Unintended Consequences

                      by Clare D. Coxey

      Throughout my eleven years as a strategic consultant, I have interviewed hundreds of executives, their direct reports and their employees. The interviews are part if the data gathering segment of the process I use and most consultants use. This is where you listen to what is said and not said, the emotion in which it is related, the body language in the moment it is said. This is where you look for the disconnects from other interviews and commonalities. This is where you look for not only Grindl but Grindl's mother, to use the story in Beowulf. This is where you seek out the nuances of the individuals and the culture of the client. Leaders want a strategic plan but trust, relationship and leadership issues often stand in the way of effective strategic planning. While there are always similarities from organization to organization it is the distinctions one sees that makes the differences on serving the client.

     Every CEO, director, manager and employee has his or her own gifts, personality, and character and life experiences. When they all come together they form a corporate culture. As a leader or a consultant each of the characteristics need to be nurtured, supported, enriched and cared for individually and collectively. And they often are by leaders. And, unfortunately, they are often not, but hardly ever out of bad intention. Leaders lead out of their life experiences, out of how they were mentored or out of what the corporate culture honors as a "good" leader. Sometimes this produces good work and results. But then  something happens and leaders look around and ask "Is this enough?", "What more can I/we do?", "How can this organization reach the impossible, create the improbable, be the benchmark in the world for excellence?"

     What takes place in organizations is they unintentionally become self limiting. Their own culture, although they are doing good work, limits their own possibilities in the world. It is like the gauze blanket you see in the nurseries or in large fields during growing season. A lot of good stuff going on underneath nurtured by the blanket but also limited by it. It is the "unintended consequences" of the corporate culture. Leaders and organization become limited by their own actions and view of what is possible. In the nursery blanket analogy, there are often individual leaders who try to break through the blanket. Sometimes they are successful and sometimes they are not. Occasionally organizations honor their boldness and offer them greater responsibility and other times the are left to dry out in the sun or rot in corporate purgatory. Also, employees sometimes take the risk and are bold in the desire for something more out of their companies. Again, sometimes they are honored and promoted for their boldness and risk taking. Other times the are relegated to the corporate leper colony for challenging the culture and "the way things are."

     The blanket becomes heavier and heavier. And despite good intention the organization does not find the breakthrough it desires. A poke through the blanket here and there but nothing that sustains major lifts in outcomes for the organization. Nothing that makes the blanket lighter or removes it entirely. Nothing until a leader or group of leaders begin an inquiry about what else is possible. The danger, unless the leaders are willing to shed old styles, old behaviors, are decisions made under the old blanket and therefore repeat the self limiting behavior.

     Leaders must start with self examination. What is it about me that should change? What is it about the leadership that needs to change in their behavior? The paradox is the organization looks up and says "If leadership would change we could really do something?" Leadership looks down and says "If the employees would change we could really do something." Greater success never happens when we expect someone else to change. The flashlight must be turned on ourselves. We must change first. This is the self responsibility of organizational breakthroughs. Knowing yourself is where organizational transformation begins. Leadership has the greatest responsibility here because of their weighted influence in the organization.

     Organizations seeking new strategic direction must start from the inquiry of how do individuals find their natural limitless skills. How do we as an organization nurture those limitless skills? How do I as a leader uncover my own limitless skills? How does the senior staff mine its untapped capabilities? A gauze security blanket covers individuals as well as organizations. What often happens though is leaders are perfectly willing to deal with organization issues but shy away from personal development because it is personal and therefore has a vulnerability to it. Transformation requires the courage of self examination.

     So what more can we get out of work? Organizations that struggle to find the breakthrough often look in the wrong place. They look for more productivity, better bottom line, more hours, and more customers. All critical to a business success but it is the wrong place to look. Competence is at the core of a successful business but everyone, whether they know it or not, is seeking a greater meaning out of work. Work has to mean more than eight hours a day plus the time they think about work work and a pay check twice a month. Leaders and employees alike want fulfillment. Deeper meaning for what they do. I don't contend that everyone thinks about these thing all the time. But if you have confidential, off the record interviews with employees like I do you will see that is exactly what they want. They simply don't know quite how to express it.

     So leaders, have to raise the gauze blanket, nurture themselves and nurture their employees, grow their organization to a place they have not yet imagined, fracture the unintended consequences of their well intended culture. Organizations that honor competence and seek fulfillment will not have to worry about productivity and the bottom line. They will be a consequence of nurturing the limitless capacity of employees. The blanket will be lifted and the organization will thrive at levels heretofore not thought possible.

     What I passionately believe in is human potential. I also believe leaders have a unique responsibility to nurture that potential. First by nurturing their own gifts and then by creating the authentic environment at work so employees feel valued, enriched, inspired and committed. This is possible in the work place. This possibility in the workplace is the competitive differentiator and the last piece of the value proposition.