Is your Management poisoning your Company

A blog some months ago had a post by someone who had recently been handed the pink slip.  He was ranting about the  Managers responsible for his termination.  The post was tailed by several comments posted from other employees who at different times had been removed by the same Managers.  The organization shut down recently and while that may or may not be related to management glitches but it is worth a think.

The worth of any organization, large or small, is always the sum total of the worth of its individual members and particularly its leaders. A bad leader is a pain but a toxic leader is poison.

 A large organization may host a dozen toxic leaders and not notice the difference for a while until it gets caught up in frauds, malpractices, employee harassment suits and the like.

But the smaller the organization the more significant is the presence of a toxic leader because even one can lead to its disintegration in a very short while.

Toxic leadership is indeed very common even in large well run institutions like the Army or the Church and even there, is difficult to eradicate.

What is toxic leadership and why is it so difficult to spot and remove a toxic leader particularly in organizations which are people oriented?

Marcia Whicker defines a toxic leader as a leader who is “maladjusted, malcontent, and often malevolent, even malicious.”   Every leader, good or bad, is a person with vision but a toxic leader has a vision for self rather than the organization.  Such a leader will seek to rise above the team rather than with the team. Such a leader is successful but the toxic leader’s success is not the company’s success and more often achieved by clawing the company’s back.

Toxic leadership is the more difficult to spot because at first look such leaders come across as intelligent and very performance oriented.  They project an attitude of confidence.  On the job, they are often to be seen ordering, commanding, rushing around, their reprimands, praises, communications very public and visible; and their presence very much felt.  They may not always be loud though. A toxic leader may be soft spoken and quiet too.  But loud or not toxic leaders display a common characteristic. With the boss they are compliant.  A toxic leader will never argue with the boss. They are the “yes bossers”, the  essential “babus” the ones who are always assuring the boss  “the job will be done.”

And indeed initially the job is done.  The toxic leader will deliver value by making sure there are enough intelligent, performing   people on the team to provide value. If there are mistakes, there will be elaborate cover ups and scapegoats firmly in place.

But any value provided by such leaders will be strictly short term. In the long term toxic leaders do not add value to the organizations even if the unit performs successfully under them.

This is because toxic leaders succeed by tearing others down. They are fiercely protective of their territory and will go to any extent to stop anyone encroaching on what they see as their turf.   They are completely in control of their team but they rule by intimidating rather than uplifting. The most lethal characteristic of a toxic leader is the tendency by the leader to weed out more intelligent members of the team.

A toxic leader is always wary of anyone who is smarter and will immediately remove anyone who could be a threat. Such a leader is intelligent enough to be able to pick out the persons on his team who although capable, have low levels of confidence and esteem and are prepared to work without threatening the leader’s position.  If any member of the unit threatens to overshadow the leader, there will be no hesitation in using any weapons, even a resort to criminal practices in an attempt to eliminate the member.

This is the chief reason why such leaders cause the downfall of the organization they serve.   At some point the performing unit members will wake up to the reality, that there is no scope for them to grow. There is always a higher rate of attrition in an organization, with such a leader.  Moreover, toxic leaders in the long run do not engender the level of confidence in their team that is necessary to lead to an esprit de corps.  The team becomes dysfunctional because the members will seek every excuse to escape either out of the team or if that is not possible out of the organization itself.

An organization would do well to be on the watch for tell tale signs which betray the presence of a toxic leader-a general sense of dissatisfaction among the team members, a tendency for the more intelligent to leave the organization, a reluctance among the team members to speak out freely, signs of fear.  The best way to spot toxic leadership is to get the team assessed by an independent manager.  Invariably the team members whose qualities have been played down by the toxic leader will turn up trumps.

However, despite spotting one, companies very often find it difficult to remove such a leader, usually because such leaders are spotted too late and by then have so much influence and control over their teams that it is hard to break the bond.  Such a leader often engenders with his team one of  two states of relationship-one where the team consists of entirely sub standard employees who know they will survive only under the aegis of their leader and the other where there has developed a poisonous bond between the leader and the follower- a bond which the followers their spirit too long broken- lack the courage to break.

(Until next time,then and hoping to post more often. Also just noticed the new followers. Welcome.)

Pins in Underwear & Quality Set-Ups Part II

To continue with the previous post.

One way a small firm can save on costs is to hire cheap at production level. and splurge at the higher level, praying that good management will control quality. But this does not work. At least not for long. Good project managers are not necessarily good at providing quality work. Nor should project management be expected to deal with quality assurance.

To ensure quality deliverables the firm must have a good quality set- up in place. Introducing quality set- ups in small firms which have never heard of them before is like taking a toddler to the dentist for the first time. She doesn't know what she's in for and eagerly toddles along, so the introduction is not too bad. But the next time you want to her to toddle, she tears your hair out.

