Is Your Job Driving You Nuts?

Be a team player but focus on your job.

Take risks but don´t fail.

Think out of the box but follow procedure.

Tell me the truth but don´t bring me problems.

Value employees but fire average performers

Help customers but spend less time with them.

Work more hours but mind your home life.

Organizational contradictions can drive you crazy. To maintain your sanity you need to recognize and dissolve them. In this post, I will help you recognize them; in the next one, dissolve them.

Hard Choices

The contradictions arise from a denial of logical or material limitations.

For a given technology and a given amount of resources, there is a limit to the number of goods that can be produced or goals that can be attained. In economics, this is called a “production possibilities frontier,” or PPF. Along the PPF it is impossible to produce more of one good without producing less of the other, since resources have to be transferred from the latter to the former.

For example, a person can devote her time to work on her project, or to help a colleague. The time used in one task is not available for the other. Thus, unless one is idle, or using her time inefficiently (as in point “C” in the graph below), there is a trade-off or “opportunity cost.”

When you spend some of your time on your project (X) and the rest of your time helping your colleague (Y), you will reach a certain progress (Xa,Ya) in each project. This is point “A” on the curve. You could spend less time helping your colleague, more time on your project, and reach point “B” (Xb, Yb). Any point on the PPF is a feasible combination of progress for both projects.

The problem is that the instruction, “Be a team player but focus on your job,” seems to require you to attain point D, which is out of the PPF, and therefore not feasible! Your manager seems to say, “Devote all your time to your project,” and at the same time, “Devote all your time to support your colleague.” This is clearly impossible. And that is why crazy-making managers hate clarity.

To get away with this, these managers use abstractions, innuendo, mixed messages and confusion. Like vampires, they loathe the light of reason. Telling them the truth, that is, that you don´t know how to attain their desired outcome with your skills and resources will produce a fit of rage.

Perhaps your manager thinks that you have free time or are working inefficiently (as in point C). Or perhaps he thinks that there is a way to expand the PPF through additional resources or an improvement in technology that would allow you to reach point D. It may be possible to make point D feasible, but you and your manager would have to rationally discuss how to make it so.

Going Crazy

When Harvard Business School professor Chris Argyris asked managers how they behave, they claimed to follow values such as humility, honesty and respect corresponding to the mutual learning model.

Argyris's extensive research found that the way managers claimed to behave is quite different from the way they actually behaved. In real life, managers followed values such as control, manipulation and easing-in corresponding to the unilateral control model .

If your manager’s behavior as a controller contradicts his self-image as a learner he must keep the contradiction hidden. Once exposed, it becomes unsustainable.

When you combine unattainable goals with contradictory managers you get double binds, those emotionally distressing dilemmas that can cause schizophrenia. Argyris found double binds of the following kind in every organization he studied:

1. The manager gives a contradictory order.
2. The manager makes the contradiction un-discussable.
3. The manager makes the un-discussibility un-discussable.

For instance, a supervisor tells a worker that whenever he detects a defect, he must immediately stop the production line and report it. The following day, the supervisor tells the worker that when there is a rush, he should report any defects but shouldn’t stop the line. If there is no clear standard of when “there is a rush,” the worker is trapped: If he stops the line, he will get in trouble; if he doesn’t stop the line, he will also get in trouble. If he tries to get his supervisors to resolve the contradiction, he will also get in trouble. “We are too busy to solve your problems. Deal with it!”

In a double bind not only you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. You are also damned if you tell your boss you are stuck!

Individuals aren’t the only ones with un-discussable contradictions. Business scholars Manfred Kets de Vries and Danny Miller present some of the most common corporate ones. “We are good citizens of this community” (while we pollute the town’s lake). “Our workers have autonomy” (while we fire anyone who questions authority). “Quality is paramount” (while we sell defective products). “People are our most important asset” (while 50% of our employees leave every year).

Schi·zor·ga·ni·za·tion: The absence of organization, systematic arrangement, or unity. Condition characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioral, or intellectual disturbances. A situation that results from the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic qualities, identities, or activities. Organizational behavior motivated by contradictory or conflicting principles.

How to Avoid the Straight Jacket

Inconsistencies and misunderstandings are inevitable. Organizational life is too complex to avoid apparent contradictions. The good news is that inconsistencies are necessary, but not sufficient to create double binds. The condition for craziness is un-discussability.

Consequently, the best strategy to dissolve double binds is to make them discussable. A culture of mutual learning, in which people are open to discussing dilemmas, is the best antidote.

In my next post, published here, I give you some practical suggestions on how to dissolve double binds. I hope that understanding their logical structure can keep you sane.

What double binds or contradictions have you experienced in your professional life?

Fred Kofman, PhD. in Economics, is Professor of Leadership and Coaching at the Conscious Business Center of the University Francisco Marroquín and a faculty member of Lean In. He is the author of Conscious Business, How to Build Value Through Values (also available as an audio program).

Photo: Maridav/Shutterstock.com