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Could a Management Terrorist be impacting your business?
April 2, 2008
Key managers are instrumental to your current and ongoing business success. They are the organizational pillars that current owners and future successors will depend upon to oversee the drive to achieve strategic succession goals. Unfortunately, this drive can often feel like a grind because performance does not match expectations.
A significant part of this frustration is due to a disconnect between your long-term strategic goals and buy-in by your key managers. On the outside they are giving you a thumbs-up, but on the inside they do not agree with your vision. We recognize these managers as “Management Terrorists.” Achieving business succession goals and building business value requires (not just includes) the identification, reconciliation and/or removal of these managers.
Identifying Management Terrorists is a formidable challenge because no manager will admit they
- Are an agent of chaos;
- Perceive everyone as an adversary not a team member;
- Perceive their individual success or gain as their number one priority; or
- Could take equal or greater satisfaction in a competitor’s failure.
Organizational terrorists can be family-members, long-standing partners and all levels of management. Rank and file employees have much less opportunity to live a lie. Their responsibilities are generally so specific that a lack of agreement, commitment and conformity is not easily disguised and they are easily sent on their way. However, management, like the hills of Afghanistan, gives organizational terrorists a comfortable hiding place to offer lip service to team work while identifying self serving opportunities for personal gain and perceived competitor loss.
The common characteristic of a management terrorist is resentment. The latent anger or jealousy imbedded in this resentment is the result of a perceived inequity, injustice or insult that has had no relief or reconciliation. Without the integrity to express his/her feelings of resentment, this emotionally confused manager will vigorously express agreement and conformity to team objectives purely for self gain while internally maintaining vigilance for the opportunity to right the wrong, equal the score or just make up for poor luck in the draw. This heart for “your loss is my gain” and “my gain at your expense” is what undermines the synergy that is critical to optimum productivity, efficiency, harmony and of course the success that defies circumstances which we affectionately refer to as Succession Successsm.
Posted by Loyd Rawls on April 2, 2008 | Comments (0)
