Another week, another crop of downsizings, and with few notable exceptions, HR people are telling me how they’re choosing the leaders over the non-leaders as the keepers. And I’m groaning inside.
Has anyone figured out how companies run when everyone’s a leader?
For one thing, no one’s willing to make the coffee.
For another, the self-promotion rises and the effective internal communication falls.
There are loads of strategic plans (if they ever get out of the planning stage, that is) but there’s no one who actually prefers to DO something.
And no one fixes the little annoying things that threaten to jam the progress and no one loves tracking the instructions that tell you what to do to unjam them.
But it’s like someone made it a rule that being a leader is the only worthwhile position. I’m going to riff on John Coltrane now and declare, unequivocally:
Damn the Rules, it’s the Team that Counts. You need all the Roles in your song, anyway.
Just give me some improvisation, baby.
