Getting involved often means getting messy. Maybe it’s just me, but do you ever get criticized, attacked behind the scenes through the gossip culture or by those who skip the chain of command and create their own counter-culture within the organization? There’s a reason so many organizations see little or no advancement in profitability and growth. It’s primarily due to a comfort with and protection of the status quo. You’ve heard the quote… “We’ve always done it that way”. In fact, innovation becomes quite a dirty word in many organizations. Why is this so often the case? Here are a few reasons we’ve come up with.
Fear of exposure – Typically up to a third of workers are miscast. The odd thing is that most of those miscast people have become comfortable where they are. It might be the money they make, the anonymity they have (staying below the radar) or the routine they’re in (the job’s easy with no headaches). Whatever it is, many in the wrong job, know they’re in the wrong job and if you’re identified as the one trying to change the situation, then you will become the target.
Lack of understanding the reality – Many employees have a belief and opinion of you and your motives based on their assumptions… and quite often their assumptions are false. It may have been something you said or did that was taken out of context or built up in their own mind. We can’t always know every detail that went into every decision. It’s important to trust your leadership but not everyone does, so their reality is skewed against the organization. We’ve seen many cases over the years where employees protect the status quo while the reality of the status quo is a lack of profitability and even large losses. Some just don’t grasp the reality that most companies don’t have the ability to print money. You lose enough money, you will go out of business. Just because the organization has been around for 50 years doesn’t mean it will be around another 50 years. Try Googling “large companies no longer in business”.
Personal agendas – For some, the objective is not organizational health but rather agenda protection. The agendas rarely have anything to do with profitability or moving the organization forward. The agenda could be protecting an old friend’s job or even their own (see the first point, “fear of exposure”). The agenda could be his department against her department. The agenda could be protecting one’s own perceived power base. Understand that about 30% of employees have an agenda that does not compliment the organizational objectives.
Here’s the bottom line. If you are an implementer of ideas or one that can’t sit on the sideline and must do what you can to move the organization forward, take time to understand what you’re going up against. Be consistent in your processes and decisions, be persistent by staying the course and be resistant to the attacks because they will come. Once you break through the wall of the status quo, stress levels will go down, profits and productivity will increase and the status quo protectors will quite possibly join your competition.
