If
you’re thinking “outsized bonuses,” “bureaucracy” or “poor strategy,” guess
again. While these issues may have merit in their own right, we believe that
the absence of candor is the single largest roadblock keeping companies from
being effective.
The
concept is simple but its consequences are huge. Without of an open culture of
frank, sincere and exhaustively honest talk, people feel left out of important
conversations (because they are), or worse, they are brought into the loop but
given inaccurate information, which they then act upon. Decisions are slowed
because everybody doesn't have the same information, and what information they
do have can't be trusted, so must be checked and double-checked. Ideas are
debated not in open forum, but rather in cloistered quarters to which only
those in the know are admitted. Costs go up as resources are wasted preparing
reports to confirm what everyone in the room already knows, or think they know.
And most troubling of all, team members have little idea where they stand in
terms of their own performance.
While
socialization, legal, and cultural factors all undoubtedly contribute to the
absence of candor in business, the influence of organizational practices,
metrics, norms and incentives on candor are things that all of us can do
something about.
You can read any number of management books that share our
opinion on the need for candor. According to most of them, the key to achieving
candor is for employees to summon the courage to give tough love to peers, and speak truth to power.
Senior executives, too, exhort their subordinates to speak up for what they
believe in, and courageously challenge the old established ways of doing
things.
But why? Why should it take courage to give your boss and other senior executives
what they say they want? Shouldn't it be just the opposite? Shouldn't courage
be required to give higher management what they don't want?
One
explanation for this seeming paradox is that, in many organizations, the people
at the top say they want candor, but what they really want is for people to
agree with everything they say and go along with everything they do. And even
if they don't feel that way, if your boss is the kind of person who interprets
every constructive recommendation as a personal attack, you’ll end up in the
same dilemma. In this situation you aren't without options but, there aren't
many, and they are far from risk-free.
Often,
however, when candor is punished, it is not because higher management really
does not want it, but because the policies, practices, metrics and incentives
inadvertently discourage it. For example, consider the norms that surround how
performance feedback is given in many, if not most, organizations. The ratings
of most employees are lumped into the top two performance categories, and even
those employees who are not carrying their weight are assured by higher
management that they are doing a good job. If an area of weakness is mentioned
at all, it is mentioned gently in passing and future rewards are not made contingent
upon future improvement. When people are passed over for promotion, they are
reassured that it was because of politics, or told that they barely missed
getting the job because someone else scored just a little bit higher. After
all, they’re good people and you want to be kind.
But
look, everyone doesn't perform at the same level at the same tasks. Most
managers would agree that some number of their employees are underperformers.
And when an important customer comes to town, will your low performers be
assigned to squire them around? When you have an important job that needs to be
done, will you give it to them? When a promotion opportunity opens up, will
they be seriously considered? Probably not. But since no one has told them how
their performance is really viewed, they think they are up for getting these
things, and they die a little each time they are passed by.
Eventually,
they figure it out, but by then most of their work years are gone and they're
not very marketable. You may think of yourself as being nice, but really,
giving less-than-candid feedback is the cruelest thing you can do. You’ve
sabotaged these people's careers.
At
least have the honesty to admit to yourself why you are doing this. It's not
for your employees' benefit. They would be better off knowing where they stand
while they are still young enough and self-confident enough to look for a great
career somewhere else. And don't tell yourself that it's for the organization's
benefit. Do you honestly believe that you can't find people who can help the
company more than your underperformers?
Admit
it -- you're doing this for your own sake. You just don't want to have those
conversations. And you shouldn’t. You’ll be sick to your stomach before your
meeting and you won’t be able to sleep the night before. It's a terrible thing
to have to let someone go. It’s something you’ll never get used to.
But you
still have to do it. It's your job! Continuously upgrading your organization's
talent is one of the most important responsibilities a leader has. And while
you're being kind, your customers are getting more demanding each year, and
your competition is getting better each year. Talk about being cruel -- if you
let your competition take over your markets and steal your customers, a lot
more people are going to lose their jobs -- probably including you.
Thus,
as tough as it is to learn to live and breathe, candor is an antidote not just
to phony performance reviews, stifled feedback, secretive information and the
future careers of your people, it’s also critical to the competitiveness of the
entire organization. Companies must work to get their people to embrace this
socially-maligned trait by creating an environment in which candor is
encouraged, rewarded and integrated into the organizational culture itself.
For
without it, organizations lose “idea capital” and valuable information, they
burden their divisions with underperformers, and they keep those people from
achieving success elsewhere. And worst by far, they continue to build business
upon the lies and falsehoods they tell themselves, a house of cards that will
eventually fall.
