Cold Shower 2: Six Silent Killers of Organizational Life

Cold Shower Six Silent Killers of Organizational Life
Volume I, Article II

This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of eight books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern workers everywhere.

Dr. Fisher, you argue that GATT and NAFTA are not the problem, that they are not the primary cause of tens of thousands of American workers losing their jobs, but that six silent killers are the “sucking sound” destroying American enterprise. Please explain.

Termites destroy a person’s home with no one the wiser, that is, until irreparable damage is done. Termites are invisible to the naked eye working diligently and effectively beyond our awareness. On the other hand, we note and are alarmed with the tens of billions of dollars lost to sick leave caused by substance abuse every year. Tens of billions more are lost due to stress and emotional problems resulting in accidents, heart attacks, strokes, seizures, or mental illness. Then there are other contributors to diminishing capacity (i.e. to work productivity) such as excessive smoking, eating and drinking of alcoholic beverages. These problems are palpable, visible, and consequential. Since we are aware of them, many firms have Employee Assistant Programs to deal with them.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are convenient scapegoats for downsizing, redundancy exercises, reorganization, reengineering, and relocation of plants and jobs abroad. One factor has clearly contributed to this drastic action.

For the past 100 years, or up to 1973, the rate of productivity growth in terms of the Growth Domestic Product (GDP) was 3.4 percent. Since then, it has been around 2.3 percent. That single percentage drop has caused the loss of $12 trillion in the GDP in the past 20 years, or the loss of $50,000 in income to every American family over that period. This has dampened the American dream and impacted negatively on the standard of living of the American family.

This erosion in contribution represents social termites at work, and I call these termites “the six silent killers” of organizational life. Successful people are successful no matter what the adversity. Successful people are aware of their behavior. When that behavior is not conducive to promoting the desired ends, they change it. They are in control and responsible. They are what I call “mature adults.” They are valued and secure employees. They can see beyond their own special self-interests to the necessity of a genuine collective strategy. This is not the case of those infected with the six silent killers.

Social termites choose to deny reality, to become inauthentic to themselves and others, and obsessively negative. They look for what is wrong, not right; for who is responsible, not how to correct; for what they can get, not give. They develop political cunning which finds them managing influence and manipulating colleagues and supervisors indiscriminately. They see themselves as victims of a system, which fails to appreciate them, or to satisfy their needs. They fail to recognize “they are the system.” Without knowing it, they have become seduced by six silent behaviors, behaviors that can kill a career before it is started, undermine all that they might become, and literally destroy the enterprise for which they work. These are the social termites, the six silent killers:

(1) Passive Aggressive Behavior – come in late, leave early, do as little as possible to get by, not as much as you are capable of doing.
(2) Passive Responsive Behavior – do nothing until you are told, and only that, then wait for instructions before doing anything else, bring your body to work and leave your mind at home.
(3) Passive Defensive Behavior – always have an excuse why something isn’t done (Not my job! Nobody told me!); point fingers at others who don’t do their jobs; play show your ass (SYA) and cover your ass (CYA) games; help others do their work as alibi for not doing yours.
(4) Approach Avoidance Behavior – volunteer for assignments you don’t intend to complete, or complete on time; take on projects then fail to show up for required meetings; punish others with your knowledge to mask your unwillingness to learn new things.
(5) Obsessive Compulsive Behavior – always want to be and have what someone else is or has; fail to appreciate what you are and have; always see the grass greener on the other side of the fence; consumed with jealousy and envy; locked in to comparing and competing.
(6) Malicious Obedient Behavior – do precisely what told to do even when you know it is wrong; withhold or hide important information necessary to the project; spread disinformation about the company, department or individuals; play games of divide and conquer; toy with natural suspicions with rumors, misuse company property.

There is no way to actually calculate the economic, emotional and spiritual damage these behaviors do to the individual and the collective enterprise. It is probably greater than all the losses from substance abuse, stress-related illnesses, and industrial accidents. That is why we will examine these behavioral indicators in Cold Shower III.

Copyright (1996) See Six Silent Killers: Management’s Greatest Challenge (1998) at $40 including shipping and handling.