Why Doesn't the System Change?
The most obvious reason why the system doesn't change is that it protects and benefits the very people who hold the power to fix it. Fixed, it would hold bosses accountable for the success of subordinates and deprive them of opportunities to pass blame downward when an individual or unit within their jurisdiction fails to produce promised results. Fixed, bosses would have more incentive to help subordinates succeed, which, in many instances, they see detracting from and diluting their energy for highly visible, more immediately gratifying functions such as problem solving, networking, marketing, and strategizing—all functions where positive results are apparent and lack of results are easy to hide.
It's been 40 years since Paulo Freire began reporting his insights into the consequences of hierarchical relationships, albeit in a substantially different context.[2] Describing how hierarchical relationships intimidate and disempower, he concluded that only the stifled and oppressed could release their oppressors from the tyranny of oppressing them. Why? Because people enjoying the spoils of oppression are reluctant to surrender the benefits, especially to put their fates in a participatory methodology that subjects them to explicit criticism and give-and-take debate. However, asking subordinates to change the system implodes on conundrums. Not only do subordinates see themselves lacking the power to express disagreement, but the vast majority have already bought into one-sided accountable, hierarchical relationship reasoning.[3] Most subordinates are also bosses trying to acquire and demonstrate the type of thinking that qualifies them to be higher level bosses.
One-sided accountability reasoning is possible only because people overlook, neglect, and deny in others certain human nature traits they readily accept in themselves. At work people expect others to be logical, rational, and objective in their statements and actions despite the fact that, when they take time to self-reflect, they can see emotions, self-interests, bias, and subjectivity in almost every action they, themselves, take. All self-candid individuals recognize that self-interested motives constantly influence what they allege is objective as well as their self-virtuous reports of organization events and critiques of other people's actions. In fact, self-candid people readily accept self-interests and personally convenient motives in the intra-organizational politics they practice when advocating what's best for the company or calling attention to other peoples' self-interests as a means of discrediting positions advocated by those with competing advocacies.
If bosses accepted the inevitability of self-interest, bias, emotions, and omnipresent subjectivity, they would understand that the only effective way of operating is to inquire into other people's views of events to understand the reasoning that underlies the courses of action people instrumentally take and their motives. They would rationally accept bias as a natural fact and seek to identify it as a variable worthy of consideration, not outrage. When tempted to issue command and control directives they would understand that their words are subject to self-interested interpretation regardless of the lip service acquiescence they receive. They would know the inevitability of self-interested motives and perceptions that no directive could more than temporarily supplant.
Thus, we see false objectivity and double standards regarding self-interested politics to be the sponsoring agents of one-sided accountable relationships as people misguidedly extrapolate from hierarchical structure, also known as the chart, to format their relationship with a direct report or hierarchical superior. Cancelled out in the process are teamwork dynamics and the type of accountability that allows hierarchical structure to perform its work. If omnipresent self-interests and inevitable subjectivity were internalized givens in a boss' mind, then open and above-board discussions would be required to get the other person's views out for viewing so that differing intellectual positions could be appreciated, understood, and addressed. Then corporate interests would be served and a major source of system-wide corruption could be checked.
Thus, we see organization traps caused by people falsely extrapolating from the accountability model of hierarchical structure to hierarchical relationships with its telling symptoms: one-sided accountability, boss domination, and system-wide corruption. On the other hand, we see boss domination as a trap that readily dissipates when people break from their unrealistic, moralistic expectations of expecting unbiased behavior—accepting in others what they already know about and accept in themselves. All that is necessary is the internalization of certain human nature principles and tenets, facts we've been calling attention to for years and that are briefly summarized in this chapter.[4] Internalized, these facts equip people to implement the more organizationally constructive two-sided accountable paradigm. In the following sections, we outline the three principles (and three tenets) of two-sided accountability; this material is summarized in Table 7-2.
