Have you ever worked for an organisation that really knows where it is going? An organisation that has a clear, inspiring vision of where it wants to be and what it wants to do? That is well on the way to becoming the best in its field? That is uncompromisingly enthusiastic in its identification and implementation of ongoing improvements to its processes and products?

Have you really enjoyed working for this organisation until one day, when you have gone to work, looked up and around and asked yourself: "What is going on here? What are we really achieving? How in control of it all are we? What does it all really add up to?

This article explores why we can sometimes feel this way – why we can sometimes start to question the role and direction of the organisations we work for and the worth of the contributions we make to them. It will show:

How an organisation’s need to achieve can easily become exaggerated and distorted into a need for victory.

How this ‘victory need’ can lead to the appearance and growth of the ‘escalation effect’

How the escalation effect can lead to negative consequences for both the individual and the organisation.

How an organisation’s need to achieve can be effectively managed, so avoiding the victory need and escalation effect and ensuring that the positive effects of achievement and progress are experienced rather than the negative ones.

 

All organisations exist in order to achieve something; they have a purpose. Effective organisations take the time to clarify this purpose and identify how best to achieve it. They make sure their people know exactly what needs to be done. They seek to ensure an ongoing increase in their level of achievement by searching out and implementing new approaches and improvements to their processes, products and services.

Sometimes, however, this need for achievement gets confused with the need for victory – for being the best at the expense of other people and organisations.

The mind – set that accompanies the victory need is completely different from the one that accompanies the need for achievement. The need for achievement mind - set focuses primarily on end users or customers and how best to meet their needs. The victory need mind – set focuses on competitors and how best to out – perform them.

This latter perception leads to organisational behaviour with negative consequences for all concerned: the organisation, the individual who works for the organisation, the customer and, of course, the competitors. Where people need to be straightforward and honest in their dealings they become secretive, duplicitous and fearful of failure. Where people need to be open to new ideas and feedback they become suspicious, defensive and jealous of others’ success.

Over time the organisation internalises the dark shadow of this behaviour and becomes obsessed with the consequent internal machinations and intrigues. It begins to ignore the people it exists to serve and exhibits distrust towards its staff. Sooner or later it ceases to have relevance to anybody but itself. It falls in upon itself, fragments and fails.

Its competitors need not gloat, as they have one less benchmark to constructively measure their achievements against – one less organisation to learn from. One less source of feedback equals one less chance to develop.

One of the major consequences of the victory need is the appearance and growth of the escalation effect. The need for victory is essentially win/lose aggressive, and like anything with aggressive characteristics it tends to grow in intensity and escalate out of control, much like an argument between two people that starts off with one or two pointed words and ends in a brawl.

When an organisation confuses the victory need with the achievement need, it quickly starts to experience the escalation effect. The good practice associated with the effective achievement of organisational aims is transmogrified into its evil twin: the vision and purpose of the organisation becomes a frenetic call to arms to lay waste the opposition; the commitment to ongoing improvement becomes an increasingly hectic, never ending search for the strategy or tactic that will provide the final knock out punch to the opposition; each new improvement focuses on being faster, quicker and cheaper than the opposition, rather than making things better for the customer. This is an arms race that escalates into a limited war focused on competitors.

But as we all know, there is no such thing as a limited war, rather there are only differing levels of chaos and aggression that usually increase before they diminish. New products, processes, systems and project management techniques are used as weapons to pacify or wipe out competitors, and as these weapons become more advanced and effective, so too does the destruction and ferocity of the conflict, until it ends up raging out of control.

In the end everybody loses. How can any organisation win when their customers, ignored during the conflict, become refugee consumers searching frantically for the last remnants of the services they need before these too are completely consumed by the surrounding conflagration.

The escalation effect is also reflected in individual behaviour. Here is an example:

Organisations want better IT equipment to enhance and speed up communications and the spread of intelligence about competitors. In response staff using this equipment speed up their own work and increase the expectation on themselves and their equipment. Being first and quickest becomes everything, being second nothing. One day they find that their patience is very short and their expectations of the equipment very high. When the computer does not provide the required information or service immediately it gets hit. Perhaps it even ends up on the floor in bits.

Unfortunately this feeling of frustration can change its focus from equipment to people, with similar results. People are finding that their effective career life spans within organisations are shortening. They are only as good as their last project and when the first slight hints of imperfection are noticed they best start to look to a future elsewhere. If they do not they may find that their careers share the same fate as the apparently obsolete computer.

When a resource, human or otherwise, is no longer perceived as a powerful enough weapon to ensure victory, it becomes a focus of frustration for people and needs immediate replacement with something ‘better’: more advanced IT; enhanced project management techniques, more ruthless and effective ‘action orientated’ management techniques; high pressure training techniques; state of the art learning, development and qualification programmes; more highly qualified staff.

Individual patience becomes limited and attention span diminished. Rather than sticking with a problem and evolving a sustainable solution, the nearest and most obvious quick win is sort out and implemented, whether or not it is the most suitable approach.

The consequences of the victory need mind – set and the tightening grip of the escalation effect are:

Waste: More and more resources are poured into the fight with competitors: more advertising; more unsustainable price cuts; more investment in the latest technology to get that edge which is perceived as vital; more staff used as cannon fodder in the day to day trench warfare at the battle front. Perfectly good staff, processes and equipment are discarded in search of the ultimate weapon and much money spent on the latest gimmick that promises much but delivers little.

