Previously in ’10 Ways to slow poisoning an organization’:
Script 1: [1] I just know. Subtitle: I just know that we’ll do x, but go and explore all the options
Script 2: [1] Let them fail. Subtitle: Wrong path but they need to see it for themselves.
Script 3: Try harder [2]. Subtitle: Guess what I want.|
Script 4 [2]: I have the answer, what’s the question?. Subtitle: Been there, done that, trust me, I know.
Here are more plots. We are half a way the script library. Have you ever encountered them? Suffered them? Have you the one who have written any of them? The point here is, again, for you and for me, self-reflection. Some read funny. There is nothing funny about them. This was my way in 2003 when I launched to deal with the frustrations and pain I was seeing in front of me. But in 2015 we are all more civilized, right?
Script 5: Legitimized suicide
Subtitle: You decide who is redundant – this is a very humane M&A.
The story opens with M&A consulting gurus deciding it’s better to let the staff decide who will survive, rather than burdening the leadership team with such an inhumane decision. Divisional heads are gathered and handed a business plan and a timetable. After several sleepless nights a good third of the managers and staff decide they’ll be made redundant, so they leave. The trick in this script is that there’s no visible murderer. Instead, a number of staff commit mass suicide while singing a rousing chorus of ‘What a wonderful human death this is’. The finale has a twist: two surviving divisional heads blame the leadership team for plainly relinquishing their responsibilities and dressing the whole thing up as a democratic decision, while the CEO uses the case to show how humane, democratic and open the company is. Sorry, I forgot, ‘professional’.
Script 6: Do but don’t do
Subtitle: Feel free to do, but make sure we tell you what.
This story is set in a ‘free’ environment where people are encouraged to take all sorts of initiatives, to take action. Examples are numerous. On one occasion a manager implements a programme she feels she’s been encouraged to do. She is reprimanded and de facto demoted. Puzzled and frustrated, she leaves. Colleagues demand an explanation, but don’t get very far. The script ends with highlights of collective frustration when it’s discovered that this pattern of ‘do it, but don’t do it’ is common across the board.
More plots continue. Watch our for the next scripts tomorrow
Do something with this, reflect, tall about it.