| Principle 1 | There's no getting around it, subjectivity is inevitable | Everyone interprets events distinctively according to his or her motives, needs, and means. |
| Tenet 1 | Don't guess what others are doing—ask them | You can't tell for sure what someone is trying to accomplish, or why he or she is proceeding in a certain way, merely from observing that person's actions. This is particularly important to remember when you see someone doing what you would never prescribe. The best way to find out what that person is doing and why is to ask how he or she sees the situation and what they believe their actions will accomplish. Only after you hear the explanation and seek to understand it in the context of the person's intentions and motivations can you voice your opinion in a way that's likely to be accurately heard and possibly well received. |
| Tenet 2 | Until you can ask, assume others are trying to be “life” competent | When you aren't able to directly inquire, assume the individual is doing what he or she feels must be done to perform “life” competently, the best way that person knows how to do it. Interpret the other person's motives broadly, not restricted to the task at hand. |
| Tenet 3 | Remember that “everyone” includes yourself | You also view organization events self-interestedly, constantly scrutinizing for “life” benefits, opportunities, and threats. |
| Principle 2 | Practice win-win-win politics | At work any statement or action, taken or perceived, that affects someone's ability to function effectively is “political.” Conducting one's politics strategically entails active consideration of what each interacting party has at stake. We call the orientation of searching for self-interested outcomes that also benefit others the “win-win-win” orientation to organization politics. The first two wins include what's self-beneficial and what benefits the company; the third win is what others deem important to their interests and success. Leaving out any of the three reduces one's political motives to tactical ones, resulting in a pull back toward hierarchical relationships. |
| Principle 3 | Put two-sided accountability into action | Look for opportunities to initiate, build, and sustain two-sided accountability relationships, particularly in interactions you have with a boss or subordinate. |
Principle #1: Acknowledge Inevitable Subjectivity
This principle, embodied in a Culbert and McDonough[5] slogan and emphasized in Culbert's book Mind-Set Management,[6] states “organization is an artifact of the mind that views it.” Succinctly explained, it holds that all interpretations of an individual's work activities are a matter of individual perception, inextricably influenced by the needs, interests, motives, means, and agendas of the individual viewing it. It's a way of saying, “What you see depends on where you stand.” It's the story of the six blind men feeling different parts of an elephant being asked, “What is the object in front of you?” It's the story of the three baseball umpires bragging about the magnitude of their power when determining balls and strikes, with each umpire competing to outdo the others. The first umpire claims, “I call 'em the way I see 'em,” the second, “I call 'em the way they are,” with the third providing the topper, “They ain't nothing 'til I call 'em.” In other words, subjectivity colors every aspect of an individual's life at work. It allows us to finally resolve the question of what constitutes “reality” in a human endeavor. It alleges that each individual sees and interprets events distinctively and differently according to his or her needs, motives, background, and means.
Inevitable subjectivity posits that people are biased perceivers even when giving what they believe are honest accounts of their experience. Internalize this principle and you'll stop fighting human nature. You'll no longer be put off by people who view and think about events differently than you do. And you'll have a way of figuring out where people are coming from when you try to influence them, especially when what you want them to do is not something they naturally think of doing. By considering that each individual lives within a unique reality, inevitable subjectivity is the ultimate diversity approach. It considers all individuals to be unique and distinctive; it treats all categories and stereotypes with suspicion.
This principle has the potential to turn your way of viewing people and organization events inside out. Seeing things differently, you'll act differently. You'll understand the importance of accessing the deeply psychological and personal issues that underlie an individual's perspectives on events and relationships at work. You'll change the way you approach people you want to influence. You'll choose the right people as partners. You'll approach those you choose intelligently and with sensitivity.
The First Tenet of Inevitable Subjectivity
You can't tell exactly what an individual is doing or thinking merely by observing that person and his or her actions. We can go even further. When you are critical of someone's behavior, there's little likelihood that he or she is up to the same thing you would be up to if exhibiting the same behavior.
To understand exactly what someone is doing, you need to ask that person, “What are you up to, and why are you going about it this way?” If what you learn doesn't make sense, it means that you need to inquire further. For all inquiries we recommend you proceed with the tone of asking a “reasonable person.” Instead of declaring, “Why are you doing that!” or inquiring, “Don't you know a more effective way?” as if the person is a dope, you need to think—and to express—“I'd really like to understand what you had in mind when you did what, given my ways, I would never think to do.”