Alienation and irrelevance: As the organisation spirals out of control and wages its epic war with its competitor enemies, its life – blood and future, its customers, look on in bafflement and disbelief. Gradually the customers lose interest in the struggle going on in front of them, after all they are irrelevant to it and only spectators, and their interest (and most importantly custom) slowly fade into nothingness. The organisation is perceived as irrelevant to and alienated from its customers, from its very reason for existence.

Complacency: The organisation has invested heavily in its state of the art IT systems and advanced project management techniques. It feels secure within its defended bunkers brisling with the latest organisational ideas and technology. It feels it can now deal with any thing and any body. Indeed, who would dare challenge them now? The organisation becomes lazy in its thinking and approach to business, over relying on its new processes and technology to give it the answers it needs in order to overcome any problems or challenges.

When faced with a situation where it needs to react quickly its systems begin to click and wrrr, but once they have warmed up the challenge is over and the organisation finds itself unequal to it; it simply was not fast enough in its response (the ultimate irony given the amount invested in the latest technology). The ground troops have all been used up or let go and the complacent trust in new technological wonders found to be misplaced.

The habit of cracking a nut with a nuclear device: As the organisation becomes accustomed to its new toys, and acquiring new ones, it also forms the habit of using them just because it can: the latest project management technique is applied wholesale, even if some projects would benefit from a simpler approach; the latest software is applied to the most mundane of tasks, even when it just makes things more complicated; the latest staff appraisal and development technique (expensively designed by consultants) is applied to staff management, even though it takes staff ages to use it and an older more basic system would by more appropriate.

The toys are available and paid for and those that commissioned them want to see them working come what may – just because they can (and to justify the expense). The organisation may be failing but the ‘powers that be’ sit down and enjoy the spectacle. They see their latest toys do their work; whether they are effective or not, it is an impressive sight.

Guilt: As the need for victory and the escalation effect grow the organisation’s people start to feel increasingly uneasy. Over time this uneasiness turns to a feeling of guilt: guilt over misplaced effort; guilt over wasted and terminated staff; guilt about the ignored customers; guilt about the wasted resources and unemployed staff of past competitors.

This guilt becomes more pronounced as time goes on and as it does (because people do not like to feel guilty) a sense of resentment grows and gathers strength. This can lead to people leaving the organisation (perhaps even to help out competitors) or to open revolt about the direction and purpose of the organisation. Worst of all the guilt can lead to an overall fog of depression, within which people aimlessly wander for a while, eventually settling into an apathetic organisational sleep that lasts a long time and from which it is difficult to wake.

Look out towards customers and not just across towards competitors. Remember that an organisation only exists to meet the needs of its customers and stakeholders and that it only continues to exist and thrive if it continuously monitors their needs ands wishes and seeks to meet these as effectively as it can. Get to know your customers by not only talking to them but by becoming actively engaged with them. Set up focus groups and open workshops where they can give their views and opinions. When looking across at competitors and benchmarking your products or services against them use your knowledge of your customers as a touchstone – as a reference point with which to judge the actual effectiveness of competitor performance.

Encourage partnership working with other organisations and encourage it within the organisation. Look for ways to share experience and work jointly with other organisations. Sharing good practice and ideas need not, if effectively managed, mean the loss of uniqueness or trade secrets. It can result in new insights and the reframing of issues and problems that benefit organisations over the long term. Sharing experience and partnership working can also help organisations to become perceived as positive forces in the business community and society in general.

Encourage a culture of partnership and collaboration within the organisation by implementing an appraisal system that has a good balance of rewards between collaborative effort and individual achievement.

Counter the escalator effect with a cyclic approach to change. We all know that change is ongoing, constant and increasingly fast (itself a symptom of the increasing influence of the escalator effect). This does not mean, however, that it cannot be managed in order to maximise its positives and minimise its negatives. Create organisational cycles of change, which last perhaps 3, 4 or 5 years. This way everyone in the organisation will know that change is ongoing and inevitable, but that it will not escalate out of control. The organisation will avoid new initiatives and changes to processes, systems and technology piling up with no time to bed in, so causing more harm than good.

As part of this cyclic process create a tradition of organisational time outs. Give the organisation’s people time to get away from their everyday work and take pause to consider how the organisation is doing – the direction it is currently headed in and the direction it actually needs to take. Doing this will be a classic case of going slowly initially in order to go faster and be more responsive and effective later. It focuses on the long – term life of the organisation, rather than just tomorrow. It also serves to slow down the escalator so the organisation can get off it if it wishes, or more easily stop or reverse its direction.

Think fit for purpose not fit for anything. What precisely is the purpose of the organisation and what resources does it really need in order to achieve this as effectively as possible? Does it really need to spend vast amounts on consultants to design new systems and processes that not only meet the organisation’s needs but exceeds them indecently? Would something cheaper and designed in house do the job just as well? Does every inspector or sales person really need a top of the range all singing all dancing laptop when all most of them will need it for is filing reports and sending and receiving e - mails remotely? If they have a laptop do they really need the remote mouse and palm top organiser as well?

When reacting to problems and issues always look for the measured and appropriate response. When significant organisational issues and problems arise they usually do so accompanied by a miasma of urgency, stress and pressure. Do not let this noxious fog get the better of you. Take a step back, stop reacting unthinkingly to the situation, consider how it affects the organisation and your role within it and then plan the most appropriate response. Before making any significant changes undertake a balance sheet analysis. Think specifically about what will be lost and gained by discarding what exists and embracing what is new.

Use of Weapons – Ian M Banks

Succeeding With Change – Tony Eccles