When Organizations Get Stale – December 1, 2024

LEARN A LITTLE:

When Organizations Get Stale

I met with two colleagues for lunch recently, and they were discussing the general topic of “how are things going” when I arrived. The response of one of the individuals stayed with me and serves as the basis of these thoughts.

He replied, “Okay, I guess. The people are nice and everybody gets along, but it (the organization) just seems stale.” I never really thought of an organization as being “stale,” so I entered the conversation and asked what he meant by stale.

We spent the next 45 minutes or so considering the elements of staleness. What follows are some of the elements that were identified.

• A general lack of excitement within the organization. The purpose and mission don’t seem alive.
• It felt a lot like the movie Groundhog Day—every day seemed the same.
• Many staff appeared to be bored and controlled by routine.
• The organization wasn’t growing or expanding.
• Following the rules was seen as more important than creating or exploring.
• Many of the organizational leaders were talking about retirement and plans for the future that were not work- or career-related.

When I got back to my office, I searched Google for the word “stale” in order to sharpen my understanding of the meaning. Here’s an interesting insight: If you think about bread, for example, staleness generally refers to a loss of flavor. It gets dry or hard, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t eat it. Think about the crackers you recently put in your soup.

Contrast that with “spoiled,’ a condition that might indeed cause sickness if you ingested it (e.g. moldy tomatoes or a casserole that has changed color over the last month).

Back to the organization. Perhaps you too work in an organization that doesn’t feel fresh, but that doesn’t mean it’s “bad.” It probably needs rejuvenation and restoration. The fact is that organizations do not stay the same—they, like us, are either getting better or worse.

It’s also interesting to note that larger organizations as well as older organizations may be more prone over time to structural degrading, another variable that leads to staleness. Here there is a decline or deterioration in organizational performance based on environmental conditions, staff turnover, ineffective internal systems or processes, as well as poor communication pathways. Sometimes such organizations need to be revamped to create a more contemporary or optimal structure.

LAUGH A LITTLE:

REFLECT A LITTLE:

READ A LITTLE:

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

Oliver Burkeman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024)

I first came across Oliver Burkeman, author of Meditations for Mortals, after having read Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, published in 2021. It was amusing and insightful, while tying together our use of time and living a meaningful life.

Meditations for Mortals continues down the same path—seeking a meaningful, fulfilling life—with many excellent suggestions and strategies. While helpful to any reader, I would especially recommend this book to those individuals wrestling with the issue of “perfectionism.”

I have seen the careers of many managers and would-be leaders stalled, weakened or even abbreviated by this ‘personality trait.’ Many high achievers have ‘perfectionist’ tendencies and work to keep this limitation in check. (More about this from Burkeman later.)

What I have noticed in regard to “perfectionists” is the presence of unrealistic expectations not only for themselves, but often for others, including their subordinates. They are prone to procrastination, checking rather than coaching, and often have difficulty in sorting things in terms of what’s “good enough” for the task at hand. Some of this group have great difficulty sleeping and/or relaxing and struggle with varying degrees of depression.

If you find yourself in the above paragraph, help is on the way. What follows are some selected thoughts and guiding recommendations made by Burkeman. Just so you know, the book’s premise is that “you’ll never get on top of everything.”

• “The essential trouble, as Rosa tells it, is that the driving force of modern life is the fatally misguided idea that reality can and should be made even more controllable—and that peace of mind and prosperity lie in bringing it ever more fully under our control. And so we experience the world as an endless series of things we must master, learn, or conquer.”
• “A good life is about taking bold action, creating things, and making an impact—just without the background agenda of achieving full control.”
• “When you no longer demand perfection from your creative work, your relationships, or anything else, that’s when you’re free to plunge energetically into them.”
• One of the interesting dynamics Burkeman shares is our tendency to look continuously for a better system or a better solution, whether it be time management or living a meaningful life. Unfortunately, you never find the perfect one.
• “You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.” – Sheldon B. Kopp
  Consequences aren’t optional.
• “My favorite way of combating the feeling of productivity debt in everyday life is to keep a ‘done list,’ which you use to create a record not of the tasks you plan to carry out, but of the one’s you’ve completed so far today—which makes it the rare kind of list that’s actually supposed to get longer as the day goes on.”
• Burkeman also briefly describes the “attention economy,” the downside of digital technology and the “arm’s race of the news media for our attention.” He advises, “The greatest act of good citizenship may be learning to withdraw your attention from everything except the battles you’ve chosen to fight.”
• “Leaving things unfinished is what’s causing people to have low levels of energy.” – Steve Chandler
• Sharing the experience of Jerry Seinfeld, the following is left for you to explore. “Do things daily’ish.” It’s a rule that captures the truth that progress doesn’t have to be perfect.
• “On a societal level, the quest for control often directly undermines our capacity to do meaningful work. If you’re a teacher or a social worker, if you work in academia or healthcare of the charity sector, or if you’re close to somebody in any of these roles, you’ll be familiar with how virtually everyone in such fields complains about barely having time to do their jobs, these days, thanks to all the admin involved in doing their jobs. That paperwork results from their employers’ efforts to render the processes of their work controllable, by making it transparent and measurable. Yet the result is that they have far fewer opportunities to create the unpredictable moments of human connection in which the real work gets done.”
• “What makes modern digital distraction so pernicious isn’t the way it disrupts attention, but the fact that it holds it, with content algorithmically engineered to compel people for hours, thereby rendering them less available for the serendipitous and fruitful kind of distraction.”
• Another bit of good advice: “Treat your to-do list as a menu.” This recognizes the reality that there will never be enough time to do all of the things that need doing.
• “A perfectly kept house is the sign of a misspent life.” – Mary Randolph Carter

What it all means: “We must accept that there will always be much to do and that the future will always be out of ‘control.’ What we need to do is to show up for life as fully as we can. Do something that matters.”

Until next time,
Art Dykstra

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