How Work Isn't Working

I'm going to try and write more here about how this organization I work for is not working. It helps me to survive by turning this into at least a written reflection, because my power to change this circumstance is limited.  Here are the three major problems I see at the level of our program director. There are difficult systemic problems that shape her behavior, although I don't believe they prevent her from addressing the following.

1) Top-heavy, egocentric control of the organization. I sometimes think of this person as the Supreme Leader. I believe this is her model for defining success and how she sees herself. It's unclear where or how she learned this model. She has an ivy league degree, but doesn't live a personal life of luxury or high class. The organization's very existence and identity is tied to her and she continually seeks to funnel as much of the decision-making through her as possible. She is a political appointee and her number one goal is to limit political liability to the program. Speaking the truth and advancing scientific fact are secondary. Over the long-term this approach is not working, but I don't think she sees or realizes the danger. She has made enough statements publically that dismiss complexity and scientific communications that the larger professional community knows what's happening with the political control. There are days when I just wonder at the degree to which I'm working in a political office versus for a professional conservation organization.  She survives in this position partly because no one can imagine the program without her at the helm. That means if she fails the program fails. I have no idea personally why anyone would want to carry this much responsibility, except that it must take a lot of insecurity and fear to feed such strength of will and a heavy dose of arrogance. She has no time to gather the appropriate information to make a decision, and apparently believes that her intelligence alone is enough to make good decisions across a broad spectrum of topics. Or that the costs of this one leader approach don't outweigh the benefits to the political election campaign.

2) This consolidation of roles into one person deserves more attention. Unfortunately the Supreme Leader, who would be challenged even if the best of managers to make all of these decision wisely and in a timely fashion, is someone who can't manage their way out of a paper bag and has poor collaboration skills. Indeed she survives by making herself the program as described above, and by stubbornly bulldozing people until they accept their fate. Of course, this is empowered by the fact that she has much control over funding decisions and is the supervisor of most of the program staff. She is a terrible administrator due to not having organized thinking skills, nor much ability to use computers, and she is an even worse personnel manager. She dismisses concerns and implements a reward system based on pleasing her political goals over any other merit. You can be mediocre in every way and rise to the top, as long as you don't make waves.

3) The staff are treated like the hired help. You just can't do this and have an organization succeed. There's a book out describing in detail why it doesn't work called "The Way We're Working Isn't Working".  Despite the program being chock full of fairly talented mid-career professionals, we're treated as if there to do what we're told like interns and assistants. A few are chosen to be the Supreme Leader's protogee's. The rest will labor in obscurity. We are trapped by this economy unless able to dispose of our houses and move out of state. Anyone who bought their house after 2001 or so is unable to dispose of it.

The alternative to the above is to share decision-making through real collaboration and respect for expert opinion. Distribute duties according to abilities and by what inspires people to succeed and grow. To create intelligent distributed, decentralized decision-making and trust the collective wisdom of the result, or at least let the whole think sink or swim based on the collective outcome. It would require devesting of the Supreme Leader model for success and to not be so ego-identified with this one organization, but rather with letting communities form and grow. Everyone's health and growth would need to be supported for the collective effort to succeed.

In our regional culture, appearances matter the most. They do everywhere, but in places where real practical, getting-things-done skills are the cultural preference eventually the fakes are exposed and shuffled aside. These practical, usually conservative cultures also tend to shuffle the creatives to the side along with the fakes, they all look similarly weird. Where I live right now, the fakes just rise to the top and everyone else is left to struggle by. The cultural creatives if they can overcome the personal damage all this does to them, perhaps go on to write scathing critiques that eventually are published. Maybe others find homes in universities writing rational books and articles that have a nicer tone.