Welcome to the Jungle
It’s not all fun and games…
“You know where you are? You’re in the jungle baby; you’re gonna die!” – Axl Rose 1
When you step back from seeing an organisation as a machine for producing dollars and instead see it as an ecosystem, most large organisations look more like a jungle than a Garden of Eden.
In the early 2000’s, it seemed like you couldn’t go to an L&D workshop or group session without the facilitator asking: “If you were an animal, what would you be, and why?”
The typical answers you’d hear might be:
“An Eagle – soaring high above to see and guide everyone to the future”.
“An Elephant – protecting and leading the herd to greener pastures”.
“A Sheepdog – rounding everyone up and pointing them in the right direction”.
However, if you went to the bar after the workshop and got talking to people about what kind of animals they actually encounter in their organisations, you might get different answers, for example:
The Chameleon – constantly changing their colours based on their mood, or who’s in front of them, or who last bent their ear, etc…
The Magpie - attracted by the latest shiny new thing they saw in HBR, MIT Sloan Management Review, or from the McSlaughterHouseBoozers Institute.
The Seagull – soaring aloofly above everyone before swooping down from on high and dumping on them.
Another animal that’s traditionally exerted a major influence in the corporate jungle is the HiPPO – an acronym for the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.
Historically, organisations assumed that decisions were made by the highest paid people, which is why ‘senior executive’ and ‘decision maker’ are often used interchangeably.
But decisions are only as good as the sense making that precedes them.
Or, in the wise old computing term, GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out.
So, here’s the ‘secret’ that everyone knows: Senior executives often make poor decisions.
And, when poor decisions made on high make their way down into the body of the organisation, people respond in one of three ways:
They do their best to do what doesn’t make sense, which really doesn’t make sense, but is what they’re paid to do;
They ask for clarification – but typically get told again to do what they’ve already been told to do;
They make something up that they think makes more sense than doing what they’ve been told to do.
The people in Group 1 are demotivated, disillusioned, and disengaged.
74% of them are actively on the lookout for new jobs post-Covid. 2
Many in Group 2 look for a new job where their questioning will be seen as valuable to organisational learning, not a threat to the organisational status quo.
Those in Group 2 who stay, end up joining Group 1. 3
The people in Group 3 skilfully save the organisation from poor decisions on high, and just as skilfully cover up the fact that this is what they’ve done.
They skilfully cover up what they’ve done because if senior executives got wind of it, they’d be punished, and sent to join Group 1.
So, why do senior executives often make such poor decisions?
Is it because they’re stupid?
That simplistic caricature so beloved by tabloid journalists is rarely true.
In the vast majority of cases, it’s simply because the sense making -> decision making -> action taking loop is woefully badly joined-up, or in the worst cases disconnected completely.
A large chunk of management consulting industry revenue is generated by services they provide to close the loop without really closing the loop.
What does that mean?
An external consulting firm comes in, interviews people in the body of the organisation, puts what they learn into a snazzy PowerPoint deck and plays it back to the senior executives.
Having tapped into the organisational sense making in the body of the organisation, the consultants steer senior executive decision making and come up with action plans. They often then hang around to oversee action taking. 4
So, whilst this closes the sense making -> decision making -> action taking loop it also creates dependency on the consultants, rather than building the internal capabilities for people in the organisation to close the sense making -> decision making -> action taking loop themselves in future.
Hence ‘closing the loop without really closing the loop’.
If the consultants really closed the loop, they’d not be needed anymore…😬
This dependency on consultants kind of worked, or was sort of sustainable, when the world was changing far more slowly than today. 5
But with the accelerating pace, volatility, uncertainty and unpredictability of change, there’s no longer the time available for consultants to close the sense making -> decision making -> action taking loop before the world has moved on and rendered their “best practice” action plans obsolete before implementation.
That’s why organisations must create future-fit cultures where sense making, decision making & action taking are ever more tightly coupled, rapidly and repeatedly iterated, deeply embedded, and widely distributed throughout the organisation. 6
The HiPPOs that traditionally hogged decision making aren’t the only animal acronyms you encounter in the organisational jungle.
There are also the RHINOs – who Rarely Have Interest iN Others, except when those others can do something for them, their personal ambitions, or careers.
There are the TIGERs – adept at producing Token Impressions of Giving Everyone Respect but conveying the overriding impression that they enrolled in a two-part course on “fake it till you make it” and only attended part one.