With a mindset that assumes the other person reasonable, your goal is to uncover the reasoning behind his or her actions. For example, if the person seems unnecessarily suspicious about a deal he or she is making, you might say something like, “In your shoes I would be less suspicious, maybe even naïve. What alerted you that got your guard up? It must have been something I didn't see.” If you still don't uncover the sensitivity, it's time to ask for more background. You might continue, “Is your reaction one that's typical for you? What's taking place here that evokes it?” If after asking such questions you still don't understand why this person is reacting with suspicion, it's time to consult a mutual friend. But the bottom line is that it's the other person, not you, filling in the blanks. If it was you, you would probably be stating why, under similar circumstances, you would do what the other person did, which you already know you would not. If you were similarly inclined, this issue would have never become a topic for your inquiry. There would be nothing more you needed to understand.
The Second Tenet of Inevitable Subjectivity
When you're not able to ask people what spurred them to act as you just observed, your best way of understanding their intentions is to assume they are doing what they feel they must to perform competently, the way they know how to be competent. However, beware of tunnel vision. Assuming that people are primarily out to perform work competently is short-sighted. To maintain political face, people talk as if everything they are doing is aimed at producing a competent work performance but what's actually driving them is the idea of performing competently in their life more generally. People are interested in optimizing total life performance, and work events represent only one dimension, however important that dimension may be.
Your reluctance to assume that people whom you judge to be flawed in their dealings with the task at hand are doing their best to perform competently, and to recognize that their focus includes many more issues than the work topic on which you are focused, will cause you to systematically undervalue what people are doing. Thus, when spotting someone whose actions are, in your estimation, insufficient to the work agenda at hand, you should know it's time to start learning. Reflect on everything you know about that person's life and the strengths he or she is endeavoring to display, the flaws the person doesn't want exposed, and his or her personal expressiveness needs. Learn whatever you need to learn to make your understanding of his or her actions compute. Think about how a person with that individual's personal agenda and operating style could reasonably go about accomplishing what you see needing to be done. Whatever you do, don't start thinking that you know enough to get heavy handed. There will be times you feel the urge, but it's an urge that needs resisting. Heavy handedness is a one-way street toward cementing an adversarial hierarchical relationship in which stand-and-be-counted accountability takes a back seat to domination and control.
The Third Tenet of Inevitable Subjectivity
Everyone, including yourself, gives self-interested interpretations to all events, particularly ones that hold important personal consequences. Consistently, we find this to be a principle that many people can't seem to behaviorally comprehend. Incorrectly, people make evaluative statements about the pluses and minuses of another individual's performance, as if those efforts were wholly work driven and their assessments were perfectly objective. But careful scrutiny will show you that all assessments are greatly colored by what the evaluator has at stake personally. People cavalierly portray another person's predilections and biases as flaws that need correcting, not acknowledging that everyone they know views the world with biases and omnipresent self-interests and that the reason they are complaining about this individual's behavior is linked to their own unexpressed self-interested motives. With this principle internalized, no critique of anyone else is complete without the phrase “…and this gets in the way of my self-pursuits and interests.” Not accepting this principle implies that somewhere there's a cadre of people whose work behavior is even-handed and objective. Of course, the inevitable subjectivity principle critiques such presumption as spurious reasoning.
You'll find that your IQ for engaging in two-way accountability increases considerably when you internalize the fact that you, just like everyone else, are a self-interested and biased judge of other people's behavior. Given fair-minded values, you'll take this into account when considering your judgments. Instead of contending that the other person is doing something profoundly insufficient, you'll give more consideration to how actions taken by that person make matters more difficult for you. Of course, given your political sensitivity, you'll prudently choose the moments for publicly owning up. There are many times that you'll correctly choose to keep your self-effacing comments to yourself. There will be other times when you'll see that owning up allows others to experience you as someone they're willing to trust.
