Impulses for organisations – Part 10
There are many little treasures to be found in online posts and comments that can be very useful for collaboration in companies. However, many of these treasures only appear briefly and then disappear again into the depths of social media. In part 10 of our series, we would like to publish some inspiring impulses from experts on the t2informatik Blog. This time it’s about employees and value creation, promotion and enthusiasm and the impact of personality.
Let’s get started with the new impulses!
“We put the employee at the centre”
We all know this phrase. It is repeated on patient websites, in flattering New Year’s speeches and on posters in local HR departments. It’s a way of signalling appreciation for people and emphasising their importance to the company. One of my bosses from a long time ago liked to add: “For us, the employee is the centre of attention, and therefore always in the way”.
The idea of being the centre of attention is most frequently praised in the HR areas of our organisations. The motives are quite noble and appropriate to the perceived purpose of HR. After all, it is the employees that HR looks after. They are the ones to be developed, mentored, trained, categorised into personality types and equipped with a mindset. In short: the employees become the “ones to be educated” and HR becomes the guardians. This easily creates a social game that has no place in an organisation and does not do justice to adults (on both sides of the table).
With a hashtag #change, it seems obvious that people need to be changed. The employees are then picked up at the centre, brought on board or taken somewhere else. The aforementioned measures take effect to bring about change. Supposedly, because a complex system can neither be explained nor changed through individuals. But if there is no room for anything else in the field of vision, the employees are simply tinkered with.
Has anyone ever thought of asking the employees themselves where they would like to be? Personally, I don’t know anyone who proclaims with conviction that he or she chose their employer on the basis of whether it would place them in precisely that position. A secure salary, an environment that suits the job and exciting work (is definitely optional). I also know companies that have trained their employees to insist on meditation courses, personal development and constant harmony soup. Perhaps there is simply a lack of real work there.
But what should take centre stage? The hashtag #valuecreation!
The answer to the question of which problems we (want to) solve for our customers and how we can best organise this. For HR, this also includes the uncomfortable truth that they are not directly creating value. It is therefore a good time to ask how people can best be supported in their value-adding work. In the rarest of cases, the answer will have something to do with standing and being the centre of attention.
Suddenly Max was promoted
Max was once one of the best developers in the team.
He lived and breathed code, spending his weekends trying out new technologies and developing prototypes. His passion and expertise were second to none. Everyone looked up to him, a mentor.
But one day Max was promoted.
“This is a great opportunity for you, Max. Now you can really make a difference,” said his line manager. Suddenly he was spending his days in meetings, managing budgets and writing reports. Contact with his real passion, coding, increasingly disappeared. Max felt alienated, lost in a world of management that was strange and unsatisfying to him.
“You have to take on disciplinary responsibility now,” he was told. Max found himself conducting staff appraisals, managing conflicts and writing performance reviews. “That’s just part of it if you want to make a career,” he was told. But these tasks weighed heavily on him and robbed him of his enjoyment of his job.
He skipped management meetings so that he could at least take part in Sprint Reviews of the teams and breathe in some tech. Remembering who he used to be.
At the weekend, you’d find him back at his laptop, secretly hacking together prototypes and discussing them in communities on Reddit. It was his way of taking a deep breath, of being himself again. “Your energy and time must now be channelled into the team,” he was often told. But over time, even this little escape was no longer enough. Max was unhappy. His passion for technology was stifled by the demands of management.
The years passed and Max found himself drifting further and further away from his original passion. His creative spark gradually died out, while the burden of management tasks weighed him down.
He felt trapped in a gilded cage that he never wanted to enter. “That’s the price of advancement, that’s what everyone dreams of,” he heard again and again.
Eventually Max became ill, physically and mentally exhausted. His enthusiasm had disappeared and he looked back wistfully on the days when he had written code and developed innovative solutions. The former top developer was now just a shadow of his former self, exhausted and discouraged.
Max’s story is a reminder: not every top developer wants to be a manager. Sometimes the path to promotion leads to alienation and exhaustion.
It’s important to provide alternative career paths that foster technical expertise and innovation without stifling the creative souls of our best developers.
The importance of personality in companies
How does the personality of people actually affect relationships in companies?
Does it make a difference who is at the top?
To what extent does personality at C-level influence realities?
There are two competing narratives on this. Only one is correct.
Some say: “The circumstances create the behavior. Not the other way round.” They feel that taking personality into account in the job is overbearing and consider leadership itself to be a phenomenon somewhere between annoying and casual.
The others are of the opinion that personality is an integral part of the job. They agree with Lewin and emphasise that behavior is always a combination of person and situation. You can therefore never just look at the system or the person. Behaviour only makes sense when it interacts.
Who is right?
If we compare the two points of view with the knowledge of modern research, the answer is clear. Naturally, this can best be observed at the top of a company. Let’s take extraversion as an example.
What does that look like?
Well, the personality of CEOs has an enormous influence on what happens in the company. Extroverted CEOs are more likely to buy other companies. M&A processes are much more likely (1).
This obviously goes hand in hand with greater debt. In this respect, it is a good idea for CEOs to have a buffer in the company. The CFO position is often number 2 in the hierarchy. Now CEO extraversion is excellently buffered by CFO conscientiousness. A sample of more than 3,000 CEO-CFO teams demonstrates this wonderfully (2). Both together bring a company into balance.
But be careful!
The balance is weaker if there is greater structural power on the CEO side and more pronounced if the CFO side is particularly powerful.
In this case, behaviour fundamentally creates the ratios. And not only there.
Conclusion:
We must not forget the people when looking at the system.
We must not ignore the individual when looking at structures.
We must not become too clinical and ignore the human factor.
Sources:
(1) Malhotra, S., Reus, T. H., Zhu, P., & Roelofsen, E. M. (2018). The acquisitive nature of extraverted CEOs. Administrative Science Quarterly, 63(2), 370–408.
(2) Harrison, J. S., & Malhotra, S. (2024). Complementarity in the CEO-CFO interface: The joint influence of CEO and CFO personality and structural power on firm financial leverage. The Leadership Quarterly, 35(2), 101711.
Impulses and questions
Three topics, three experts, three impulses. Should we put employees at the centre of the company or should we rather design their work and their environment in such a way that value creation is easier? How can we promote employees beyond hierarchical promotion opportunities? And what role does personality play in working together in companies?
Questions upon questions. Perhaps you have some too; that’s good! Then Part 10 of “Impulses for organisations” has also achieved its goal.
Notes:
If you like this article or would like to discuss it, please feel free to share it in your network.
Stephanie Borgert has published two posts on the t2informatik Blog about change resistance in a team and “We need training!”.
[3] Ralf Lanwehr has been working as an expert and consultant for evidence-based leadership, culture and change for over 20 years and has held a professorship in management since 2008. Information about Ralf Lanwehr can be found in his LinkedIn profile, the impulse can be found here in the original on LinkedIn.
Ralf Lanwehr has published an article on Authentic leadership is nonsense! on the t2informatik Blog.
Michael Schenkel has published more impulses in the t2informatik Blog, including
Impulses for Organisations – Part 3
Impulses for organisations – Part 6
Impulses for Organisations – Part 9
Michael Schenkel
Head of Marketing, t2informatik GmbH
Michael Schenkel has a heart for marketing - so it is fitting that he is responsible for marketing at t2informatik. He likes to blog, likes a change of perspective and tries to offer useful information - e.g. here in the blog - at a time when there is a lot of talk about people's decreasing attention span. If you feel like it, arrange to meet him for a coffee and a piece of cake; he will certainly look forward to it!