More like them

Organizations tend to take on the personalities of their leaders.  I fought this one, I really did.  I tried to find examples in my organization where this wasn’t true.  I failed, utterly.  There are considerations to make.  In the case of my group, after about 12 months they began to be a little more relaxed, a little more willing to change, and a little less likely to make excuses when things didn’t go well (in other words, more like me).  Unfortunately, they also bitched a lot more about upper management, they were less patient with their operations counterparts, and they were too easy on the mechanics (in other words, too much like me).  Of course their personalities did not fundamentally change.  I’m asserting that they all moved just a tad (a noticeable tad, mind you) closer to me.

I admit to changing as well.  I am definitely less laid back than I was when I took this job.  Though I’ve had more bosses than Bill Simmons has had mailbags (narrowly), they have all been more intense and bigger detail men than me, so I’ve grudgingly edged in that direction.  The new guy isn’t nearly as bad as the earlier ones, but he is a detail guy through and through.

I think that the higher up the org you are the more you are influenced by your boss.  This flies right along with another theory I’ve posited, which is that you are more likely to get promoted (over and over) if you are a butt-kissing lackey.  And, butt-kissing lackeys will do what the boss wants because the boss wants it.  Therefore, the CEO need only write something stupid on the whiteboard in the top-floor conference room and the deed is done. 

I also think that if you want to rise high in an organization, particularly a large company, you have to want it more than anything else in your life.  Your co-workers become your friends and family (in a twisted way) and your real friends and family get on with their lives without you.  You put in lots of hours at the office and you make sure people notice.  The people you live to impress are your boss, and his boss, and his boss.  [We have a kid at the plant, an engineer, who took some vacation days to drive to HQ so that he could introduce himself to the executive VPs.  How’s that for gonads?]  You would never think to do something contrary to what the boss (or his boss or his boss) wants, unless it’s something the higher boss wants.

But you can’t get every direction from the boss, because you’d probably drive him nuts if you asked for “input” all the time, and that would put a metric screw in the works, wouldn’t it?  On those occasions, you have to ask WWTBD?  If you did something different than the boss would do it must surely be worse, and that would put a metric screw in the works, too.

So to channel the boss, you become more like him (or her).  If he roots for Tech, you root for Tech (even if you went to State).  If he listens to Engelbert Humperdinck, you soon learn the lyrics to “After the Lovin”.  If he goes to Northlake Baptist, you quit dancing, too, even if you’re Catholic.  If he chews out his underlings just for fun, you become a huge jerk, too.  If he makes decisions with his “gut” and then cherry-picks the data to show his gut was correct while ignoring the data that discredits his insane guess, your hair gets pointier, too.

They say that insanity is not contagious, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes.  It starts with some nut at the head of the conference table saying something completely bonkers, followed by heads nodding up and down the sides.  As Kay says in MIB, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”  Groupthink is not a myth, and it starts with someone who is involved in the salary decisions.  The groupthink is something like this: “I’ll support her in this stupid proposal in the hopes that she’ll support me when salary review time comes.”  Of course this is all sub-conscious, because no one does this equation in their heads, right? 

The origin of this rant is a meeting that we had not long ago that was intended to use the collective brilliance of the managers and supervisors to improve the performance of the plant, which was lagging because we had a series of poor decisions and unfortunate events that effected production.  (Our managers have no understanding of randomness; see also The Drunkard’s Walk.)  The operations manager chaired the meeting, and after 90 minutes of fruitless discussion he decided that the best course of action would be to cancel all salaried vacations, and, furthermore, to put salaried folks on 24 hour coverage.  Now bear in mind that the poor decisions mentioned earlier had nothing to do with people on vacation or not enough salaried people in the site.  Pure and simple this was punishment of the salaried side for the poor performance of the plant. Several of the people around the table, normally sane and thoughtful people, nodded their heads and agreed that this must be done.  Coincidentally they WERE ALL OPERATIONS PEOPLE.

I don’t work for the ops manager and I fought like hell, but the decision was made.  Undeterred I complained bitterly to the HR manager, who agreed it was a ridiculous and got the plant manager to rescind it.

This all started with the impression I share with many other people that organizations tend to take on some of the personality traits of the leaders, especially near the top.  The ops manager works for the plant manager, and the plant manager works for the executive VP at HQ.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but the exec VP is to misanthropic management as Elvis is to hip-gyrating dancing.  Back when he was a plant manager he was known to pull the vacation-canceling stunt every couple years.  If you don’t think the ops mgr knew this then you should read some other blog…