Loyd Rawls

How to identify and remove management terrorists from your organization

How do we identify management terrorists, the vampires of organizational synergy, and stop the frustration, befuddlement and mediocrity?

Fortunately, there is a simple answer: demand integrity.

This means that first you must have integrity. So, if you are not walking your talk, work on yourself before you start picking pepper out of someone else’s cow-pie. You could be the role model for your own dysfunction.

If you are confident about your own integrity, the next step is to spend sufficient one-on-one time with your key managers to find out who they are. Complacency is the playground of the management terrorist. If you are not motivated enough to personally engage your key managers and deal with what you discover, don’t complain about performance mediocrity or an only-the-strong-survive, dog-eat-dog culture.

When you begin personal engagement, don’t focus on how they are doing their job, that’s an issue apart from integrity. Focus on determining the values, priorities and goals of your managers. You must understand how they live when you are not looking and where they live emotionally. Some may say that you are invading your managers’ privacy, but that is not the case. You are simply recognizing how important a key manager is to the achievement of your strategic succession goals and you are doing the “due diligence” required to achieve cultural alignment and avoid or eliminate terrorists.

As you spend time with your key managers and their families:

• Look for inconsistencies in what you have been led to believe (thought vs. how you feel)
• Anticipate transparency and question reluctance to reveal feelings and goals

If you see parallel values/priorities - one intended to please you and one intended to feed the beast within - note to self, you may have uncovered a management terrorist.

Hunting out management terrorists could, in a bizarre way, be compared to going door to door in Bagdad – very personal and confrontational. There is simply no way to identify a management terrorist absent a personal willingness to know and understand the good, the bad and the ugly of your managers. When your managers ask why you are becoming so personal, tell them that you are paying attention to those you value and depend upon.

Reconciling inconsistencies between expressions and feelings is best done through the process of sharing your Non-Negotiables and reaffirming that there is no long-term opportunity for anyone in your organization that does not accept and own your core values and business priorities. This is best done through a continuous process of affirming Non-Negotiable values and priorities. Constant, unrelenting pressure will eventually make life so uncomfortable to a fake-it-as-long-as-you-can terrorist that they will eventually conclude that self service can better be achieved elsewhere.  

Posted by Loyd Rawls on April 2, 2008 | Comments (7)