Broken Company Broken Souls
Marcia comes in every day without fail and sits at her desk and appears to work diligently at the tasks at hand. She rarely, if ever, calls in sick and is the one person everyone can count on to work through lunch without complaint. Marcia is considered a team player by the staff and appears to be liked by everyone so her boss considers himself fortunate to have her on his team.
Marcia on the other hand has a different opinion. Marcia comes in every day because that is what she has to do to get the paycheck. She gets to her desk and rarely leaves because she has fifteen chat conversations going on at once and of course dozens of personal emails to attend to. She makes use of the high speed Internet to download music to her conveniently hidden IPOD and is often engaged in a mad game of Texas Hold Em going on a game site. She sprinkles in a little bit of work here and there to feel like she contributed her self-imposed important piece to the company's success; knowing in her own mind the company wouldn't likely exist without her critical contribution. She always appears busy to anyone who might be looking but all and all no one checks on her so she is pretty much left to do as she pleases. She passes the time until five o'clock when her real life resumes.
Marcia's company brags about being a cutting edge employer that only hires top-notched talent and that every member of the team is critical to their success. It's self-described literature to the college recruiters is "being the place people want to work." The recruiters know that a candidate's placement at this company is a sure road to a comatose mental existence but the company pays a big placement fee so they keep finding and attracting talent.
The company is filled with many Marcias on ever level of the organization. Secretly in the boardroom the executive team knows the company is struggling and has many issues to contend with, not the least of which is how to get the team on the same page. The "team" doesn't seem to want to get excited about anything these days and though it appears everyone is working hard, things aren't working. Both sales and customer satisfaction are beginning to falter and the new products are way behind in development. The board of directors is demanding changes happen and happen soon. They debate for hours about what's wrong and who's to blame because of course someone has to be blamed. Many executives and and department heads dig in and prepare for the inevitable battle of duck, bob, deflect, assault and cover your ass.
Marcia occasionally looks up from her computer monitor to make sure the suits are still engaged in whatever it is they are talking about. It looks like they are going to be in there for a while yet so she smiles to herself as she realizes she has a little time to do some online Christmas shopping before the next Hold Em tournament starts. She glances at the clock and says to herself only three more hours to go until happy hour. She prepares to dig in and looks across the office and if she didn't know better, she would swear everyone else was doing exactly what she was doing.
So my Ripple friends....a question. Who's wrong in this story? Who's ultimately to blame? And maybe more importantly what needs to be done to fix this?
I realize this is a very loose and open-ended story with few specific details. Or are the details that I have given you somehow oddly familiar? Perhaps with your own corporate environment?
In my next post we will look at what's possibly going on but in the mean time I would love to hear your take on what is happening with Marcia and her company.
Marcia on the other hand has a different opinion. Marcia comes in every day because that is what she has to do to get the paycheck. She gets to her desk and rarely leaves because she has fifteen chat conversations going on at once and of course dozens of personal emails to attend to. She makes use of the high speed Internet to download music to her conveniently hidden IPOD and is often engaged in a mad game of Texas Hold Em going on a game site. She sprinkles in a little bit of work here and there to feel like she contributed her self-imposed important piece to the company's success; knowing in her own mind the company wouldn't likely exist without her critical contribution. She always appears busy to anyone who might be looking but all and all no one checks on her so she is pretty much left to do as she pleases. She passes the time until five o'clock when her real life resumes.
Marcia's company brags about being a cutting edge employer that only hires top-notched talent and that every member of the team is critical to their success. It's self-described literature to the college recruiters is "being the place people want to work." The recruiters know that a candidate's placement at this company is a sure road to a comatose mental existence but the company pays a big placement fee so they keep finding and attracting talent.
The company is filled with many Marcias on ever level of the organization. Secretly in the boardroom the executive team knows the company is struggling and has many issues to contend with, not the least of which is how to get the team on the same page. The "team" doesn't seem to want to get excited about anything these days and though it appears everyone is working hard, things aren't working. Both sales and customer satisfaction are beginning to falter and the new products are way behind in development. The board of directors is demanding changes happen and happen soon. They debate for hours about what's wrong and who's to blame because of course someone has to be blamed. Many executives and and department heads dig in and prepare for the inevitable battle of duck, bob, deflect, assault and cover your ass.
Marcia occasionally looks up from her computer monitor to make sure the suits are still engaged in whatever it is they are talking about. It looks like they are going to be in there for a while yet so she smiles to herself as she realizes she has a little time to do some online Christmas shopping before the next Hold Em tournament starts. She glances at the clock and says to herself only three more hours to go until happy hour. She prepares to dig in and looks across the office and if she didn't know better, she would swear everyone else was doing exactly what she was doing.
So my Ripple friends....a question. Who's wrong in this story? Who's ultimately to blame? And maybe more importantly what needs to be done to fix this?
I realize this is a very loose and open-ended story with few specific details. Or are the details that I have given you somehow oddly familiar? Perhaps with your own corporate environment?
In my next post we will look at what's possibly going on but in the mean time I would love to hear your take on what is happening with Marcia and her company.
posted by Steve Harper at 5:45 AM
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