Have sat in a couple of meetings recently with management and can’t believe how they filter everything to sound so positive. Really disturbing that while Rome is burning they don’t seem to even notice.
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The famous and time proven Exxon management communication method called: “Spoon Theory”
- Project has a bucket of shlt that it should report upward.
- Showing entire bucket of shlt to management would be career sulcide for both the project and the manager.
- Keep full shlt bucket hidden.
- Only show management 1 spoon of project’s shlt at a time.
- Over an extended duration, management accepts all the bucket full and everyone happy.
5a. Manager likely knew about the bucket full of shlt from the beginning because utilized Spoon Theory throughout career. Manager never asks about the bucket.
5b. If bucket of shlt so large that Manager can smell it easily, Manager sponsors IPR audit team. Manager gets to report upward to execs that he discovered the hidden shlt bucket and gets credit for bucket discovery instead of blame for bucket contents.
All supervisors and middle managers have already been told to make everything look beautiful or they will be NSIed next year. They were told this about 3 months ago. You should have noticed a change in your supervisors attitude recently. They were also told that the implosion of XOM's culture was their fault and they have to fix it. Darren, Jack, Neil, and other "hotshots" will never accept that they messed up badly. We should all quit right now.
I'm so tired of the repetitive positive story fed out at each and every forum of any description, that bears absolutely no semblance to reality. If I cared it would be quite nauseating, as it is I just take it as an hour or two getting paid to switch off and do nothing.
I'm so confused with our most recent culture employee survey... We score 70, 80, 90+% in the majority of areas.... All is well???????
Yes, while I understand the fear of upward discussions of our problems, I think it can be welcomed if don’t in a respectful manner.
I also don’t fear PIP. It might be a blessing, given that I seem to have trouble deciding whether to stay or go.
I don't recommend getting up the courage "to have some hard conversations with your management 1 to 2 levels above you" unless you want NIS in the next ranking. I went the courage of conviction rout and was PIPed for speaking truth to power, though the actual reason they used to argue for the NIS were silly and minor. Happily swallow the PIL and landed in a much better place. There are beautiful gardens beyond the burning ashes of XOM, you just need to find them.
Of course... courage of conviction and hard conversations are required. They may be happening even thought you don't see them.
This is the #1 reason why nothing is changing. ExxonMobil promotes people who manage up. They will ignore the fire in their backyard and tell their boss, instead, of the beautiful garden they are growing. Then no one checks to see that there is no fruit and only ash.
Real problems don’t flow upward. Only well crafted messages and fabricated silver linings. Some of them are so twisted that they are flirting with lies…but not quite actual lies yet. The ones that get too close to lies are dubbed ‘omissions’ or ‘incompetence.’ As in “That person isn’t trying to hide the truth. They mean well but haven’t been trained properly. The procedure is broken.” Nope. Maybe they weren’t set up for success, but they also made a moral decision to not be transparent. That latter is their failing and shouldn’t be ignored. It is not the type of person we want in the company (oh but wait….there are no people to replace them. Guess we have to keep them. We might even need to promote them.)
When I started here, managers had a much better B.S. meter. I was warned any B.S. was spotted immediately, and undermined my credibility….and I saw this happen to peers. Now, it feels like B.S. is welcome, as long as it is positive and let’s the management line ignore a brewing issue.
And furthermore, all these outsourced organizational silos are just enabling this behavior. You have to take issues all the way up to a VP in order to hop across the silo to another VP and take it all the way down to the poor performer or group. Think about how many times that issue can be ki---d or changed in the process?
You can care for your people, be empathetic and hopeful….AND get the courage to have some hard conversations with your management 1 to 2 levels above you AND stop sugar coating conversations and hiding brutal truths.
If you are only doing the empathy and hope, you don’t deserve to have a leadership position. Your employees probably think the same. You should take some personal risk to try to fix some things, and keep escalating when you hit a roadblock.
Some of them actually care about their people and are doing the best they can under the circumstances. Of course, they must acknowledge issues.. but they should be empathetic and hopeful. What would you have them do? Set the place on fire? How would that help?