INTRODUCTION TO KINDLE EDITION OF "SIX SILENT KILLERS" -- ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS!

INTRODUCTION TO KINDLE EDITION OF “SIX SILENT KILLERS” – ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS!

REFERENCE:

This is the first draft of what may become the Introduction to the Kindle edition of this book.  People ask me, how do you write so much?  First of all, I type rather fast, have a good idea of what I want to say, am not much of an editor of my work, and can knock off a piece, such as this, in an hour give or take ten minutes.

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In 2001, I did an intervention of the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County in Tampa, Florida, which is an agency that delivers important services to indigent children in the county.  I asked the director, “What do you want me to do?”

The director answered, “Find out why we can’t get our work done.”

I made that the title of my report, “Why the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County Cannot Get Its Work Done.”  It was the right question.

The report was a blueprint of what went wrong and why, and how to correct these deficiencies.  So incensed was the director with the report that she short-changed me $3,600 as punishment for answering the question. 

In 2012, she was removed and a high-octane local politician and former mayor, Pam Iorio, took over her position in an interim capacity, implementing many of the recommendations made in my original report.  She also reduced the administrative staff and field operatives by nearly one-third.  Iorio has organizational skills and an instinct for doing the right thing.

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The question of why America cannot get its work done has been a concern of mine since 1980.  Prior to that time, I operated either in the field or as a top executive, never having worked professionally in the bowels of the corporation.

After earning my Ph.D. in 1977, I consulted many Fortune 500 companies, finally joining one in 1980, Honeywell, Inc. in Clearwater, Florida as a management & organizational development psychologist.  Several studies were made between 1980-1986 assessing work efficiency.  It resulted in my identifying six passive behaviors and three dominant cultures, finding the complex organization had many functional groups performing at various levels.  At best, overall performance was at about 50 percent efficiency. 

Promoted to director of organizational development for Honeywell Europe Ltd. in 1986, the efficiency of workers was found to be about the same.  In both instances, there appeared clear evidence of “six silent passive behaviors,” crippling performance and negatively contributing to the bottom line.

It was clear by 1990 to me why the United States and Europe could not get their work done, a series of books followed with this the most comprehensive.  Now, in the advent of handheld electronic devices, which are as much a distraction and contributor to work, worker efficiency would appear around 35 percent or below.  The paradox is that as the efficiency of workers declines the efficiency of these electronic devices soars, leading to the possibility that workers will be marginalized to the point of being essentially unnecessary, somewhat as drones are changing the nature of combat in warfare, then what?  Asking the right question doesn’t to be natural to us.

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In 2003, the United States in a state of heightened fear and paranoia after the Twin Tower terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, the wrong question was asked of Iraq: where are the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), when the right question should have been are there WMDs in Iraq?

Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson wrote a series of articles in The New York Times debunking the Niger intelligence claims that uranium sales were made to Iraq, which President George W. Bush misrepresented in his State of the Union address leading up to the preemptive invasion of Iraq.

General Adam Clayton Powell, with CIA Director George Tenet sitting behind him as he addressed the United Nations, laid out a case of Iraq having these phantom WMDs.  It became a burlesque comedy of tragic proportions.  Wilson was maligned, and his wife, the covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, was exposed and compromised.  All this for asking the wrong question.

“The Six Silent Killers” doesn’t ask where are these passive behaviors, but the more audacious question: are such behaviors leading to our collective decline; if so, why and what are we going to do about it? 

These killing behaviors are described and shown how they fester undetected in the workplace, affecting and effecting performance and competitive advantage.  At the same time, three cultures dominate organizational life: the Culture of Comfort, which is management dependent with the manager acting as parent to reactive and taciturn worker; the Culture of Complacency, which is organizational counterdependent for the worker’s total well being, and where the worker acts like a dependent child; and the Culture of Contribution, where workers and managers are partners in enterprise, and where managed conflict not harmony is the key to the positive performance of mature workers acting as interdependent contractors.

It is my view that the “culture of complacency” may persist in some quarters but surely in 2013 the “six silent killers” operate even more so in work cultures and industries plagued by constant restructuring, mergers & acquisitions, and downsizing. 