The first step in introducing quality procedures is to introduce the team to the concept of "errors".

The reason errors occur is that at production level, the team is often not aware what exactly is the error they are alleged to be making. The client's mails listing mistakes, are sheer babble. (What is she talking about? What error? Isn't that just what we did?)

Asking a direct question therefore: What is an error- draws a blank. Yet in order for the quality procedures to be put in place, this first step of getting the team to recognize what is an error for that particular process, is vital.

This can be solved by getting the team to relate what part of the process seems to them to be the trickiest. Remember, it is always at that part of the task that one finds the most difficult that one is likely to make the most mistakes.

In one instance while applying this strategy, I realized that the team was not really aware of what the process was all about. They were merely performing the tasks told like automatons without the faintest idea of why they were doing it.

An explanation of the whys and wherefores of client requirements serves to bring the team to an understanding of why a particular document needs to be done in a particular manner.

Once the team sees the reason and logic in the work they are engaged in, they can then see for themselves what the client means when she cries "error".

And so thus, the first step in introducing a quality set up- defining an error is taken. For the rest, wait for my next post.

In parting. As I always say a knowledge of the English language is essential if you are going to work on US or UK legal documents. Recently an EBT submitted (deposition) in a personal injury case, read: She cannot put pins in her underwear.

Pins in underwear. Why would anyone put pins in underwear? Do American women now put pins in underwear the way Indians used to pin purses into their underwear to deter thieves?

A little investigation revealed all.
The EBT should have read: She cannot put pants on, her underwear.

Yeah, even legal outsourcing has its lighter moments.

Obama and the Indian in the LPO.

Overheard recently, “Obama is out to close all the BPOs in India!”

Will President Obama really turn the tide of outsourcing back?  No. There could be lesser work offshored by the US. But it will be mainly the small-change projects that will not be outsourced. And most BPOs and KPOs here are all set to meet this deficit by turning their attention to Australian, UK, and European processes.

So far as LPOS are concerned, Mr. Obama’s policy of taxing the profits earned by offshorers could result in vendors indulging in cost-cutting this side of the pond to increase profits; and the principal area of this cost-cutting is going to be salaries.  One way of cost-cutting will be LPOs hiring mainly freshers on per-contract basis and paying them a minimum salary.  Another method that is fast catching on, is providing a “training period” of two or three months to new employees and/or paying them a small stipend.

Should this side of the pond worry?  I think not. Legal work demands  higher ethics, and a greater degree of confidentiality and security of data than any other field of work.  The attorney-client relationship is very like the doctor-patient one.  It is based on absolute trust- which even a small breach of confidentiality will absolutely ruin.  At the same time, the work produced by the LPOs has to be faultless, since no matter how high the level of trust, if the outcome of the litigation is affected because of  the shoddy work done by vending LPOs, the client is going to yell blue murder.  Therefore, sooner or later, every LPO is going to have to take a call on whether to hire freshers and risk less than perfect output, or sacrifice a percentage of profit and pay experienced professionals to provide a high quality of work.

Incidentally, it is this unique attorney-client relationship that is the root cause of the LPO industry taking a longer time to ramp up.  No matter how convinced a law firm is of the ability of an LPO to meet its efficiency and due- diligence standards, prudence dictates that it test the waters by sending out smaller jobs initially, and then graduate slowly to larger ones.

In his latest post  Mukul makes a conclusion that legal process outsourcing is no longer a hot career option for those interested in legal services. This sounds very much like what the naysayers were saying when Jerry Rao launched Mphasis-There was never going to be a future for those who choose to make a career in BPOs.  It is Jerry Rao and those who did take the leap who are still having the last laugh.  There is never going to be a dearth of lawyers opting for LPOs.  With the lawyers who passed out of law colleges in 1955 still practicing in courts today, where is the place for the hundreds of lawyers tumbling out of colleges each year?

Besides, I find many management students opting to do short-term courses in various branches of law, merely because they do not want to lose out on a chance to work in legal project management.  Many of my lawyer-colleagues with a dozen years and more of practice in Pune courts, are very keen to give it up and work in LPOS.

I do agree however, that if LPOs continue to provide only back-office job work to employees, this may inhibit the more talented legal professionals from entering the industry.  But this percentage is minuscule compared to the hundreds who will find even the more simple back office functions performed in LPOS challenging, mainly because they find English speaking a challenge.

A few LPOs are making hay by providing training in US Law and English language at a fee while they wait for the bigger projects to come in.  Wise ones!  It is not only those who hit the gold lode but also those who provide the spades that win.