The Pendulum of Doom

How the either-or trap limits the possibilities of new ways of working

A really common trap when organisations try to move away from hierarchy and traditional management is to swing too far in the opposite direction – and get stuck there. When we end up in absolutes and binaries (either this OR that), it tends to create dysfunctions and limits what is possible.

I call this ‘The Pendulum of Doom.’

Here are some examples.

Pendulum of Doom: leadership

This is a common trap. Organisations that are trying to move away from traditional management end up swinging too far in the other direction and getting stuck in a realm where there is almost an allergy to anything resembling leadership.

Symptoms can be things like:

• Leadership vacuum (people are scared to step up and contribute in ways that could be construed as leaderful because when they do, they are called out. E.g. “Hey, what are you doing? We’re self-managing, remember? No leaders!”)

• Accountability void (people don’t know how to hold each other accountable without becoming like a boss)

• Creative entropy (the organisation becomes less focused and less creative with no one willing or able to share a vision for anything)

• Equality dance (people desperately try to maintain equality and consensus, ignoring the diversity of experience and competence in the group)

• Talent drain (people who have valuable leadership to contribute feel muzzled, grow tired and leave)

Of course, what we want to aim for in a healthy self-managing organisation is probably something in between these two polarities.

I like to say that self-managing organisations are bossless but leaderful. In other words, allowing leadership to emerge and flow, like water, to where it’s needed. It’s magical to see who steps up – often individuals who would never have had the chance in a top-down, traditional hierarchy.

Here’s another example.

Pendulum of Doom: feedback

Feedback has such a bad reputation in organisations because it has been a tool of ‘power-over’ (to use Mary Parker Follett’s term) for so long. Margaret Wheatley put it beautifully when she used the metaphor of Schroedinger’s Cat to describe how human beings’ potential and fate is determined solely by the act of a manager’s (subjective) observation. No wonder the human brain has an immediate threat response even just hearing the word feedback.

Naturally, when we move to a self-managing structure, we also want to move away from this ‘feedback as violence’ paradigm. But again, it’s so easy to swing too far in the other direction and get caught in a culture of false harmony, of ‘niceness’. In fact, it can even become ‘violent politeness’ (a term I love from the book ‘The Leading Brain’).

When we swing too far in the other direction, symptoms we might notice are:

• Gossip culture (in an absence of feedback, people end up giving ‘feed-behind-the-back’, bitching about others in backchannels and corridors)

• Stagnation (people are frustrated that they are not growing or developing or being challenged)

• Conflict escalation (when small things are not addressed, deeper conflicts brew and erupt frequently, causing unnecessary harm and draining everyone)

• Accountability vacuum (unable to hold each other accountable, we let things slide, quality descends, and resentment bubbles)

In my experience, there is a great value in having a strong and healthy feedback culture. But feedback does not have to come at the expense of being caring. As Brené Brown says, “Clear is kind, and unclear is unkind.” So finding something in between these two polarities is a useful exploration.

Let me give you a final example, a specific scenario.

Reinventing performance management

Part of your journey of becoming a self-managing organisation has been eliminating the traditional performance management process you used to have where managers met with their direct reports to discuss (top-down) goals and (once a year) would give them a performance rating (linked to their salary).

You have replaced this process with something much more loose. Individuals no longer have a manager, but they can enlist the help of an internal coach if they choose. Goals are decided together in the team and colleagues are encouraged to give each other feedback. Pay rises are determined through a self-managed process where individuals can put forward a proposal and a committee of peers review the proposal alongside feedback from their colleagues.

Here are the tensions:

• Even though the organisation espouses a feedback culture, it doesn’t happen as often as most people would like (“Who am I to give someone feedback? I’m not their manager!”)

• Sometimes the goals aren’t very clear and there isn’t always strong accountability when the goals start to drift or aren’t met

• It tends to be the same kinds of people who put themselves forward for pay rises and many individuals (who are making great contributions) aren’t confident or assertive enough to do it

• Some people in the organisation have started to complain that they miss the old system – they liked having a manager responsible for their development

What would you do?

One of the most common responses to this challenge I’ve come across in organisations is something along the lines of: “No we can’t go back to the old system and we can’t have managers – we’re self-managing now!”

This is not a criticism, by the way. I understand that it feels scary when there is pushback and it can feel like we need to defend this new system we’ve invested so much time, energy, and money in.

My point here is that the fear stems from the assumption that we are in a binary. Either we push on with this new system, or we go backwards.

The either-or trap is what keeps us mired in arguing and what keeps us from seeing the vast array of possibilities that life has to offer.

So, given that, here are a few tips.

How to get out of The Pendulum of Doom

1. Notice when people start using absolute language
   Watch out for language like: always, never, we have to, we can’t, we’re not allowed to, there is no… and so on. When this happens, see if you can challenge it in a coaching way.

   For example: “I heard you say: “We can’t have hierarchy.” I wonder if we’re limiting ourselves by being rigid in that. Would you be willing to explore together what might be possible if we weren’t constrained by avoiding anything resembling hierarchy?”
   

2. Learn to discern between a problem to solve and a polarity to manage
   One way to avoid the either-or trap is to embrace both-and thinking with the Polarity Approach. The idea is to think of some of these either-or scenarios not as problems to solve, but polarities to manage:
   
   Centralised ← → Decentralised
   Structure ← → Flexibility
   Trust ← → Accountability
   
   You might want to do a Polarity Mapping exercise – something you can use at an intra- or inter-personal level (like leadership) or at a group level (group, team, organisation, community etc.).
   

3. Practise understanding needs
   Remember the performance management-related scenario I outlined earlier? There’s no one correct answer here. One possibility, however, is to gather and understand the underlying needs. These will be unique to the individuals and the culture of your organisation. Examples of needs might be:
   

   • A need to matter – to be acknowledged or recognised, or to feel that someone cares about me and my development

   • A need for security – to know that there is some structure I fit within, that someone is looking out for me and the organisation (that it’s not only on me)

   • A need for understanding – to have clarity on our goals and what’s needed from me, to have someone to challenge me and stimulate my learning and development

   • A need for community –  to feel that I belong, that I am included, that I am supported, that I am part of something bigger than me

   • A need for my sense of self – to feel I am competent and effective, to feel ‘enough’, and that I am growing and developing

   • A need for meaning – to know that I am contributing something, to be challenged, to be able to explore and be creative in relation to a purpose I care about
     (I got these needs from Needs Understanding’s ‘List of needs’, which you can download for free here.)
     

   Once you have gathered the needs of the individual or group, you can start to ask questions about what solution could meet the greatest number of needs. It doesn’t mean we have to go back to what we had before, but perhaps we could create a role that could fulfil some of the needs that have been lacking since we eliminated the role of manager?
   
   Or perhaps it doesn’t have to be a one-size-fits-all solution. At Decathlon Belgium, for example, they agreed that some individuals would keep the more traditional previous system and those who were interested and felt confident enough could enter into a more self-managed system where they had much greater responsibility for their own goals and professional development.

What Pendulum of Doom do you sometimes end up in?

My final invitation is for you to reflect on your own team or organisation, either individually or with your colleagues.

Do you see examples of a Pendulum of Doom that you sometimes end up in? What does it cost you?

And what could become possible if you stepped back from the either-or trap?