Management: Throwing Sand in the Gears – The Stress Culture in StartUps
by Stephen Balzac, ByThePeople (www.PorElPueblo.org) contributor
The phrase, “a well-oiled machine,” is often used to describe a piece of complex equipment, or a team of people, that performs smoothly, excellently, and with little apparent effort. Should, however, that well-oiled machine get some sand in the gears, its performance starts to degrade. At first, it may just run a little slower, or perhaps it will make some noise. Often, the degradation in performance will initially be imperceptible. Inside that machine, though, the sand is grinding away at the gears. There’s a little bit more friction, a little bit more heat being generated and trapped inside. It takes a bit more energy to keep the machine running. The machine’s performance degrades, slowly at first, and then faster and faster as the damage builds upon itself. Eventually, the machine comes to a screeching, smoking halt or explodes in an exciting and dramatic fashion, much like the chicken-pie-making machine in Chicken Run. , the 2000 Aardman Animations studios movie that tells the humorous story of a band of chickens who seek to escape from their coop.
Just as it is possible to have a team that functions like a well-oiled machine, it’s also quite possible to have one that functions like a machine with sand in the gears. Sadly, this latter situation happens far more often than the former. When dealing with teams, organizational stress plays the role of sand in the gears of a machine. Like the machine, the effects of stress are cumulative, feed upon themselves, and are not always obvious in the beginning.
Ironically, many people believe that they perform best under stress: “I wrote my best paper the night before it was due,” is a common refrain. There is some truth to the claim, in that stress for brief periods can improve focus and concentration; however, there is also a big difference between writing a paper the night before its due, and performing the equivalent feat with a large scale engineering project. However, even in the case of large scale engineering projects stress can be a powerful force with positive results if managed correctly. Two keys to good management under stressful/ emergency situations are: good and constant communication and the creation of achievable short terms goals that would reinforce success. Finally, the management team must develop a culture where emergency situation are the exception and not the rule. Having said this, the purpose of this article is to explore the characteristics of stressful situations that lead to disaster. In a future article we will explore the 10 rules of good management that lead to success even under stress or under a clear emergency.
Sands in the Gears:
High stress for a brief period is considerably less destructive than low levels of constant stress. Humans are built to handle remarkable amounts of stress for relatively short periods of time, and can do it repeatedly provided adequate recovery time is provided! An athlete who competes in the Olympics typically doesn’t do it again the next week. Environments that are constantly stressful wear away at people, in much the same way that sand wears away a mechanism.
Because it can be so hard to recognize the early warning signs, here is the sequence of steps that most organizations follow before the dramatic explosion occurs.
Members of the company seek to improve motivation by frequently highlighting the risks the company faces.
A win/lose mindset is established, in which employees are constantly reminded that they must constantly work long hours in order to have any hope of corporate survival.
Teams begin to lose trust in other teams (e.g. engineering does not trust marketing and vice-versa), and management. Each group in the company retreats into its own metaphorical fortress.
Team members start to lose trust in one another, leading to further fractionalization.
An atmosphere of constant crisis keeps the business focused on short-term fixes instead of long-term problem-solving and innovation.
As communications break down, team members find it difficult or impossible to engage in constructive conversations. Interactions are increasingly viewed as win/lose confrontations rather than opportunities for collaboration and cooperation.
Without effective communications, error correction becomes increasingly difficult, resulting in a destructive feedback cycle. Mistakes are compounded upon mistakes.
Because of the perception that everything is an emergency, decision making becomes increasingly reactive, short-sighted, and non-participatory.
Interpersonal conflicts increase and, more and more frequently, remain unresolved.
As the situation deteriorates, management becomes increasingly authoritarian in an attempt to prevent utter disaster. Employees are increasingly seen as interchangeable components, not as valuable members of the organization.
Management becomes steadily more isolated from the rest of the company. Input from non-managers is regarded with suspicion.
Employees, especially engineers, become increasingly resentful of management’s attempts to control their behavior. They may respond by working fewer hours, spending more time on email or surfing the web, quietly discouraging potential new hires from accepting jobs at the company, etc. If people have not already started leaving the company, the exodus usually begins at this point.
All parties become increasingly focused on surviving the conflict. The need for self-preservation becomes paramount, and the company’s goals are forgotten.
Employees and managers become increasingly disenchanted with their work.
Product quality decreases. Standards may also be lowered, to try to hide or deny the deterioration, or in a misguided effort to improve morale. Contempt for the customer is common.
Some internal or external event triggers the final explosion. Small companies may simply go out of business; larger ones can lose entire teams or even divisions.
The key to effectively preventing the final explosion is intervening early and building a strong team foundation. The later the intervention, the harder it is to accomplish and the less likely it is to succeed. Once a company is in a power dive straight for the ground, it’s generally too late to do anything.
Most companies don’t fail because of a flaw in their technology. They fail because the people who make up the company aren’t working effectively as a team when they most need to be.
Stephen R. Balzac is the president of 7 Steps Ahead, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in increasing individual, team, and organizational performance, and a contributor to ByThePeople.org (www.PorElPueblo.org). Steve has over twenty years of experience in the high tech industry and is the former Director of Operations for Silicon Genetics, in Redwood City, CA. Steve contributions to the journal are in the area of Business, Leadership, and Organizational Development.
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