The Sense Makers

Organizational unconscious

During 1998-99 I worked in the public relations division of the largest life assurance company in the southern hemisphere. In terms of growth, the organization had outgrown its motherland, South Africa, and was on the point of demutualizing and listing on various stock exchanges, including the London stock exchange. One of my functions as was to produce the “glossies,” the annual reports of this 154 year old life assurance company.

Working to deadlines, I remember burning the midnight oil, working with 50 content experts, the graphic design people, the chief accountant, actuaries, in-house copywriters, and chasing directors and board members with the photographer in hand.

And then after many proofs, when the “glossy” finally came off the press. The annual reports got shipped out on schedule to high net-worth investors, trade-union stakeholder groups, members who requested a copy and to every branch in the country.

After all this activity, I remember feeling disappointed. After all that effort, no-one was queuing up to read the copy, hot off the press. Although the organization was experiencing incredible growing pains as it became an international player, none of the true culture, spirit and symbols of the organization was reflected in the pages. Not able to put my finger on it at the time, I now know that the annual report reflected one aspect of the narrative, “what’s happening” but not “what’s really going on here?”

Once the annual report is out, leaders, employees seldom read the numbers. As a customer, the most anyone might read is to casually flip through the pages, while waiting for an appointment with a representative of the company.

But leaders also seldom read the organization’s actual balance sheet. Apart from income and expenditure, assets and liabilities, it’s the off-balance sheet numbers that show the actual human cost of staying in business. Those numbers are rarely seen. Consider this fictitious scenario:

Although Mike Pender, the sales manager at Learnys Inc., regularly exceeds the sales projections, we re-calculated the balance sheet, by including the off-balance sheet realities of Learnys. This new balance sheet showed the actual cost of sales to Learnys, and the numbers turned out to be less rosy. Why? The off-balance sheet numbers revealed that two extremely skilled members of the IT production team resigned because, in their view, Mike had a short fuse, lacked integrity and was in need of some vital social skills. We included the many hours that were consumed last year at meetings trying to keep the peace instead of addressing the actual issues between Mike and the production team. We included the loss of productivity of the production team because of Mike’s unreasonable demands and tantrums. We also projected the cost to replace the intellectual capital loss if five more member of the production team decide to resign because no one has the know-how and courage to confront Mike. And if left unchecked, like bad cholestrol, we calculated the cost to Learnys Inc. if it’s veins get further clogged with the toxic waste of interpersonal fallout between sales and production.

If leaders look at the company through its cultural and symbolic frames, and zoom in on the off-balance sheet realities, it might spur different actions and better results.

I can’t help but think of the incredible loss of intellectual capital, energy and human potential that wasn’t reflected in some way in the annual report, because the frames of reference were more about structure, and traditional powers and politics, while ignoring the significant contributions through the lens of culture, spirit, symbolism.

The result was an incomplete picture, overlooking, misinterpreting or reframing important signals and thus presenting a partial perspective of what’s really going on. [Bolman & Deal, pg 4]

And even as the annual report is shipped out, most everyone knows it’s a partial story because at the same time, other numbers and narratives are being circulated around the water cooler. They reflect the off-balance sheet numbers that show the actual human cost and potential of the organization.

It’s the employees, often overlooked, who hold informational and informal power. They are the ones who hold the keys to the real kingdom – real transformational change.

Dene Rossouw