Tom Hill’s Eaglezine arrives each Friday morning via email. It’s a short, fast paced single page newsletter that always has at least one nugget of knowledge worth pondering.
Last week’s issue had an interesting excerpt from a book written by Dave Ramsey, owner of The Lampo Group. Dave writes from personal experience as a CEO about the Five Enemies of Unity: Poor communication; Gossip; Unresolved disagreements; Lack of a shared purpose; and Sanctioned incompetence. The company you lead may have none, some or all of these Enemies of Unity.
The phrase “Sanctioned Incompetence” literally leapt of my computer screen. Over the long Memorial Day weekend I pondered what I meant and how it happens.
It starts when a company hires a person without written criteria for the position. Often we laugh (or cry, depending) when we deal with other organizations that have hired someone clearly not qualified because the only visible requirement was that the person was breathing when they showed up for the interview. But are we guilty of doing this ourselves?
We perpetuate the problem by having the interviewee talk to others in the company without any type of standardized interviewing system to compare the answers given. We fail to perform background and reference checks. We fail to make sure that the interviewee has the competence, knowledge, skills, talents, interpersonal skills and passion to do the job.
The lucky person joins the company. However, once on board, there is no orientation program, no one to explain how things work, save his or her immediate supervisor. We assume that that the immediate supervisor will guide and mentor the new employee, because we think that is the role and responsibility of the supervisor. The supervisor, however, is already busy doing their own work and leaves the new employee to pretty much fend for themselves. Does this sound familiar?
The new employee, meanwhile, is excited to be part of something new and is very interested in making a contribution, to prove that the decision to add them to the payroll is a smart one, one that will pay dividends to the company and make the supervisor look good.
However, the supervisor does not have much time to spend with the new hire. A promised job description never materializes. Concrete goals and expected results are never communicated except only in passing and those are never followed up writing. Given to the nature of the oral communication, deniability is available for both parties.
When asked to see and organizational chart to see where they fit in, the new hire is told that one does not exist, that it isn’t needed and that anytime a question needs an answer, to speak to their immediate supervisor.
Formal performance evaluations are never conducted by the supervisor. The feedback that is provided is vague, communicated only in passing. When the supervisor gets mad or stops talking with his or her direct report, the new employee learns to recognize that they have done something wrong, but what was done wrong and what should be done differently is never explained.
The new hire notices that others in the company don’t show much enthusiasm for their jobs or the company. They observe that behaviors that should generate warnings, write-ups and termination go unnoticed, unpunished and therefore, are tolerated and acceptable.
What the employee soon learns is that path of mediocrity will keep his or her paycheck coming. To be bold and aggressive will eclipse their immediate supervisor and bring wrath; to do nothing at all risks the loss of the job. So the employee accepts the fact that staying in the sweet spot of safety is the best course.
All of this is part of the culture of the organization, established and perpetuated by the person at the top, who allows and permits sanctioned incompetence to flourish.
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