Executives frequently disagree with decisions that the executive team – or the CEO – have already made. Sometimes, we even disagree with how a decision was made. However, after a decision is made, we make a choice to either act in accordance with the decision or to act and speak consistently with what wish the decision was. While we don’t often call it this, acting inconsistently with a decision that was made, covertly or overtly and intentionally or unintentionally, is a toxic act of sabotage, negatively impacting the behaviors of others and diminishing the intended results.
Furthermore, when leaders give competing directions to employees, we create Organizational Schizophrenia, a term I coined when I first wrote this article in 2013. causing employees to be confused or frozen in fear, acting without clear direction, choosing who to please and who to disappoint, or simply acting with diminished power and support and at odds with colleagues.
This is without a doubt one of the most critical impediments to a company’s ability to successfully manage execution. The problem is that this doesn’t often make its way to the executive team – or the executives are so desensitized to it that it becomes just one of the elephants in the room and never gets addressed.
There are times to discuss and even revisit a decision after it is made, but
- all public disagreements,
- confusing directives, and
- any actions that are inconsistent with the team’s decisions
…are all sabotage.
If there are disagreements with a decision after a decision is made, the thing to do is to take that to the team and work it out in the locker room. Playing out the disagreement on the field with the rest of the company serves to confuse and break down the fiber of the company: trust, motivation, focus, and power to succeed.
So, how much of the gap between the target and actual results can you chalk up to sabotage or Organizational Schizophrenia?
Would you like to get the company moving faster, have it be more agile, and accomplish better and more predictable results? Then, create the list of targets not met, issues unresolved, disagreements, and pink elephants and start talking, resolving, and making decisions – and then follow through in unison.
And, if you don’t know all the issues that the exec team should be resolving and to what extent the next-level leaders are confused, ask them.
This can get messy, especially if you have been avoiding issues for months or years or if Sabotage and Organizational Schizophrenia are well ingrained. And, it is possible that your employees won’t be comfortable telling you everything, or they would have already. But there is hope and it doesn’t have to be painful or hard; get some help. The first step is to admit that the company has a problem. You’ll want to have an MBA with a very high EQ that is very skilled at executive team development, strategy execution, and conflict resolution as a guide. And, yes, I know someone that would be perfect…
