I had a terrific conversation yesterday with Tom Riley, a former big company guy who now heads up Business Development for a hungry, fun, and smart online design/strategy shop called Closerlook. Tom’s a sharp guy with keen perspective on corporate life.

One the thing from our talk really stood out: it was a comment Tom made in describing big company decision-making: “I couldn’t get a yes, and I couldn’t get a no.”

That an organization wouldn’t want to take the risk on a revenue-generating opportunity is not a news flash; at a personal level, for the decision makers, the dangers of making a mistake are often far greater than the upside of a win. In one poignant example, Tom told me how he had once been asked to reframe a revenue-generating proposal as a safer-sounding, cost-saving initiative. We laughed about how, when weighing his project against others that “guarantee” cost savings, executives had even asked him if he could “guarantee” his results, too. (Guarantee sales? Wouldn’t that be nice!)

It was the story about how an executive committee refused to kill a proposal for six months, after letting it languish, unapproved, for 16 months, that really got me. Turns out, the problem wasn’t with “approval,” it was with “commitment.” Saying no would have closed doors and could have created political risk—no one wanted to put themselves in a position to be painted as the person to kill the golden goose.

And so it was, a major company let a proposal sit for nearly two years, unapproved, unkilled.

If you read this and find it appalling, unethical, and terrible, relax. It is what it is, and “fixing” the human condition is beyond your scope. Accept it, and move on.
If you read this and don’t understand the inherent problem, THE PROBLEM IS YOU. Just like how the government puts fluoride in our water, corporations put perks into your life, and you never noticed your growing addition, did you? That’s the thing about growing numb: you don’t feel it happening. It’s easy to miss the slide into becoming one of those overfed, puffy-looking teddy bears sitting up in first class, completely indistinguishable from one another, basically serving as human in-baskets who hold ideas for awhile until other people decide to take one and do something with it. Yet there you are, in seat 1A. You, like Tom’s proposal, are neither alive nor fully dead… my guess is that you have a great golf game, a secret fascination for the gizmos in SkyMall that promise to make your life even easier, and almost no idea who your kids are.
If you read this and wonder how to break through this kind of culture, it’s time for a little group therapy, because you don’t. Decision making cultures like this start at the top. They are a function of the people in the highest jobs, and no amount of structural changes, re-organizations, or compensation plan tweaks can change anything unless the people at the top have the willpower to bind themselves to an arbitrary set of outcome and process goals. Short of accountable leadership, nearly every penny of OD spend you make will merely cause the pieces on the same game board to shift around, without changing anything.

Posted under Coaching & Consulting, Team Dynamics, Leadership