To John and others thanks for this thread. It seems to me that we can
create at least three distinctions of Problem People and easily confuse
one or the other.
Taking where John left of as a start point
==========start========
I am glad that there have been several postings recently which address the
sad fact of social and professional isolation resulting from management's
actions. While I don't have stats to support the statement, I would
venture to say that major corporations are no different than governmental
beaucracies. Each deals with "problem employees" as social illnesses, and
while some employees may indeed need professional counseling resulting
perhaps in termination, more often it is the imposition of heavy-handed
managers who are themselves encouraged to "deal with" such employees. As
Robert Bacal notes, a compentent performer of yesterday may be displaying
a normal human reaction to an abusive "boss/manager".
I truly believe this is the norm, not the exception. Any stats out there
to support either view?
==========END========
I do not have stats John I have several cases which support the view. At
risk of boring people here comes a bit of personal history.
Several years ago I was managing a Research and Development division, part
of a large corporate research laboratory. The senior management of the
research organisation had stated policies of focusing more attention on
clearly defined targets and objectives, and of judging individual
performance by such standards. The company's Chief Executive had announced
a much publicised intention to shift the corporate culture through more
empowering and open management. Both campaigns resonated strongly with my
own patterns and I, and those I was managing, duly set out to meet, or
exceed our targets for performance, safety, budgets and customer
satisfaction in an open and empowering way. We achieved them delivering in
the process what we believed to be one of the best performances the
division had turned in in recent years. I duly got the worst performance
review I had had in my entire career for having, in the course of the
year, made public the fact that I was not concerned with the time that
highly trained and well paid scientists started and finished their day,
providing the job got done and colleagues were not inconvenienced. As a
matter of record most were even then working longer hours than the
official nine-to-five and any form of official time keeping had withered
years previously. However I gave official sanction to the de facto reality
of flexitime; something to which the director of research had stated many
times his vehement opposition. By writing down one unwritten rule I broke
another and regardless of espoused policies on results and new cultures,
the overriding unwritten rule, as in so many companies, was 'don't make
the boss wrong'.
I was moved sideways [booted out] or even downwards for which BTW I now
have no regrets. I am in a wealthier place because of it and have learnt
more than I could ever have done if it hadn't happened, but that is not
the point.
At the time it was stressful. I was given a job of organising a team of
change agents in another, fortunately *differently* managed part of the
organisation. It was a time of high stress for all of us not least me.
During the course of it one member of the team had a nervous breakdown
[repeating earlier problems]. It was hard for most of the rest of us to
appreciate the difference between that and lack of commitment. I bless on
reflection the medical officer who helped me to a realisation that mental
illness could afflict as much as say malaria for which a scientist like me
could see a cause.
So, what lessons.
1. I totally agree with Rol's urging us to realise that some people are
ill and that managers need professional help. The majority, I suspect,
find that a hard lesson to learn.
2. What of the other two characters in the story. At the time it was easy
to fall into the trap of making the boss wrong. By implication I made
myself right! Various vernacular phrases express the sentiment! With the
benefit of hindsight it is possible to see the situation in different
terms as an example of the inevitable limitation of company life. My boss
had sterling qualities as a leader. Most people simply ignored his
particular blind spot. Others, such as my subordinates may/must have seen
me having similar blind spots.
To create a different result in an organisation people have to be
different. Organisations need that difference, but also some conformity.
They are always liable to see the non-conformist as 'mentally ill' and it
is hard in some cases to know where the difference lies.
It is still easy to recast boss and I as two other categories of problem
people, the blocker and the victim but can we really know the difference?
-----------------
Later on the same thread
Rol [LO8108] reminds us of statistics
This really is a good point at which to collect some data. We each know
hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Approximately how many have been
wrongly terminated, how many rightly terminated, and how many do you know
in total?
My experience may very well be unusual, because it is only my own. My
stats are 1,2, 1000 (more or less).
Rol: I do not think - the example above will show why - terminated is
necessarily the correct measure. Termination is not the only way
organisations show disapproval. I will offer from personal experience 10
separate cases of people who have suffered in a similar way [only one got
fired] and that is without thinking hard. If I thought about people
wrongly 'penalised' I would, I suspect, reach a larger number which may
just mean I have managed less ethically than you. I have been forced [and
have chosen] to terminate some myself, and have been through being
terminated. I would guess I only know 50 people <more or less> well enough
to get into reasons for 'real career problems'. I think this is actually a
hard area to get statistics. My instinct is with John, but thanks for
challenging again an easy assumption.
If Price
The Harrow Partnership
Pewley Fort Guildford UK
101701.3454@compuserve.com
--Dr Ilfryn Price <101701.3454@compuserve.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>