Basically, the managerial class has been waging a losing war against workers for nearly three decades, and it continues, now aided by those elected to political office in the state and federal government, always aided by a cadre of lobbyists.  Despite gridlock or dysfunctionality, corporations – including higher learning institutions – continue business as usual practices with infallible institutional authority contributing to the forward inertia. 

The right question to ask is how much longer can the United States afford it?

To be noted some 24 states in the United States have passed union busting legislation calling it “Right to Work” legislation.  This has been in part preempted by the impossibility of maintaining the benefit and retirement plans of many of these states.  For example, it is not uncommon in the State of California to retire with a yearly income including benefits in the range of $100,000 to $200,000.  The mean average is in the range of $40,000 per year for 60 percent of state retirees, which is well above the national average of industrial retirees.  Who pays for these exorbitant compensation packages?  Taxpayers do!  Keep this in mind.

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Current attention has been paid to the National Hockey League’s owners dispute with the players union association.  It has been finally resolved but after canceling half of the current 2012-2013 NFL season.  The long-term contract should keep peace in this sport for the next eight or ten years, that is, with players and owners, but what about fans?

It is yet to be learned what are the long-term consequences of this most contentious struggle between labor and management.  Neither complacency nor the six silent killers are easily detected as they represent a mindset that feels it is being taken advantage of, which translates into justifying the negative behavior.  Little or not concern is directed to the unintended consequences. 

The wrong question for NFL players was why did they strike, when the right question is how much longer will NFL fans be able to afford continuing to pay the high price for supporting the sport? 

Owners know there is a limit to how long they can continue to honor high priced contracts without transferring the costs to ticket buyers.  Obviously, players want more revenue, and the fans are on their side, without either fans or players knowing the price of doing business other than their part in the sport’s entertainment dimension.  The risk factor is outside their purview.   Typically, professionals of all stripes, when asked about the risk factor, reply in unison “not my problem,” when clearly it is in the long run. 

The other right question is why is there so much distrust between players and owners, workers and managers?   Inappropriate questions are asked because of false assumptions.

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During the golden era of business in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, that is, before the rest of the world caught up with the United States competitively, the differential in compensation between workers and managers was modest.  The differential climbed in the 1980s, soared in the 1990s, and has spiraled beyond comprehension in the 21^st century.  It is no accident that the “Six Silent Killers” became prominent in the 1990s when this book was first written, and “greed became good.” 

It is the reason the “Occupy Wall Street” movement was launched without an apparent agenda, but with pervasive frustration and confusion as 1 percent of the populace earned or controlled the wealth equivalent to what the bottom 90 percent shared as their own.  OCW didn’t know what question to ask so they simply acted as squatters. 

Another wrong question to ask is what can management do about this extravagance, when the right question is when will workers tire of being disenfranchised from the workplace, from the money changers, and from the marketplace? 

An ancillary right question would be: what prevents workers from growing up and accepting responsibility and accountability consistent with their interests?  It is futile to look for demons.

There are no demons here, no good guys and bad guys, only workers and managers moving away from good sense and the pragmatics of William James psychology, where self-interest once dictated enterprise for workers and managers alike.   

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To put this in some perspective, more than ninety percent of what workers said they needed in the beginning of the last century – a safe and healthy environment, pay for performance, fair benefits, adequate vacations and opportunity for promotion – has essentially materialized compared to what had existed before.

“Six Silent Killers” is not about powerless workers under siege as much as workers wanting to fall back on justification for their passive behaviors because of their frustration in the workplace.  Nor are the “Six Silent Killers” about anachronistic management, which clearly is outdated, but which paradoxically is supported and daily reconstituted as much by workers as by their managers.  Neither workers nor managers want to mount the struggle to institute a new system, which would appease if not eliminate the litany of their complaints about “the system,” as well as about each other.  They are the system.

Countless attempts have been made over time to encourage workers to be self-managers, including putting them on salary and giving them professional status.  I don’t know of a single case where hourly workers wanted to sacrifice the possibility of overtime pay for a salaried position, or for the possibility of coming in of a Saturday or Sunday to handle a rush order without double-time pay, or indeed, operating where there are few professional unions.

The final question, which the reader might ask is not why workers are suspended in terminal adolescence, but when will they decide to grow up?  A secondary question is when will workers decide to work without managers?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© January 8, 2013

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