My 37-years gig in "corporate America" came to an end a few months ago, thanks to Bain & Company's management consulting advice. I was one of thousands of people thrown into the volcano to placate the Gods of Wall Street when my employer missed plan and their stock tanked. Despite removing me from their midst, their stock price is still in the toilet, but... if they stick to their marvelous plan, they assure investors, things will turn around. Sure, the employees and the clients and the shareholders have their doubts, but management, ever wise, has a plan.
Corporations may not be people, but they do embody some of the more regrettable human failings. With the benefit of a little distance from my dysfunctional employer (let's call them "DysCo"), these failings have come into much sharper focus.
Chief among these failings is the tendency towards paralysis in situations calling for action. When action was finally taken at DysCo, it was generally seen as "too little, too late", and nothing is really solved. There was plenty of blame-mongering and retrospective recrimination, but nobody in "leadership" positions lost their jobs. If anything, they were further emboldened in their belief that their position was secure.
Ironically, management by consensus played a key role in advancing corporate stasis and mediocrity at DysCo. While consensus sounds like a nice idea, it has a dark underside.
Every major initiative, action, or decision required consensus. For planned actions, initiatives, roll-out of new systems or technologies, a committee was formed with representatives from any part of the organization affected. Everyone on the committee needed to agree with the plan. Sounds logical, on the face of it. In reality, though, there was often one person on the committee who said "well, I don't know... I'm not entirely comfortable with this... I need more information..."
Follow along below the black hole of inaction for the rest of the story...
That one hold-out ruled the whole process. Nothing could move forward until he or she got "on board" with the plan. What power they had! Time and progress stood still while they deliberated. In some cases, it was clear that they were just playing a passive-aggressive game, knowing full well that they'd eventually give their support.
Meanwhile, everyone else - the proponents of the plan, the committee members who expressed their support of the the concept (even over their own doubts), the vendors or partners involved in the plan, and the employees, customers, or shareholders who stood to benefit - were all unable to move forward. Multiply this effect across the hundreds of major decisions, and you've effectively tied everything into one massive corporate gridlock.
Distrust seemed to be at the root of much of this. Nobody trusted "management" to make decisions that were in the interests of the staff or customers. They did give some thought to the shareholders, though. The basis for most decisions was "will this make our numbers look better this week/month/quarter)".
Management didn't trust the people in operations. Sure, they might say they'd go along with something, but a key part of this consensus process was an actual sign-off on the plan. This way, when the plan failed and objections were raised, management could haul out the piece of paper and say, "But you agreed with this! Here's your signature". Gotcha.
At DysCo, it wasn't only the major initiaves that were govered by this process. Nearly every decision required multiple levels of sign-off. When one of my colleagues was moving two office spaces down the hall, the move required the sign-off of our supervisor, the office administrator, and some other corporate person far away.
The middle managers did nothing more than track the numbers. Even though they were held accountable for bottom-line performance in their operating units, they couldn't hire, fire, or promote staff without multiple levels of sign-off. Many potentially good employees never got hired because they took other jobs while DysCo was still deliberating.
Least trusted of all were DysCo's employees. Already complex systems of time and expense entry, performance evaluation, and performance metrics were made more complicated. By reducing everything to systems and numbers, the middle managers could focus on what was really important: their bonuses.
As you might suspect, all of these systems, processes, and controls haven't been able to stave off the inescapable reality of DysCo's languishing stock price, exasperated shareholders, disengaged employees, and dissatisfied customers.
Like a dinosaur wondering why that weird bright thing in the sky looks bigger and bigger, DysCo hasn't been able to find a way out of its predicament. The upside - if there is one - is that many of the people thrown into the volcano as part of DysCo's decline (myself include) are launching their own busineses to better serve their customers. It's starting to feel like the dawning of the Age of Wily Little Mammals.
Somewhere, Darwin is smiling.