I've recently been promoted to a managerial position. The people I now call my peers are not respected by the rest of the employees, or me for that matter. They have yelled at other staff members (I once was asked "who do you think you're talking to" when I said not an offending word); thrown tantrums; created a hostile work environment in which people will not communicate with them one-on-one and face-to-face; slacked off and given their work to others to finish; made snide remarks in meetings to cut others down (I was on the receiving end of such a remark recently); and much more. Employees have left the company because they could not work for their supervisors. Now that I report directly to the executive director, I feel I may have an opportunity to bring about some positive change. I know he's aware of most of these problems, but hasn't done anything to correct them. He also has some favorites who can do no wrong. I'd like to try to effect some change instead of just walking away. I've worked at the company for 5 years. Any thoughts on how I might proceed?

-- Colleen Smithyman (colleens@iss.org), November 01, 2000

Answers

This is what we do for a living. Thinking about accupunture, your company is broken and the smartest way you are going to fix it is by going to a third party.

That is where another problem lies, a lot of third parties out there do things by the book or in a cookie cutter approach that is just as messy as doing things yourself. Moreover, they don't come back to audit or check or monitor the transformation they were assigned to do.

You are too close to the situation to do this by yourself. At the same time because your management, getting outside help will only be seen as a different form of control, so you need outside help who can be both impartial and who can help your executive director to see the business case not the emotional one and who can reconnect what is broken and create a structure that flows again.

We are skilled at doing that but first of all our consulting rates are very high and secondly I am not here to tout for business, I am here as a Fast Company community member in a process of dialogue. That's why I use the name Mark Zorro, what I write here isn't a commerical proposition, it is from my heart and sense of being, a good samaritan.

At the end of the day, you have to find people that you trust, that you question and that you are comfortable with that can help you bridge the scars in your organization. You have to find people who are skilled enough to demonstrate to your executive director that they understand the top line and bottom line of your business and to do it in a way that awakens rather than advises your executive director.

When we sit down with CEO's one-to-one, they know its not the same bullshit, that more than changing their companies we are fundamentally changing them and taking them to a higher level, not as following some mantra but as clearing the forest so they can see the trees.

You say that he knows what's going on but you will be surprised how much isn't clear to him. He has no context to see how those things affect his business, he has no connection to the things you see as important that you think he doesn't see. Moreover, even as consultants we see things initially that in the light of building up and uncovering the truths of the organization change our view of the organization completely, each additional fact we uncover can change fundamentally what we know and move us closer to what we are aiming for, which is to find the real truth of the organization that the organization can live with and remove the cholestral that is clogging the flow.

It is a dynamic that we are skilled at achieving, it is a dynamic that has to be done one-to-one from the top and it is a dynamic that can be a painful process. After all, this isn't kid glove transformation and you have already explained the tremendous amount of pain your organization has already faced.

I know if we were there how you should proceed because we could help your CEO, but if you are going to do it yourself, you have a lot of baggage to put down, a lot of bridges to mend and moreover you have to have the confidence to not make the CEO see what you see, but to see what the CEO sees.

Good luck with it. All I can do here is give you my 2 cents worth but talking to a lot of people is a great idea but at the end of the day, you have to decide how you want to proceed, not any of us.

Regards M.

M. To be or not to be that is the question: http://www.fastcompany.com/fasttalk/replypost.html?p=9738

-- Mark Zorro (zorromark@consultant.com), November 02, 2000.