Broken Company Broken Souls
Marcia comes in every day without fail and sits at her desk and appears to work diligently at the tasks at hand. She rarely, if ever, calls in sick and is the one person everyone can count on to work through lunch without complaint. Marcia is considered a team player by the staff and appears to be liked by everyone so her boss considers himself fortunate to have her on his team.
Marcia on the other hand has a different opinion. Marcia comes in every day because that is what she has to do to get the paycheck. She gets to her desk and rarely leaves because she has fifteen chat conversations going on at once and of course dozens of personal emails to attend to. She makes use of the high speed Internet to download music to her conveniently hidden IPOD and is often engaged in a mad game of Texas Hold Em going on a game site. She sprinkles in a little bit of work here and there to feel like she contributed her self-imposed important piece to the company's success; knowing in her own mind the company wouldn't likely exist without her critical contribution. She always appears busy to anyone who might be looking but all and all no one checks on her so she is pretty much left to do as she pleases. She passes the time until five o'clock when her real life resumes.
Marcia's company brags about being a cutting edge employer that only hires top-notched talent and that every member of the team is critical to their success. It's self-described literature to the college recruiters is "being the place people want to work." The recruiters know that a candidate's placement at this company is a sure road to a comatose mental existence but the company pays a big placement fee so they keep finding and attracting talent.
The company is filled with many Marcias on ever level of the organization. Secretly in the boardroom the executive team knows the company is struggling and has many issues to contend with, not the least of which is how to get the team on the same page. The "team" doesn't seem to want to get excited about anything these days and though it appears everyone is working hard, things aren't working. Both sales and customer satisfaction are beginning to falter and the new products are way behind in development. The board of directors is demanding changes happen and happen soon. They debate for hours about what's wrong and who's to blame because of course someone has to be blamed. Many executives and and department heads dig in and prepare for the inevitable battle of duck, bob, deflect, assault and cover your ass.
Marcia occasionally looks up from her computer monitor to make sure the suits are still engaged in whatever it is they are talking about. It looks like they are going to be in there for a while yet so she smiles to herself as she realizes she has a little time to do some online Christmas shopping before the next Hold Em tournament starts. She glances at the clock and says to herself only three more hours to go until happy hour. She prepares to dig in and looks across the office and if she didn't know better, she would swear everyone else was doing exactly what she was doing.
So my Ripple friends....a question. Who's wrong in this story? Who's ultimately to blame? And maybe more importantly what needs to be done to fix this?
I realize this is a very loose and open-ended story with few specific details. Or are the details that I have given you somehow oddly familiar? Perhaps with your own corporate environment?
In my next post we will look at what's possibly going on but in the mean time I would love to hear your take on what is happening with Marcia and her company.
3 comments:
Obviously, Marcia is not very happy with her work. All she's after is her paycheck. The only things that seem to keep her sane are the games she plays on her computer and the free Internet access for her music downloads. I don't really know who's supposed to be blamed for creating such an environment or if there anyone to be blamed at all. Guess I'll just have to check back on your next post to find out.
Marcia needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible. She needs to be given some way of participating in the life of her company away from her computer. I think the management would do well to read your posts on leading by example. In fact, they should all look at your blog while they are surfing duting working hours ;)
(They took internet access away from where my husband works)
This seems to be a classic situation where everyone is doing their job the best they know how given who they are at this time in their development as Human Beings. This includes the board members and mangers as well as Marcia and her peers. It is my belief that the potential success of any business lies within the potential of the people that are the business.
Though we usually insist that there is someone to blame or maybe even everyone is to blame, it has been my experience that people pretty much do the best they are capable of most of the time. The issue, or opportunity, as I see it here is the potential these people have to expand their view of the work place, themselves and each other. I’ll bet that these people in real life would not see what Steve’s story has made so clear for us. And if they did they would respond to the situation pretty much the same way we would. That is to say, that they are not much different than us except for the benefit of the view we have.
Ok then, so what? So if this an accurate take on the situation how can we use it to create a “Ripple” worth making? How do we expand our view of our own work place to have our organization perform better? How do we improve the success of our organization and the quality of life at our work? Now there’s a ripple worth making.
Expanding our awareness can be a little like trying to get into a locked room the key for which is inside. However, I’ll bet if we chew on this a little we all have some great ideas on how to expand our way of thinking about our role in the success of the company we work for. Let’s brainstorm on this idea. Once we become more mindful of all this we can create our own kind of “Ripple” that the people in the story would create if they could see what we see.
Ripple on you Ripplers.
Have a fun and fulfilling day, Arlin.
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