Orwellian mumbo jumbo --right from the Harvard Business Review....
Managing Away Bad Habits
by James Waldroop and Timothy Butler
We’ve all worked with highly competent people who are held back by a seemingly fatal personality flaw. One person takes on too much work; another sees the downside in every proposed change; a third pushes people out of the way. At best, people with these “bad habits” create their own glass ceilings, which limit their success and their contributions to the company. At worst, they destroy their own careers.
Although the psychological flaws of such individuals run deep, their managers are not helpless. In this article, James Waldroop and Timothy Butler — both psychologists — examine the root causes of these flaws and suggest concrete tactics they have used to help people recognize and correct the following six behavior patterns:
The hero, who always pushes himself — and subordinates — too hard to do too much for too long. The meritocrat, who believes that the best ideas can and will be determined objectively and ignores the politics inherent in most situations. The bulldozer, who runs roughshod over others in a quest for power. The pessimist, who always worries about what could go wrong. The rebel, who automatically fights against authority and convention. And the home run hitter, who tries to do too much too soon — he swings for the fences before he’s learned to hit singles.
Helping people break through their self-created glass ceilings is the ultimate win-win scenario: both the individual and the organization are rewarded. Using the tactics introduced in this article, managers can help their brilliantly flawed performers become spectacular achievers.
hbsp.harvard.edu
Between the two branches of the Technocracy there is a certain amount of interchange, but only so much as will ensure that weaklings are excluded from the Inner Technocracy and that ambitious members of the Outer Technocracy are made harmless by allowing them to rise. Proletarians, in practice, are not allowed to graduate into the Technocracy. The most gifted among them, who might possibly become nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the StraighThought Police and eliminated.
G. Orwell, 1984 (updated).
Excerpt:
The Rebel
Teenagers imagine that they are rebelling by wearing funky clothes and getting outrageous haircuts. In reality, most are simply conforming to the look of their peers. Workplace rebels can also be quite conventional in their knee-jerk reactions against the status quo. Although they fancy themselves as revolutionaries, most of their protests against "the system" don't go beyond simple grousing --they rarely take action to change the things that bother them.
Rebels are easy to recognize. They're the ones who always ask the inappropriate questions in meetings, constantly make jokes about the company's management, and publicly question the motives behind any major change. Their cubes are papered with Dilbert cartoons, and their adherence to company rules is always just to the letter, never to the spirit. In short, rebels do enough to threaten morale that an effort to correct their behavior, assuming that they are otherwise valuable to the company, is a necessity.
What rebels enjoy most is a game of tug of war. So your first tactic is to refuse to play. Don't lose your temper; don't respond to provocation. You can then use two approaches to help the rebel break out of his negative behavior pattern.
The first is to co-opt the rebel by making him responsible for a relatively high-profile task that requires him to win the cooperation of others. In essence, you pull him out of the heckling audience and push him on stage, into the spotlight. The chance to take on an interesting and important project is, essentially, a bribe. Some rebels will see it as such but will take it anyway. Others will stubbornly refuse --in which case, on to the second approach.
Begin by asking the rebel, in a neutral tone and without warning, if he's thinking about quitting. When he --in a state of shock now-- says no, tell him that you were wondering because he always seems to be butting up against the limits, venting his frustration, and putting the organization down. If he responds with "No, that's just my way of talking; I'm only kidding around," come back forcefully: "I don't buy that. And in any event, the things you say hurt people and the morale of the group. That needs to stop."
Then shift to a different gear: "But more to the point, you seem to think that a lot of things around here should be changed. True?" The rebel is likely to give some kind of affirmative response. At that point, throw down a challenge: "Well, right now you're about as effective a revolutionary as my three-year-old. All I have to do is tell him not to do what I actually want him to do, and he does it. And vice versa. Now, if you're going to battle the counterproductive aspects of the 'regime', do you want to do it effectively, like a real guerilla? Or do you just want to be the one who makes an impassioned speech before he gets dragged off to the firing squad?"
The latter is an unappealing option, so now you have the chance to help your rebel become a real leader of change. His first assignment should be to spend a week or two as a cultural anthropologist, noting all the subtle elements of your organization's culture: the way people dress and speak to one another; how much they reveal about their personal lives; how they align in groups; how decisions are made officially and how they are really made; who has informal power and influence, and so on. You should require him to hand you a written report at the end of this period.
Once the rebel has gathered that information, ask him this: "If you were a real revolutionary fighting somewhere against a dictatorship, would it be better to stand out or to blend in?" The answer is clear, so push the rebel to the logical conclusion. "You have a choice. You can work to change things here or you can follow your old pattern and just be an irritant. If choose the latter, your career will stall and your influence on the organization will never amount to much. I hope you make the other choice, because you're right --this place isn't perfect, and we need people like you to help improve it."
The story of Charlotte, a young manager who was hired at a large insurance company, illustrates our point. She was appalled by the condescending attitude that senior management displayed toward the rank and file. Her response was to tweak the nose of the institution by dressing much more casually than other managers and taking her lunches with the frontline workers. When her manager discussed her behavior with her, Charlotte determined that she wanted to work to change the company's culture. And she did. Instead of "acting out" by dressing down, she directly confronted peers about their superior attitudes. (Ultimately, however, she found the pace of change too slow and moved on to work in another industry.)
A rebel who genuinely cares about the company (and his career) will see the light. Instead of being negative just for its own sake, he'll turn his energies toward constructive criticism and the building of a better company. He won't change overnight, and for some time you'll have to keep a close eye on the situation through frequent meetings. The payoff will make it worthwile, however.
O'Brien. |
