Some leaders achieve success by intimidation. It may work for a while, but like any dictatorship, it’s not sustainable. You can’t just look at results; you have to look below the surface.
Once a child reaches the age of 2 or 3, it’s difficult to force that child to do something that he or she doesn’t want to do. If you try and force them to eat strained peas, every parent knows that the peas are coming right back out, and soon.
It’s the same at work. You need an approach that inspires good work, not dictates it. One of the hardest things for any leader to do is to maintain a balance between consistent, process-driven work assignments and individual initiative.
Young start-up companies are often organic—they have few rules, and those rules are often ignored. Employees have substantial freedom in their work. This can work for a while, but if a start-up starts to grow and doesn’t change this, chaos results.
As companies grow, they are more likely to become autocratic. There may be rules, but senior management disregards them as they see fit, and employees are seen as the major cause of problems. “Who screwed up this time?” is something you frequently hear. These kinds of businesses are vulnerable to executive whim; if the boss gets it wrong, the whole company, like lemmings, stampedes over the edge.
At some point, leaders in an organic or autocratic firm try to build rules to address these issues. The problem is that the resulting bureaucracy becomes a tyranny of mammoth proportion. “We can’t do that, it’s against Policy 1-237-44C.” Rigid enforcement of rules, with significant negative reinforcement, usually follows whenever rules are bypassed or flaunted. This leads to a stunted, inflexible organization, and the end result can be a failure on a massive scale.
What’s the alternative? Should the rules just be discarded and an organic approach adopted? Almost no organization of any size or complexity can be led that way. There must be yet another way toward enduring success for an organization.
Leaders need to build an enabling bureaucracy—a place where the rules support employee tasks and employees, within reasonable but flexible limits, and have substantial control over their day-to-day work. In such an organization, the hierarchy drives learning to improve the business, and leaders become organizers, process managers, and teachers more than dictators or micromanagers.
To sum up, a leader can set an agenda that is either coercive or supportive. At the same, a system of rules (or lack of rules) is needed for any organization. Young businesses almost always start with almost no rules. Depending on the leadership, these businesses can be on a continuum from dictatorial—and autocratic structure—or broadly democratic—an organic structure.
Over time, if the business grows, rules are needed and usually proliferate. If the rules are enforced by coercive social pressure, a coercive bureaucracy may result. The companies tend to be inflexible and are vulnerable to deft competitors and don’t respond well to rapid change.
If through serious and persistent effort, leaders can sustain a supportive social environment, a company might evolve into an enabling bureaucracy. It’s difficult to maintain, though, as there are always pressures to fall into intimidation or to loosen the rules and structure too much.
Nevertheless, dynamic organizations that have sustained success tend to have encouraging cultures and a workable yet flexible set of procedures and policies that everyone can follow.
Here’s a graphic that illustrates the various alternatives that leadership can shape:
You can change what you do and what those you work with every day do. It starts by moving away from an intimidating, rule-based approach where you feel your main task is to prevent people from making mistakes. You need to move to a style and approach that encourages people to grow and develop yet creates reasonable boundaries that ensure that their work stays consistent with the organizational goals that everyone will ultimately be judged against.
If, on the other hand, you work in a no-rule, no-process organization, you need to think carefully about creating and implementing more structure, particularly if the organization is growing and developing a larger reach. But, as you develop and implement rules, you must be wary of using rules as a substitute for leadership. There are always some people who will want to push for black-and-white, clear yes-and-no situations. These are rarely good for the business or for the people who make the business successful.
You have to maintain a balance between rules and culture.
THE PLAYBOOK
- Review your mission statement. Check with those you work with to see if it appeals to their ideals, hopes, and dreams. If it doesn’t, ask them to suggest how your mission statement can become more inspiring.
- Give employees the support and resources they need to do their jobs. When a problem arises, ask your team to list what they need. Certainly, there will be things on these lists that are impossible to obtain. You can’t promise what you can’t deliver, and you shouldn’t hesitate to say so. But that should help the list of needs become realistic and possible rather than an “I wish the world was perfect” fantasy.
- Empower employees to adjust to circumstances as they arise and not wait for orders from on high. Map major work processes and let everyone know that, as long as they follow the maps, they can do whatever is necessary. But also let them know that, if they think the map won’t allow the results that are needed, they need to present this to the work team as a problem that requires assistance.
- Constant criticism can kill an organization. If you think that this is the norm in your workgroup, keep your own little tab during meetings. How many times do people criticize in these meetings? How many times do they praise someone or something? If the balance is poor, make sure you address this.
- Give more rewards and less disapproval. Support people when they are down and acknowledge their successes. Remember that punishment nearly always has unintended and unproductive consequences. Ask yourself a simple question, “Do I think this was a deliberate bit of sabotage or was there something wrong with the process, resources, or assignment?” Deliberate sabotage arises so infrequently that you should assume it never occurs. Just suppose that everyone was trying to do the right thing as a starting point.