Then there’s the GORILLA – a Glaringly Overbearing & Ruthless Individual Liberally Leveraging Aggression to get what they want whilst trampling anyone in their way.
There’s the SCORPION - the Smart Cocksure Orator Regurgitating Philosophy to Impress Others Narcissistically whose undoubted intellectual gifts are unfortunately devoted to their desperate never-ending need to prove, project and protect a fragile ego.
And the ANTELOPE - the Accomplished Nullifier of The Enthusiasm Levels Of People Everywhere, whose catchphrases include: “we tried that and it didn’t work”, “that will never fly”, “our clients won’t accept that”, “the Board won’t accept that”, “I disagree”, “who came up with this rubbish?” etc.
Of course, not everyone you encounter in the corporate jungle is so negative.
You may be fortunate enough to meet:
A JAGUAR – Just A Guy/Gal Undertaking A Role and trying their best to do what’s needed without drama, politics or intrigue. You’ll often find these unsung heroes in Group 3 above, working selflessly for the organisation’s success despite poor decisions from on high, and saving many a senior executive from themselves.
A LEOPARD – a Likeable Extrovert Organising Parties And Recreational Distractions who may or may not be a stellar work performer but is a lot of fun to have around.
A GIRAFFE – Gifted In Rising Above Fiefdoms and Factions Everywhere and therefore a natural exponent of the 2D3D mindset at the heart of a future-fit culture. 7
But if you personally want to ensure that the organisational ecosystem is more Eden than jungle, aim to become:
A WILDEBEEST - Wise & Industrious in Leveraging & Developing Everyone’s Best to Ensure the Enterprise Survives & Thrives.
Wise & industrious means doing the right things. 8
Leveraging & developing everyone’s best means knowing how to bring the truism that “none of us is as smart as all of us” to life in your organisation.
This in turn means developing insight into the organisational culture so you can focus your attention and efforts on maximum leverage for systemic change. 9
People with these traits make great key instigators who, alongside key influencers are of vital importance to maximising systemic leverage for creating future-fit cultures of innovation and agility. (Find out more on pages 17 to 21 of this 22-page report.)
So, be more WILDEBEEST, and help transform your organisation to thrive.
‘Cos if it remains a jungle baby, it’s gonna die.
And if you don’t help it change, who will..?
One of Guns N’ Roses most popular tracks, Welcome to the Jungle (450M+ views on YouTube) was, according to lead singer Axl Rose, inspired by these words shouted at him and a friend by a homeless man at a bus stop in New York.
Gallup polling in July 2021 shows 74% of those who are ‘Actively Disengaged’ are seeking new job opportunities. The other 26% of the ‘Actively Disengaged’ are just sticking it out.
Even 30% of the ‘Engaged’ employees in the Gallup poll cited above are seeking new job opportunities.
Sense making is invariably best in the body of the organisation. Firstly the people there are in most close contact with customers. Secondly they’re doing most of the value-adding work and know what’s working well, and what’s broken. Thirdly they’re often from younger generational cohorts in touch with societal trends and the latest social tech. Fourthly, there are many of them, which means there’s greater opportunity to triangulate their perspectives to error correct collective sense making.
Only ‘sort of’ sustainable because some hosts eventually get sucked dry, or poisoned, and die. Welcome to the consulting jungle.
They also have the option of burying their head in the sand, which often happens if senior executives calculate they can keep their heads down, cash in their share options, grab their retirement pots, and run for the hills before everything falls apart.
Fiefdoms, factions and silos are the #1 organisational barrier to a future-fit culture of innovation and agility, as described in this 4 minute video.
Wisdom - or doing the right things - is qualitatively different from Data, Information, Knowledge, and Understanding - or doing things right. As Russ Ackoff famously said: “We are largely devoted to doing the wrong thing right. That’s very unfortunate because the righter you do the wrong things, the wronger you become. By contrast, doing the right thing wrong allows you to error correct and improve”. The distinction is absolutely critical. And we as a society are simply drowning in the pursuit of efficiency concerned with the pursuit of the wrong ends.” For more detail see ‘Big Data, Little Wisdom’.
Most people see ‘Culture’ as an amorphous, messy and intangible phenomenon, getting to grips with which feels like the proverbial ‘nailing jelly to the wall’. That’s because theories of culture rarely lend themselves to pragmatic application. But it doesn’t have to be this way, as this post on Seeing Culture explains.