powerful and climb the ladder at the
expense of ???
If it sounds familiar,
then you have practical experience with the downside of classical management theory.
The fact is that company culture can make or break your company as it
grows/declines over time. This is why you should tune in to my next blog post
in two weeks time about tips on engineering your company culture…
About
the author: John Mulhall is a Marketing Technologist and newly Minted Software
Developer. John is also a committed blogger and from February 2016 onwards,
will be publishing blogs every second week on topics around Technology,
Leadership and Sustainable Capitalism.
Sources/Credits:
Pics;
Credits;
