“Oh We Love … The Old One”

 

Do you remember the scene from The Wizard of Oz (1939) where the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion (and Toto, too!) have crept up on the Wicked Witch’s castle, and watch her guards march about the front gate, in formation? They are singing/chanting, but for the longest time I had no idea what they were saying. They are actually repeating the words in this blog’s title, over and over, using only two notes and a militaristic drum score which adds dramatically to the creepy motif of the castle. Only after Dorothy accidentally dissolves the Wicked Witch do we discover that this “love” that the guards have for “the old one” wasn’t so deep after all. In fact, the guards appear almost joyous when they realize the Witch is gone, which kind of makes one wonder whose idea it was for them to sing those words, over and over, in the first place. My guess would be “upper management.”

Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…

I wanted to save this organizational culture-related subject, the darkest of this month’s theme set, for last. It’s highly relevant, though, since, while it won’t have a current impact on all of my readers, I can safely assert that all of my readers, at one time or another, has dealt or will deal with this topic. No, it’s not how to ward off flying monkeys (actually, come to think of it, it is about that – more in a minute). Rather, it’s how to get by in those times you find yourself in a highly toxic organizational culture, and a well-placed bucket-load of water won’t dissolve all of the toxicity generators.

We’ve all either been there, or will be there, or both. Let me start by stipulating that a toxic organizational culture is NOT one where you disagree with your boss or coworkers, or think that you should be receiving more compensation or respect. By that definition, every organization out there is toxic. Some of the indicators of a genuinely toxic organizational culture are:

• The organization is not a meritocracy, as evidenced by cronyism, nepotism, or clan-ish behavior. The most talented don’t advance, only the best connected.
• Managers allow ex parte conversations. Ex parte conversations are strictly disallowed in the legal professions, since, if the judge is listening to only one side of an argument without opposing counsel present for rebuttal (or even evaluation), then one version of a narrative is being advanced at the expense of the other, and the truth is rarely achieved by such means. Management is no different in those instances where ideas or personnel are competing for acceptance. If certain people or ideas are being advanced on, say, the golf course, you might work for an organization with a toxic culture.
• Based on my previous descriptions of the Maccoby archetypes (or even directly from his book The Gamesman), take a copy of your organization’s org chart, and next to each name place a “C” (Craftsman), “G” (Gamesman), “M” (Company Man), or “J” (Jungle Fighter). If you end up with a bunch of “J”s, or even one “J” overseeing a lot of “M”s, you are probably in a toxic organization.

The best remedy, of course, is to find another position with an organization that shows none of these characteristics. Realistically, that’s often not an option, and the PM professional needs to make the best of a toxic situation. Here’s where it gets tricky, since there’s a right way and a wrong way of surviving a toxic organizational culture, and to make this distinction clear we have to return to the Wicked Witch’s castle, and our old, creepy friends, the Flying Monkeys.

Creepy in the movie, and not much better in real life.

The term “Flying Monkeys,” in psychology, refers to those people who are associated with narcissists, and help them advance their nefarious agendas through tactics that are strongly associated with the Jungle Fighter Maccoby archetype. I’m going to stick with the Maccoby archetype here, rather than speculate along psychological lines, since Maccoby made observations about people’s observable behavior, and observable behavior is the sole basis for furthering organizational behavior and performance theory.

So, when you find yourself in a toxic organizational culture, you must not only deal with the Jungle Fighter execs themselves, but with their “Flying Monkeys.” To do so, let’s start by considering the four archetypes displayed by members of a dysfunctional family:

• The Golden Child is clearly the favorite, and gets away with things the others can’t.
• The Mascot enthusiastically supports the family as a whole, and seeks to smooth over conflicts.
• The Lost Child simply seeks to get by with minimal interface with the rest of the family.
• The Scapegoat is blamed, usually unfairly, for the difficulties the family encounters.

Toxic organizational cultures will often display characteristics similar to dysfunctional families, but with some modifications. Let’s evaluate the following payoff grid (Hey! I’m in to Game Theory! We love our payoff grids!):

In the dysfunctional organization, the Golden Child is considered the most loyal and competent, and the Scapegoat is considered least in both categories. In this game of “Escape the Witch’s Castle,” the main goal is to avoid letting the Flying Monkeys put you into the Scapegoat category. The wrong way of doing so is to ensconce yourself in the Mascot category by performing overt displays of loyalty to the Jungle Fighting execs. This is how people get turned into Flying Monkeys. Rather, focus your energies on technical performance and quiet displays of competency, all in order to move towards the Lost Child category. From here you can either wait out the toxic influences within the organization, or use this archetype as a platform from which to move, either to a division within your existing organization that’s not dysfunctional, or out of the macro organization altogether.

If this blog was a bit compressed, or if you would like more information on this particular strategic approach, you might want to check out my ProjectManagement.com webinar on the same topic, here. Alternately, you could come up with an adequate defense against winged Cercopithecidae, though, if an actual lion and a armored man with an axe couldn’t stop them, well…