Being aware of the power of words, I prefer the somewhat vague expression “unfortunate situation” over the term “problem”. A better word would perhaps also be ‘issue’. Of course, to speak of “unfortunate situations” is a euphemism. What I mean by it is that many situations within organizations are not necessarily ‘wrong’; rather they are ‘so so’.

The Boiling Frog Syndrome

You may have heard about this metaphor. How do you boil a frog? Slowly. In other words, if you put a frog in boiling water, the frog will leap out (who can blame him?), while if you put him in lukewarm water and then very slowly let the temperature go up, the frog will gradually get used to the temperature and stay in boiling water, eventually. The metaphor puts it a bit to the extreme, but this story contains some truth about us humans.

Do we not often show similar behavior, when we know that the situation is imperfect, when getting used to the imperfectness seems easier than correcting it? I know I have.

The story of the manager who complained that his people were not communicating with him: the performative paradox

The story of the manager who proved to be a wrong hire and how he was encouraged to create more damage.

Organizational Loneliness

In the standard model of business, it used to be clear what was 'inside' of the organization and what was 'outside'. In some cases, most of humanity was 'outside', as the members of the organization were expected to leave their personality at the door upon entering the premises and change into their "office persona". And the organization stood apart from society, as if in distrust of it. In terms of ethics, the members of the organization recognized only the primary stakeholders, and often even just the stockholders, as they were the only stakeholders seen from the perspective they had in their "office persona". When things went wrong, they were hardly to blame; it was "the organization", "the department" or some other abstraction. And they had a point in saying that.

The lonely organization of old times tried to characterize itself as the standard, as typical of scientific management. Still, there have always been organizations in which precisely the opposite happened, in which the members were expected to act from their personalities and to keep seeing themselves as members of communities. Even some of the companies that were known for "scientific management" had that perspective despite their other faults.

Maybe we think the days of the lonely organization are over. But aren't there still organizations that are oblivious of the communities they could be a part of and that cut off the roots of their own employees?