Turnabout is Fair Play
By Peter Block
I don't quite know
what is happening to me, but I am beginning to feel some empathy for
managers. In our efforts to create accountable, high performing and
satisfying workplaces, we most often think that if the management would
change, the institution would change. So we train them, write books for
them, consult to them.
I have felt for some
time that the problem with our leaders is not so much their behavior but
the depth and intensity of our expectations of them. We persistently
want our boss to be our mentor, we want them to take responsibility for
our development. We get upset when they do not act with integrity, or
work well together, articulate a clear vision, or be a powerful advocate
for our unit with those even higher in the institution.
It is disturbing
that we expect so much of our managers. For a shift in a culture,
something more is required of the employees. Perhaps workers are the
cause and management is the effect. Our frequent feelings of futility
and frustration may be from putting our eyes on the wrong prize. Here
are some wishes of myself and other employees that would balance the
equation and support the transformation many of us seek.
Employee Manifesto
1. Care
for the success and well being of the whole institution regardless of
how it is managed. Stop thinking the organizations has to earn our
loyalty. Commit to its purpose and its customers even if management no
longer is so committed to us.
2. Mentor ourselves.
Find our own teachers and support, don't expect it from the boss or from
Human Resources. Be willing to pay for my own learning, recruit my own
coaches, plan my own continuing education.
Stop thinking the organization is responsible for my development.
3. View our boss as a struggling human being, no more able to walk their
talk than we are able to walk ours. Have some empathy for anyone who
would have to endure the reality of having us as their subordinates.
Besides, most bosses are more worried about their bosses than they are
about us. Why would they be any different than us?
4. Learn how to run
this business. Become economically literate. Know the
budget-cost-revenue connection of everything we touch. Learn as many
jobs as possible, figure out on our own what clients and customers want
and how to give it to them. And do it even if the pay system is
irrational and indifferent to anything that matters.
5. Be accountable
for the success of our peers. Decide to support their learning and focus
on their strengths, rather than be disappointed in their shortcomings.
Be their mentor, see their weaknesses as an opportunity for us to learn
forgiveness and tolerance. And if we get in battle with them over
territory or budget, give it away.
6. Accept the
unpredictability of the situation we are in. The future of the
organization is a mystery and who knows how long these conditions will
exist. Outsource our fortune teller, and stop asking where we are
headed. Today is where we are headed and that is enough.
7. Forget our
ambition to get "ahead." Ahead of whom? Why not stop competing with
those around us. Maybe we are not going to get promoted and our salary
grade is essentially peaking right now. The only hope we have for more
prosperity is if the institution really grows and even then we will
never get our fair share of the rewards. Besides, if we do get promoted,
who is to say we will be any happier. My observation is that the higher
you go in the organization, the more depressed people become.
8. View meetings and
conversations as an investment in relationship. Value a human
relationship over an electronic one. Assume we come together to make
contact with each other and any decisions we make are simply a bonus.
Agree to end one meeting this week without a list or action plan.
Besides most of our best plans get changed five minutes after we leave
the room and the lists are mostly a reminder of those things we do not
really want to do.
9. Deliver on our
promises and stop focusing on the actions of others. The clarity and
integrity of my actions will change the world. Stop thinking and talking
about the behavior of others. Let go of disappointment in them and how
they were too little and too late. Maybe they had something more
important to do than meet our requirements. Similarly, no one else is
going to change. They are good the way they are.
If change is going
to happen, it will be us. Ghandi said that if blood be shed, let it be
ours. We need to blink first. Shift our own thinking and do it for our
own sake, not as a hidden bargain designed to control the actions of
others.
11. Accept that most
important human problems have no permanent solution. No new policy,
structure, legislation or management declaration is gong to fix much.
The struggle is the solution. Justice and progress will always happen
locally, on our watch, in our unit, only as a result of our actions with
those in the immediate vicinity.
12. Stop asking
"how?" We now have all the skills, the methods, the tools, the capacity
and the freedom to do whatever is required. All that is needed is the
will and courage to choose and to move on. And to endure the
uncontrollability of events.
13. Finally, stop
seeking hope in the eyes and words of people in power. Hope is for us to
offer, not request. Whatever we seek from our leaders can ultimately
only be found in the mirror. And that is not so bad.
The point is to
confront the passivity, isolation and complaints that flood our
workplaces. Employees are powerful players in creating culture and we
ignore this when we act as if managers are the primary agents of change.
Not to let managers or leaders off the hook, for how they use their
power makes a difference. It is just that the hook has room for many
players, us included.
These guidelines
could easily be translated into ways to handle the difficulties of
marriage or ways for citizens to rebuild the qualities of their
community. They may seem to carry a strain of cynicism, but they are
more a witness of faith. I have long felt that what we seek looking up
in our organizations are expectations and dependency that is better
directed at God rather than at a second level supervisor.
Also, I write these
with full knowledge that they are rules I fall short of fulfilling.
Perhaps if I could act on what I know to be true, I could stop writing,
you could stop reading, and we could both seek in real literature, music
and art what we now seek on bookshelves filled with answer manuals. We
could stop going to consultants and therapists and force them into real
work. We could turn in our degrees in engineering, technology, finance
and administration for ones in philosophy and religion. And this would
be the most practical thing we could do
This
article appeared in
News for a Change published by AQP in October 1999
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