Leadership Trap - "Sanitized For Your Protection"
Leaders rely heavily on others in their organization to accumulate data for reporting purposes. This includes daily sales figures, monthly end financial results, and project status updates. Many times this data is accompanied with powerpoint slides or “decks” (despise that term) to help interpret the meaning of the data and to “tell the story.”
Leaders I work with speak frequently about their desire to know exactly what is going in the business so they can make better, more timely decisions. As Jim Collins says in “Good to Great,” they want to hear and confront the brutal facts.
The question is, “Do they get the brutal facts on a consistent and timely basis?” I would argue that in the majority of cases, leadership does not.
Let's take a look by peeling back the covers to see the sanitation reporting cycle in action!
1. Raw Data is Generated by the Front Line Employees
- Here are results in its purest form. The actual results do not lie. This is what's really happening!
2. Data is Gathered and Reported to Middle Management
- Sit back and wait for the questions to massage, sanitize and reorganize the data
3. Middle Management Reviews
- Does the data make us look good or do we need to make some adjustments……..we better make some adjustments so this looks better! I don’t want to get yelled at. Send back to massage, sanitize and reorganize (MSR’s) the data
- After repeated MSR’s, we now feel comfortable sending to senior management
4. Senior Management Reviews
- Does the data make us look good…..……..we better make some more adjustments so this looks even better! I don’t want to get yelled at either!! Send back to middle management for more massaging, sanitizing and reorganizing
- After repeated MSR’s, we now feel comfortable sending it to executive leadership
- Cross our fingers that our MSR’s have eliminated all questions and potential objections
5. Executive Leaders See Sanitized Results
- Review of results indicate things are in order and senior management had great answers to all of our questions. Great job! Meeting adjourned.
I hope you don’t think I’m exaggerating for effect because I am not! I see this cycle all the time and it is quite disturbing. Leaders are not getting the information they need to make good decisions. They get a false sense of state of the business which can eliminate any sense of urgency to take action………..until it’s too late.
The end result is layers of management spending significant time and resources creating misleading information, at best, which leadership either acts or doesn’t act on. Not only is time wasted on non-value activity, the activity’s main objective is to create misleading information. Not a recipe for success.
Key Leadership Question
As a leader, the first question I would ask is, “Am I the problem?” Have I created a culture that does not encourage sharing the truth? Many leaders say they want the truth but then go "ballistic" on everyone when they hear it. If that is you, you may have created the “trickle down” culture of sanitation.
Action Steps to De-Sanitize
High performing leaders really want the truth..........so ask for it. Ask for the bad news. Ask your senior management team what we stink at and what is trending in the wrong direction. If they can’t come up with anything, you know that information is being withheld.
React to bad news in a constructive way and encourage your team to share the unvarnished truth. Recognize members on your team that speak the truth. Start changing the culture so that “confronting the brutal facts” becomes the norm as opposed to the cycle of truth avoidance.
You can’t solve problems until you are aware of them. Encourage unvarnished, unsanitized reporting so you can work on solving the problems instead of ignoring them.
Remember, bad news is not like fine wine, it does not improve with age!
I would love to hear from you. Let me know your comments and thoughts by either commenting on this post or contacting me directly at derrick@titanhr.com or 804-814-9921. You can connect with me at:
Derrick Strand is a Principal in Leadership Development at The Titan Group in Richmond, Virginia. He
designs and delivers innovative management and leadership courses to
the public and internally to clients who prefer customization.
Categories: Leadership, Quality, People, Communication, Culture, Productivity
Tags: leadership culture brutal facts accurate data culture of fear
I love this article! In far too many organizations, leaders come up through the ranks learning thee bad habits, and I believe this translates in to the continued proliferation of the same bad habits if and/or when they reach the senior positions they were once reporting to. It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy of conditioning that has set the expectation for how things will be. It takes strong leaders willing to shake things up and not accept the status quo to make a difference, and I hope that those that read this take it as a call to arms. We have to learn to accept the not so great news to make it better and really improve. Thanks so much for putting this in the spotlight!
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Well said, Derrick! At Reynolds, I was always amazed at the work that would be done at a plant prior to a board visit. Safety lines repainted, equipment properly stored; it's no wonder the company was bought by Alcoa. I'm also aware of a certain school system in the Richmond area where the elected school board members are "discouraged" (prohibited?) from entering schools without an accompanying senior employee from the Central Office. I've been lucky that I've always worked for bosses who expected and encouraged me to tell them the truth... albeit with due respect and timing perhaps... but still, they wanted to hear what I really thought.
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