Territories

I saw the dog playing in my garden and the first thought that came to me was, "How did this dog get in?" I then saw that our gates were open. I was reminded of something that I had read, "Does the breeze ask you your caste or religion before touching you? Does the migratory bird worry about which country's airspace it violates? Does the cloud look at which country it is floating above before dropping rain?" All these territories are man-made. The dog did not understand it at all. Funny, because even the dog marks its own territory and if anyone is anywhere near it, it will growl or bark. Despite that, this dog didn't understand any other markings.

Man made these territories so that s/he could live in peace with neighbours. But most wars have been fought over territories. Most of the tensions that we see in Asia today are again on who owns the oceans and what are territorial waters. There are issues with airspace violations. There have been instances where civilian air-crafts have been shot down for violation of airspace killing hundreds of people. So, apart from dividing up land, we divided up water and space too. And, despite marking all these territories, we seem to be at loggerheads with each other constantly.

Human behavior is amazing and varied. You also see this behavior of territory in organizations. Whilst this is an issue in all organizations, it is especially acute in large organizations. We do try and ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly laid out. However, in large organizations, we typically notice redundant organizations, duplication of efforts and all these cause confusion on accountability. It also causes territorial issues. I have seen that typical human behavior is to make use of this confusion and actually not take accountability.  More so, if the organization is not meetings its targets.

"The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective." Warren Buffett.  This is especially true in large organizations and more complex multi-national organizations. I have seen people wanting to "own" certain types of work or certain teams and will go to any length to get it going. To a large extent this happens when they want to increase the spend budget or revenue budget under themselves. What I have noticed is that this is done so that they can survive either at their existing level or they go and ask for a promotion stating that their accountability has increased.  This is also done at times to protect the budgets under them if some part of their organization is taken away from them due to re-organization.  The problem stems from the basic fact that the size of a role or job is measured by the Cost or Revenue that the role/job supports. So, the larger the cost or revenue under the job, the bigger will the size of the job be. Eg. if you are a Vice President, you must have $x of budget under you (either cost or revenue). If that comes down, someone will question as to why you are at the level of a VP. So, what happens if that  sizing is under threat? You will immediately try to increase it (so that you can continue to remain a VP) and that is where territorial behaviours come in. 

"Most bad behavior comes from insecurity." Debra Winger. This is so true. When the sizing of your role is under threat, you behaviours change and you want to add to the dimension of your role.  I have also seen many leaders making a grab for business lines to bring in revenue streams under them. This is more so where they are just cost centres and want to become profit centres.

Over the years, I have found that it is best to get out of this paradigm and also get your teams to get out of this paradigm. Yet, despite this, you still have to manage the Human Resources Policies that are driven by this paradigm. Why do they have this way of measurement? Because, there are not many other ways to measure a job sizing across a global organization. If you measure based on complexity, then, over a period of time, every role will become complex. This is exactly why organizations have used this measure based on cost or revenue. 

What has worked for me is to show the value that the organization drives - in terms of revenue improvement, cost reduction, profit enhancement and cash flow accretion. These are also objective measures and moves the organization towards contribution rather than costs/revenue numbers managed.

Beyond all these numbers, we need to remember that leadership is about people. It is essential for every leader to create an environment that is non-threatening. As regards this, I would come back to what I have written on many times before - being a human being and treating everyone as a human.  "The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior." Abraham Maslow.