Beware: Organizational Quicksand!

Hey, its’ great to be back! I want to pick up on one of the themes in my last post before the summer whirlwind…dysfunctional comfort.

Sometimes, I’ll begin a conversation on this topic by asking my clients or the audience (depending on the venue), “How many of you want things to improve in your organizations?” Almost every hand shoots up immediately! Then I ask a follow-up question, “How many of you are willing to stretch, change, grow or learn in order to make that happen?” All but a few of those hands sheepishly go down.

Uh oh. That’s a problem.

We can’t simply show up and do the same old thing, the same old way and assume that we will be individually or collectively competitive and successful. In fact, chances are, we won’t be.

Uh oh. That’s an even bigger problem.

If we are to challenge our current habits at work when we interact with one another, then we must come off autopilot—stop thinking, feeling, or doing things only because we have thought, felt or acted that way for a very long time. To be an effective everyday leader, one of the first steps we must take is to develop a healthy mistrust for our current habits. You read that correctly --- be wary of our everyday habits! Many of us cling to the familiar like a life preserver in choppy water. We are comfortable with what we know even if we suspect or know that it doesn’t come close to being us at our best.

My language for the organizational quicksand that holds many of us stuck in that way is dysfunctional comfort. It refers to that odd feeling of reassurance or relief around a longstanding relationship, process, procedure, or approach even though it is unhealthy, outmoded, broken or just plain wrong. We are reassured simply because it is familiar. It includes old thought patterns (prejudices and biases) about other people, groups, or institutions that are kept alive in organizations despite a contrary objective truth. Dysfunctional comfort also has a complementary feeling of defensiveness when we are asked to surrender it for something different. Dysfunctional comfort is the archenemy of progress and improvement. And, because of that, it stands squarely in the way of leading from every seat and reaching new levels of engagement at work.

Why is dysfunctional comfort sooo seductive for many of us?

I have made it a practice to explore the reasons why colleagues hang on to dysfunctional comfort so long. Here are some of the answers we’ve come up with:

1.    My reptilian brain makes me do it!—A powerful part of the brain, the amygdala, wants the world to run on routine, not change. This ancient area of the mind deals with the way we perceive and respond to the world; the amygdala urges us to favor the familiar and routine. It craves safety and control. At some point in the distant past, this may have saved our species from extinction. Today, however, it is maladaptive. We are not simply servants of our amygdala! We can choose to intentionally over ride this tendency and begin to see sparks of possibility for making things better around us, including ourselves.

2.    Inertia has me in its grip—It’s easier to know what to expect and complain about what is wrong than to hold oneself accountable for identifying challenges and finding better solutions for them. It takes energy to get going in a different (even slightly) direction. We’ve got to climb out of our thought rut and intentionally engage in something new.

3.    The devil you know is better than the one you don’t— This is why, when I ask, most employees will agree that they want things to get better in the workplace; yet few are willing to be the change that they want to see. The possibility that things might actually get worse looms large for some.

4.    I’ll settle for good—I frequently find that our colleagues convince themselves that, while something isn’t the best that it could be, it’s also not the worst. “It’s a whole lot worse in other organizations!” “It’s never going to be perfect!” or “don’t wake that baby to hear it cry!” are examples of excuses to keep doing what we’re doing. This often feels as though it is a particularly reasonable position to take in light of the hectic pace and degree of “busyness” that many of us experience in our work lives. “Good,” as Jim Collins so astutely reminds us, “is the enemy of great.”

Now what? 

Check out our next post to find out how to break free from the cycle of dysfunctional comfort! Here’s a hint…it could feel a bit ‘uncomfortable.’