It seems that in life there are two types of people. Those that are pushing forward to new and greater things in the future and those that are pulling backwards just grasping to the comfort of the old glory days or just pure comfort of the known. I watch a reality show from time to time called, Restaurant Impossible. The basic premise is a failing restaurant owner calls for help of the show’s star to basically fix what is wrong. What’s amazing is that quite often the owner of the restaurant will fight the change or pull backward even when faced with the prospect of going out of business. As crazy as this seems when watching the show, we see it all the time in business. In most businesses there is a culture of pulling backward. We’ve labeled them as the Status Quo Protectors. For various personal reasons this group seems to always pull backward as leadership tries to push forward. This tug-of-war is often the reason businesses are operating in perpetual mediocrity. There is only one way to deal with those that are pulling backward and that is to identify them and deal with them swiftly and directly. This shouldn’t be a six to twelve month process. It should be handled today.
Identifying those that are pulling backward…
- They bog down a process with “what if”s”, “yeah but’s”, “I’m concerned”, etc. Get the picture? It’s ok to ask questions but these particular people never bring a solution to push forward. They love starting a group conversation via email about their “concerns” with liberal use of the cc feature. This usually creates more “what if’s”, “yeah but’s” and the like and nothing ever gets pushed forward. They are about keeping things the way they are.
- They attack the process instead of addressing the performance. Any new initiative or program that measures results will be attacked if it doesn’t make them look good. Rather than working to improve performance, they’ll say the process is flawed and should be changed. They’ll attack those responsible for introducing the process.
- They’ll run reports and play with the numbers until they can manipulate a positive view of themselves. If the process tracks results they’ll want to track activity and effort. Activity and effort are subjective. Results are definitive. They don’t like definitive. They probably like watching kids soccer games where they don’t keep score. When you mention Core Scoring they attack and in essence claim to know more than Jack Welch, Peter Drucker and Donald Trump to name a few.
These are just a few ways people pull backward. There are many others, but these will give you the basic idea of what to start looking for. For most companies, about 30% of your staff will be those that push forward. About 30% will be those that pull backward. The remaining 40% are watching and waiting to see how leadership deals with this tug-of-war. That 40% will usually move to the team that is winning or the team they perceive to be winning. The casualty in this war is usually the best employees who will often seek employment elsewhere or will become disengaged in the process.