Principle #2: Practice Win-Win-Win Politics
If organizational behavior was a logical science then all laws would follow from the law of self-interest: People interpret their jobs and perform their work in ways they perceive best for themselves. This premise features self-interests as a given with people seeking win-win outcomes. The first win features outcomes that benefit the individual; the second, outcomes that benefit the organization and/or company. If, hypothetically, there were 6,431 outcomes that could benefit an organization, then each individual pursues a subset of 1,260 that also benefit him or herself. This is why, when asked to explain their actions, people almost always have an explanation that emphasizes benefits to the company.
But because different people possess quite different needs, desires, and capabilities, their self-interested pursuits are different. This quickly gets us to the first implication of the law of self-interests: People with comparable assignments see their jobs differently and, because of this, pursue different avenues of action and reasoning when performing their work. In our hypothesis, this means that two people working on parallel assignments will pursue somewhat different “1,260s.” Moreover, when it fits their convenience politically, they will self-interestedly interpret the other person's lack of overlap as neglecting an essential organizational interest. A second implication holds that organizational dynamics leading to conflict derive from different people pursuing different interests in different ways. Others hold that the organization prospers when each member's self-interested pursuits are nested to augment the self-interested pursuits of other members and that enterprise activities are most efficient when staged to accrue rewards to all who participate. Conversely, people and their organizational endeavors stall and suffer when one or more of the constituents' interests are not addressed or served. Of course we're talking percentages because, from time to time, there are many organizational endeavors in which interests left out of the immediate mix receive focus in another endeavor or at a later time.
Simply stated, an organization succeeds when people engaged in self-interested pursuits choose and perform activities in ways that are attentive to the needs of work associates and the organization. In essence, wherever possible, all organization actions ought to be predicated on win-win-win reasoning, with the first win being the interests of the individual taking action, the second being the interests of corporate entity, and the third, the interests of others affected by that action. Of course, practically speaking, people won't always be able to figure out how to act in ways that meet three sets of interests simultaneously. Nevertheless, all three should receive active, intelligent consideration, especially when the end-game goal is two-sided accountable, trusting relationships.
Principle #3: Put Two-Sided Accountability Into Action
Abuses and corruption stemming from one-sided accountability were cited in the opening paragraphs of this chapter and are meticulously described in the book, Don't Kill the Bosses! Here it is revisited from the vantage points of antidote and treatment. We've portrayed one-sided accountability as intrinsically hierarchical with the implication that it inevitably leads to corruption and self-inflation and as the anathema to open, honest, above-board, and trusting relationships. One-sided accountability allows uppers to hold lowers' feet to the fire without lowers being able to complain that their feet are too hot. Of course the reason behind our invective is that we favor two-sided accountability. That is, we think every boss's job includes staging for the effective performance of the people he or she oversees. Who is better positioned than the performer to comment on the help and support that's needed and received? We crave partnerships instead of hierarchical relationships, and we eschew situations where a boss gets to say how a subordinate is doing without the subordinate having a voice that counts.
We believe a company prospers most when bosses make it possible for each individual to work at his or her best. And we believe the method for effecting this is the establishment of reciprocal accountabilities. This implies inevitable subjectivity consciousness and win-win-win politics practiced at every level. Subordinates need to stand accountable for alerting all levels of “bosses” to the structural constraints that limit their ability to candidly state what they sincerely believe. Supervisors need to stand accountable for their efforts to fairly and open-mindedly oversee quality and provide coaching that's appropriately formatted for a specific individual. Managers need to stand accountable for their efforts to check and revise systems that are supposed to facilitate the effectiveness of units and groups. And leaders need to stand accountable for coming up with organizational effectiveness initiatives that facilitate people doing what they think the company actually needs done and that leverage the resources of the people performing work. All this requires reciprocity of effort and each individual focusing on how his or her way of tackling an assignment impacts every other person on the organization “team”—win-win-win politics.
Taken as a package, these three principles—with tenets and implications—lead to an accountability mentality that casts one-sided accountable, hierarchical relationships as an invalid default setting.