Stop Corporate Craziness
Running around in circles? Discover a way to stop the craziness!
Mary, an executive manager in a large corporation,
reflects on her work experience after leaving a high-level job: "I can
hardly believe how caught up I got in the craziness. I worked 70- to
85-hours a week. Now when I look back at the projects, they seem
meaningless! How could I get so wrapped up? Everything seemed critical!"
Signs of Craziness
We're unable to focus on one thing long enough to get it done. We go from
meeting to meeting-scattered, barely attentive, leaving loose ends and
confusion in our wake. There's never enough time. Weeks go by in a blur of
activity. We can't distinguish one day from the next. Everything is urgent.
The pressure never subsides. There's always a crisis that needs our
attention. We're tightly wound, unable to settle down and consider the
implication and consequences of our actions.
We Have No Time
We pride ourselves on the number of balls we can keep in the air. A group of
exhausted employees asks an executive to prioritize 150 initiatives. He
refuses, saying: "Everything is important! If I prioritize thing, the others
won't get done." We're overwhelmed by the amount of work there is to do. Yet
we rarely feel the satisfaction of seeing a project well done.
To keep things going we delegate to others, but we don't have time to
explain what we need. We don't have time for our personal lives. Spouses,
families and friends are seen as intrusions in our busy schedules.
Organizational Depression
We can exist in this frenetic state of activity for only so long. After a
while we are affected. Layoffs, restructuring, new strategies and changing
job requirements leave us numb, depressed and silently discontent. We feel
whipsawed and no longer want to play.
Vitality is missing. One research report states that eighty percent of
employees feel their jobs are "meaningless." We feel, "What's the use?
Nothing's going to change. Why bother?" We bite our tongues-even though a
small voice inside of us says, "This is nuts!" We lose our confidence,
overwork to prove ourselves, and doubt the value of our contributions. It's
easier to catch the craziness than to try a new way.
Finding a Way Out
To succeed we must make the quality of our relationships as important as our
strategies, budgets and schedules. The new bottom line is that we need each
other. Complex solutions and fast time-to-market can only be achieved
through clear vision and successful collaboration. No one person, group or
authority has all the answers. Intelligent decisions require input from many
sources, calm discussion of implications, appropriate time to plan, and
trust that allows us to implement these decisions.
It takes courage to do things differently. To change the game we must take
down the walls between us and create safe environments for people to share
their experiences. We need to make it safe for employees to confront their
bosses; where business decisions can be challenged; where rocking the boat
is expected, honesty is the norm and deep convictions are shared. Honest
opinions and relationships are the untapped resource that will help our
organization to prosper.
We can start by having candid conversations with co-workers and bosses and
asking: "How do we build trust? Where do we need to communicate more
effectively?"
To recharge work, we must shuck our psychological armor and start sharing
our opinions, feelings, concerns and vulnerabilities. It's imperative that
we build a new kind of workplace that encourages us to take responsibility
for each other's well being. We can find a way out of the craziness by
discovering the calm in our connection to each other.
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