Time Capsules of Bad Management

Some workplaces are time capsules.

Inside, you'll find management techniques that started to go out of style shortly after the Second World War. Supervisors yell at employees, casually threaten termination, discriminate, seldom document, and generally turn the working environment into a cross between a Three Stooges comedy, Deliverance, and Lord of the Flies.

These mini-dictators stay away from lawyers and consultants because they rightly suspect that an objective observer would tell them to change. That, of course, is undesirable. After all, it can be enjoyable to be the police in a police state. In many cases, their style is not at all unusual in their industry. When they go to breakfast or conferences with the competition, they hear stories resembling their own sorry practices.

To modify a line from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, these characters define good management down. What would get a manager sacked elsewhere is transformed into acceptable practice; indeed, it becomes a virtue. Being abusive is confused with being tough. Arbitrary discipline is confused with decisiveness. Not documenting or failing to use progressive discipline is equated with saving time. Since it can be hard to find any part of the company that has not been infected by this attitude, employees often have few internal allies. In these bizarre realms, even the human resources professionals, who should know better, can fall prey to the prevailing nonsense.

In short, it is a culture of incompetence.

Changing a time capsule culture requires support from the top and a willingness to take swift action against managers who won't get with the reform program. It requires leadership by example, supportive policies and procedures, and consistent enforcement of the new culture. If any one of those elements is missing, the reform won't work.

And then the time capsule culture will continue until the organization goes under or a crisis forces improvement.