Is Your Organization Chart Giving Someone on Your Payroll a Hiding Place?

Two films – “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Lone Survivor” – provide moviegoers with insight into the elite combat units of the U.S. Navy SEALs.

The SEALs – Sea, Air, Land teams – trace their beginnings to World War II when the need for covert reconnaissance of landing beaches intensified. Over time, the teams evolved to include the demolition of enemy landing defenses and, ultimately, to commando-type raids.

An early SEAL team member, in describing their work, said, “We were ready to what nobody else could do, and what nobody else wanted to do.”

Make no mistake. Most of us do not face life and death issues on the job. Yet when problems arise in the workplace, do you find yourself relying on a small team of committed employees?

Character Counts

In his book Lone Survivor that inspired the movie of the same name, Navy SEAL, Marcus Luttrell writes:

The work of Navy SEALs is brutally hard; the fitness regimes are as harsh and uncompromising as any program in the free world. The examinations are searching and difficult. Nothing but the highest possible standard is acceptable in the SEAL teams. 

It’s harder to become a Navy SEAL than it is to get into Harvard Law School.  Different, but harder.

And perhaps above all, your character is under a microscope at all times; instructors, teachers, senior chiefs, and officers are always watching for the character flaw, the weakness which may one day lead to the compromise of your teammates.  We can’t stand that. We can stand damn near anything, except that.

Character counts in your organization, too.  Or, rather, you say it does.

For my new book – Accountability: The Key to Driving a High-Performance Organization (McGraw-Hill) – I surveyed more than 3,200 executives worldwide. When asked, 80% said “we do what’s right for our customers, employees, sup­pliers, and owners, even when it hurts.” And 76% said “we are accountable for our performance and accept responsibility for our mistakes.”

When asked specific questions, the good intentions’ executives said existed inside their organizations were practiced with less consistency.

For example, the numbers drop to 58% who “strongly agree” or “agree” that “accountability isn’t just top-down; everyone knows they are accountable to one another.” The implication of this statistic is that 4 of every 10 employees view holding people accountable as the responsibility of the supervisor – not the peer.

Imagine the new levels of performance you can attain when everyone in the organization – not just management, midlevel executives and supervisors – views holding one another accountable as an essential part of their daily duties.

Character Revealed

Our actions are the outward expression of our character.

The character of under-performers in your organization is revealed when people provide excuses to explain why activities previously committed to remain incomplete or not completed to the agreed-upon standard.

I’ve talked with executives who believe an organization chart is little more than a theoretical exercise.

Not so.  An organization chart is another tool smart leaders use to create clarity around roles and responsibilities.

Is your org chart – or lack of one – giving someone on your payroll a hiding place?

Under-performers don’t like clarity, specifics and measures to track performance, because there’s no place to hide.

SEALs call this person the “Gray Man”.

During the punishing training that all candidates must survive to become a Navy SEAL, the Gray Man “was the guy who blended into the group. Never the best guy, but also not the worst, the Gray Man always met the standards, exceeding them rarely, and stayed invisible,” writes Mark Owen, a pseudonym for a former Navy SEAL, in No Easy Day, the book on which “Zero Dark Thirty” is based.

Because the instructors could not be with the candidates all the time, they relied on peer feedback “to get a better sense of who was really performing well. The instructors took our top-5-bottom-5 [assessment] and compared them with their lists. Our assessment contributed to the fate of a candidate because it drew a clearer picture” of a candidate.

In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined a corporation as “an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”

By contrast, SEAL teams operate at peak performance because they are trained to do so, and because each person counts on the character of those on his team to do the things they are responsible for doing.

Which team is yours?

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