Okay, this is the best blog post I have read in months! I will compose a post about it over the weekend, but I at least wanted to say, well said!

Darn good praise and much appreciated. Glad it struck a chord with you, Jamie. Can’t wait to see your post/response.

Chris: Sorry to get here so late This is a wonderful post. It reminds me of a time when I got involved with a really large organization. They’d done a big employee survey and surprise surprise the outcome was criticism of “upper management” for failing to communicate and making poor decisions. So I went to the head of the organization and asked, what do you think about the results? He said, “The employees are absolutely right. When I look at the people who report to me [VP level folks], I know exactly what the employees are talking about.” So then I had conversations with all the people in that senior group and I asked them what they thought of the survey results. And they said, “The employees are absolutely right! Look at the guy who says he’s leading us. He is the problem around here!” It didn’t take a brain surgeon to see the problem. But the kicker was when I went back to the top guy with my observations about what he and the top team were saying about one another, his first question was, “Well, do you think it’s time to run that survey again?” And he was serious. HELPPPPPPPPP!

Oh Dan, I’m chuckling as I respond…looks like they were doing their damnedest to prove their people right. Now I’m curious…what’s the rest of the story? Did you bail? Did you pull the CEO and the VPs together in the same room in the off-chance they might actually see reason?

Lots of self-deception, denial, and poor leadership at that org…but then that org’s employees already knew that.

Oh, I didn’t bail, and in fact did quite a lot of work with the executive over the next year. And while there was a certain ironic chuckle that went round when I reflected back the story of the employee survey to the executive and top team in a group setting, it really didn’t change anyone’s mind about what was going to go down. I had been hired by the top exec to help him gain insight into the effects of his style, which I was able to do at a certain level, and I believe my work helped him personally become a little more effective. But the overall picture was grim. The senior group decided they wanted nothing to do with a facilitator — or rather thought they could facilitate their own work on “undiscussables” at the bar one afternoon each week (against my recommendation). That finally stopped when someone in the group almost called the police because things were on the edge of getting physical. I witnessed meetings of the top executive, senior group, and larger management team that would break your heart, they were so incorrigibly wasteful — one involved 75 people, both local (including a number called back from vacation) and from the home office in another state to sit for two days at a single very long table while two high-level factotums argued points from a powerpoint that no one could see and which never led to any form of group discussion. The meeting had been set in a state halfway to the home office because placing the meeting either locally or at the home office would have been seen as a political win for one side or the other, so everybody traveled. Direct and pointed feedback from me and other high-priced consultants asked to attend was dismissed as irrelevant or “too negative.” The organization had federal dollars (an unbelievable number of them) and what dominated internally was a show of politics much stronger than any form of conscience or vision or information from employees that I or anybody might bring. A big part of what kept the cultural system in place was the reporting relationship to the home office that was, if anything, even more corrupt. How anything got done on this outpost’s 1.7 billion dollars of revenue per year, I’ll never know. The employee survey was something the home office had purchased and imposed on everybody, so it was just another ticket to punch and simply didn’t matter. Reports were written, promises were made, nothing happened. Employees continued to work for the place because the benefits were outrageous and the local operation was in an area where it might be hard to find other kinds of work at the same level of compensation — at least that’s what I was told.

This story is fifteen years old, so I have no idea if things have changed.

Thanks for sharing the rest of the story. Perhaps the most astounding thing is that 15 years have passed and we’re still dealing with the same monkeycrap within orgs. It’s a mixed blessing for workplace consultants - great because this means there’s always business…frustrating because nothing really gets solved. The issues for this org will likely only change when there’s a critical mass from within who rise up like Peter Finch in Network and yell out, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Or maybe this org is the ideal stopping point for boiled frogs other lemmings who’ve given up on finding purpose in their work.

Thanks for letting me vent, Chris! On to better things….