Overcoming Destructive Management Communication Behavior (Jim Lukaszewski's Strategy Newsletter)

When we analyze those things that cause management programs to implode, explode, derail, self-destruct, slide into the ditch, or fall significantly short of expectations, we find identifiable negative communication behaviors and activities that precede or predict disaster and cause negative collateral damage. Many of these negative behaviors are identified below. If any of the destructive behaviors, attitudes, and approaches on this list are a routine part of your management’s communication behaviors, many past failures can be better identified and future failures forecast. One useful way to bring unhelpful behaviors and attitudes to management’s attention is to label the behaviors, describe them, and then distribute these descriptions widely so that others can recognize, point out, and discourage these negative behaviors as they occur. But there are some important caveats to overcoming management’s destructive communication behaviors. Keep these five precautions in mind: 1. Remember who’s driving the bus: It is, after all, management’s prerogative to move the organization in the direction it wishes, with the tools and methodologies it chooses. 2. Staff functions have limitations: Public relations, law, finance, human resources, and other support services are staff functions. Quite often, there are severe limitations on just how much behavior change a staff function can actually foster. After all, the staff’s function is to help those who run the organization run it better rather than to substitute their own operational judgments.