Faux-hesion: Attempts to unify an organization that actually divide it

The CEO’s words echoed with the drama of an Olympic ceremony. “We will be one Henley Industries!”  With that, banners broadcasting “One Henley” unfurled around the world. We’ve seen at least fifteen corporations put “one” in front of their names, launching campaigns to dramatically increase interconnection across the organization. 

As if that would work.

Fragmentation is a natural byproduct of scaling. Whether $20M or $20B, the routine mitosis of growth will eventually divide your organization into pieces. A holistic approach to organization design with continual adaptation ensures a cohesive identity across an enterprise. Unfortunately, the difficulty and ongoing effort required to sustain it lead most organizations to settle for cheaper knock-offs, perpetuating cosmetic cohesion while ignoring splintering at the organization’s core. Like new home-owners who put laminate over linoleum, executives take dangerously superficial approaches to unifying organizations. They forfeit the organizational magic where everyone feels part of an epic story greater than themselves, contributing with reckless abandon.

Here are the four most lethal “faux-hesion” culprits that do more to undermine unity than create it.

1. Big targets – Forgery for Strategy  The single most unifying factor of an integrated organization is shared, understood direction. A widely known, embraced strategy is the mechanism that creates this. It’s astounding how many organizations don’t have one. If you go around the room and ask members of the executive team “what’s our strategy,” you’ll likely get many different answers. Sales and product quotas, growth targets, and mission statements are widespread counterfeits for real strategy. Big targets are notorious substitutes for direction intended to “rally” the organization: “We will be the #1 provider of…,” or “We will be the fastest growing…,” or “We will dominate….” There’s nothing wrong with ambitions that inspire organizations to stretch, but declaring big targets doesn’t unify organizations to reach them. It may whip them into a brief frenzy of enthusiasm, but once the hype settles, it’s back to business as usual. The loss of credibility from “All hat, no cowboy” declarations fuels eye-rolling when anyone mentions the aspiration. Credibility of the goal is shaken, as is commitment to reaching it. Big targets can ironically lead to inertia and weaken cohesion. Instead, create substantiated plans that define competitive distinction, differentiating capability, priority customers, and key investments. That will align your organization.

2. Values – the Culture Cover-up Typically displayed in the lobby or on a screensaver, most companies have a published statement of values. Integrity, innovation, teamwork, customer service, sustainability, respect — insert your company’s version with catchy language — are common. A toxic culture, collection of sub-cultures, or pervasive unwanted behavior can prompt leaders to pull the “values” lever as the antidote. Underneath the chosen pithy words is often the insidious intention to correct. “Speed” suddenly becomes a value when time-to-market cycles are industry lagging. “Integrity” becomes a value when there’s been a scandal. When a new sacred value is publicly declared with the unspoken intention of fixing the people asked to embrace it, you can bet embracing it is the last thing that happens. 

   A company’s values must reflect DNA that makes it uniquely successful, conveying to members, “This is what it takes to succeed here.” From strategy to HR processes, they are woven deeply into the organization’s fabric with undeniable consistency between actions and words. Values for which violating carries no consequence create duplicity that becomes its own performance-sabotaging toxin. Worse, faux values become a weapon used to expose hypocrisy of leaders whose failure to model them becomes everyone else’s excuse not to try. True cultural norms drive results, are consistent with requirements of strategy, and engender strong communal pride. Values everyone knows mean nothing weaken cohesion, and with it, confidence and passion, leaving behind shame and cowardice to shape behavior.

3. Meetings and Reports – Surrogates for Synchronized Governance  I’d love a dollar for every time I’ve heard the complaint, “We spend all our time in unproductive meetings and generating useless reports, so we have to do our ‘day jobs’ at night.” Excessive meetings and their accompanying worthless reports are a vivid sign of poorly designed, or non-existent governance.  When decision rights are not carefully distributed with requisite authority and resources, councils, task-forces, and committees proliferate like a bad flu. Endless piles of presentations and spreadsheets justify the meetings’ value and serve as evidence of productivity. Owners of these groups and reports frantically cling to them as emblems heralding their indispensable value and importance. The waste of such carnage can’t be overstated. A windstorm of meetings and reports that brings the organization to a grinding halt can be lethal. Synchronized governance speeds execution, focuses resources, and frees capacity because the only needed meetings and reports are those tied to a broadly coordinated set of governing devices. There’s no need for superfluous meetings and reports whose “busy work” weakens cohesion.

4. Teambuilding Offsites – Imitation Linkage The frequent phone call goes something like this: “Our executive team’s annual offsite is next month. The (insert yours: new CEO, recent crisis, unexpected bad results) has the team on edge, and we’re starting to see “not great behavior.” We’re wondering if you could come in for an afternoon to discuss high performing leadership teams.” Then I’ll hear about the kayaking trip, cooking class, or scavenger hunt planned for that morning as our “opening act.” What’s most terrifying about these conversations is the callers, who are desperately trying to convince themselves this will have material impact when their gut knows it’s a waste. They fail to recognize, however, how much worse it could make things. Occasionally, we’ll get to introduce a more realistic understanding of what offsites can and can’t do, and, more importantly, what must happen for the six months following the offsite for real change to stick. Our data inevitably reveals the “not great behavior” is not new and worse than anyone’s admitting. Border wars make coordination impossible. The usual suspects: sales and marketing are fighting over pricing, supply chain and sales are clashing over shipping times, HR is holding up key R&D hires, and finance is cutting costs in over-built functions. Camps have formed, and relationships between leaders are strained, damaged by succession rivalry. The team leader is a classic hub-and-spoker who has directed decision pathways to his desk. Undiscussables have piled up, clogging healthy, open dissent. These are more than symptoms of bad teaming. An organization’s top team has unique responsibility for stitching organizational seams to integrate critical work. Leaders point to “silos” as though the leaders themselves are mere spectators. Territorialism results when linkages aren’t established, and individual agendas become the default driver of functional priorities. A few hours in a kayak and a generic discussion of great teams won’t build commitment to collective success; they will dilute it. Building integrating linkages across seams and holding executives accountable for mutual commitments will create cohesion at the top, setting the stage for the organization to follow. 

   Organizational unity isn’t a mysterious phenomenon. It also doesn’t happen by sprinkling “cohesion pixie dust” over the organization in the forms discussed above. A harmonious, cohesive organization that feels whole happens because you do the hard work to build and keep it that way.