Around 479 B.C., in a highly stylized depiction of Sparta, a messenger from King Xerxes arrives to pass along Xerxes’ demand for a token of submission from King Leonidas. I sure hope messengers in the ancient world had nice benefits packages or something because Leonidas proceeds to kick him into a “bottomless” pit.
Or so begins the film 300 (thanks, Wikipedia). At least I think it begins that way. I’ve never seen the film, and I’m not going to, but that scene has popped up on YouTube. It would be an odd scene to come after the film’s main events. When I first heard of the movie I wondered if it was a really long season of 24 or something.
Anyway, how do you handle people who bring you news you don’t want to hear? The reality of your answer to this question, which may differ from the words of your answer to this question, will determine if your organization is going to make it.
Dr. Ron Westrum built a typology of organizational culture born out of his research into a wide array of organizations. I’ve made recommendations in this publication before, but let this one be the strongest one I’ve ever given. Read Google’s page summarizing this research. Stop reading this email to do it if you have to.
His typology has three buckets: pathological, bureaucratic, and generative, and Google’s page reproduces a table showing the characteristics of each. I’d reproduce it here, but it would cost me $309 to do so. If we get this list up to 1,000 subscribers, I’ll reproduce that table in an email.
One of the criteria has always stuck out to me, probably because I’ve often found myself in that unfortunate messenger’s position. Pathological organizations “shoot” the messenger, bureaucratic organizations neglect them, but generative organizations train them.
“Training” them means training your people to surface bad news. This goes beyond saying, “please surface surface bad news.” What signals do you send when you receive bad news? Firing? That’s pathological. Ignoring? That’s bureaucratic. Annoyance? That lands somewhere between pathological and bureaucratic. Keep these up, and your people will get into the worst state possible for your business: apathy.
You need this bad news. Messengers aren’t the ones creating the situations. Reality exists whether or not you’re aware of it. But they are the ones bringing your reality to light so that you can act before your competitors catch up and surpass you. With support and empowerment, they’ll probably help you fix the issues too.
If after receiving bad news you typically launch lengthy investigations and conclude that you’re already doing everything right, well I suppose that’s a possibility. But that would also mean that you’re already 100% content with your organization’s performance and that there literally is nothing else to improve. If that’s the case 🙌 and well done.
Now, of course, not everything can be acted upon all at once, and improvements need to be sequenced. But you can clearly communicate that while still fostering trust in your people.
This. Is. Leadership.
