The September 10 issue of the Wall Street Journal has one of those articles sure to inflame the ardor of some and gain a lot of reader comments. It's the familiar conflict of what to do when your boss ignores you. The writer, Elizabeth Garone, a well known journalist with a rich history of writing about business issues, responds to a question from a CIO in a bank in Texas who's having great difficulty breaking into the Texas "good old boy" network and getting nothing from the CEO to whom he reports. He has 25 years of experience in banking with more than 20 years in technology. He's losing interest in his job, but has a good salary and if he stays for five more years will have a "good salary continuation package." That's a swell package that will pay his salary from retirement to death, or if needed, from disability to death.
The writer checks out the consultants on her rolodex, asks for reader comments, and gets a number of seemingly relevant answers. They include: the boss is a jerk, your boss doesn't understand your value, stick it out for five years and get another job, be straight with your boss and manage him better, learn to choose your bosses better and check out the culture again to see whether you're misunderstanding,etc.
Interesting advice. However, it's somewhere between difficult and impossible to assess whether any of the answers have real significance. But it makes for readership and provides possible interpretations so that, at the least, the reader will have different perspectives should he or she be found in a similar situation. Besides, it's a catchy title and journalism is all about catchy titles. WSJ seems to be pretty good at getting reader interest--that's their business.
So what is the best way to approach and ultimately resolve power games and conflicts when your boss is part of the problem?
Rather than address the question the way the journalist sets it up, this is an excellent time to lay out the possible parameters for that kind of question. Once you understand the important parameters of conflict and power, you'll have a better way to look at those issues. If you start there when faced with difficulty, you'll save yourself a lot of grief.
In the above situation the questioner and nearly all the commentators believe the boss holds the cards. That may or may not be the case. But one thing is clear: if you start with that lens, you've seriously limited possible resolutions.
First, here's my disclaimer: I'm clueless regarding the best possible resolution for the CIO's problem. However, from ancient history as well as the last 30 to 50 years of related theory and research, we know the parameters of the resolution. And I'm writing this blog because I've found that more often than not we focus on only two of the possible three parameters that might provide insight to resolution.
As far back as Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.), the ancients understood that when dealing with conflicts you should look at the protagonist, the antagonist and the context: the CIO, the boss and the organizational culture. We are often limited by the proclivity of our American culture to focus on the antagonist. You see it in politics, economics, business and community. We focused on Hitler during world war II, on Putin, on Bin Laden, on whatever political party to which we're opposed, on the "government" and on "the boss" when we're not getting what we think we deserve.
When it comes to assessing how to manage an an interpersonal difficulty, we're primarily dispositionalists. That's a neat term referring to our emphasis upon the psychology of the wrong-doer. As might have been expected, the majority of the comments to the WSJ article emphasized the psychology of the boss as the path to resolution, while a few focused on the skills that the CIO might need to successfully manage the situation.
If you're focusing on the antagonist, the boss, most of you know the questions: what are his priorities, values, expectations, desires, needs, competencies, awareness, etc.? The possible resolution might be within those issues.
If you're focusing on the protagonist, the CIO, you'll be asking: what skills does he have, how well can he communicate, manage up, understand power, influence, persuade, etc.? And, the resolution might be within that list of issues.
But don't miss the organizational culture, the context within which conflicts take place. What are the culture's values, norms, expectations, systems? And what are the culture's norms for relationships, conflicts, support, etc.? You can never succeed in a culture on your own. So you'll need to know how you fit and have built alliances with the organizational movers and shakers. Unless they own the firm, bosses became who they are because of their relationships with the movers and shakers, and those people are key to the resolution of problems as much, and sometimes more, than the CEO. On many occasions those people will not only tell you how to understand and manage the boss, but sometimes they'll help you do it. It's possible that the resolution to the problem may be within the cultural norms and values.
In companies of any size, the major focus of the CEO is upon the financial stakeholders. People below the CEO actually run the firm. Many lower level people accept the movie/TV caricature of hierarchy and CEO power. But, it's actually rare for CEOs to make decisions without the counsel and support of the people. And in organizations with history, the people are very responsive to the corporate culture and its mythology. Indeed, the deciding factor for many hires is whether they fit the organizational culture. After a few years of existence, employees are more a reflection of an organizational culture than the culture is a reflection of the employees. (You may want to quit a job because you don't like what the culture is doing to you. Cultures are unbelievable powerful in their ability to shape people.) So pay a lot of attention to the "rules" of your organizational culture. They can be the real decision maker and the path to problem resolution.
Bottom line: Don't get your shorts all knotted up until you understand how the culture works and whether you can manage conflicts by means of cultural expectations. I have no experience in the culture where my Gen-Y protege works. Nearly every recommendation I make concludes with this caveat: "Here are a couple ways to handle that problem in most firms, but don't make a decision until you've checked out their cultural fit. My recommendation could be well off the mark for your firm."
I'd love to hear from you. To what extent do you disagree? What can you add? What have I missed.