It’s probably obvious that different people
approach their work at a different pace – where some like a challenging,
fast-paced environment and others have their ‘cruise control’ switched on, just
going through the motions, but not really interested in pushing themselves.
The immediate thought might be that those
on cruise control would be quickly spotted and dealt with – but that is not
always the case. Those that have only worked in small to medium sized
businesses would be right in assuming the ‘cruise control’ mentality would
stick out like a sore thumb and can easily be dealt with through appraisal and
disciplinary procedures. That’s unless of course the organization has a ‘cruise
control’ mentality in the first place.
But in larger corporates it’s not quite that
simple. Here you can find people in management positions, earning good salaries
and benefits that simply don’t want to be challenged. They are happy to do
their time with as few ‘challenges’ as possible – often because these
challenges can put them at ‘risk’ of failing something and/or cause them to
work a little bit harder than they would like, and/or highlight that they don’t
have an up-to-date skill set to do the job at the highest standards.
Some big corporate cultures allow people to
hide and keep performance churning over, but at a very slow pace – they often
have managers above them who for some reason either don’t want to push their
subordinate manager and/or who are ‘fooled’ into believing that these ‘cruise
control’ managers are ‘doing the best
they can under extraordinary circumstances’.
The cruise control work pace seems to be
one of those ‘unspoken’ behaviors that employees know about – but often find it
hard to formally address. It certainly isn’t something that one can easily
assess at interview – unless you give the person specific tasks to do - and
even then you can’t be sure that’s the actual pace they’ll work at if employed.
The problem with the ‘cruise control’ mentality
is that when it is adopted by people in leadership positions on people who
don’t have the desire or natural inclination to work at this kind of slow pace –
the leader creates a demotivated and eventually disengaged workforce. Employees
who have a desire to continually improve and want to be part of the best
organization need leaders that will enable them to optimize their true
potential and this is done through positive engagement around a desired future
state and best practice – or at least an environment that allows them to strive
to be the best they can be at any point in time
It’s worth being aware that these ‘cruise
control’ leaders can remain hidden in large organisations their entire career –
destroying the potential their department had to create something really
special during their tenure and at the same time ‘sucking’ the innovative,
life-blood out of their employees. In the work place these leaders (and I use
the term loosely) are very good at manipulating their environment – they like
to surround themselves with like-minded people who also don’t want to put in
too much effort and are pretty good at ‘selling’ their work load as
‘overstretched’ as it is – giving the impression that they don’t have the time
to do more – rather than not having the inclination.
If you’ve ever worked for someone in
‘cruise control’ mode you’ll know how demotivational and frustrating the experience
can be. Where these leaders will listen to your idea’s but always find reasons
why the idea can’t be implemented – often blaming executives or managers
further up the chain – making comments like “I’d love to support this idea but
so-and-so doesn’t want us to implement any new initiatives at the moment”; where
often, in these command and control like structures, the employee can’t verify
whether these comments are fact or fiction.
Leadership isn’t rocket science as many
would like you to think – it’s about optimizing an organizations sustainable
growth through the optimization of existing and latent potential in each and
every employee and bringing those individuals together in well-designed teams,
in a transparent culture that makes work and innovation a pleasurable rule,
rather than a strained exception.
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