Are there organizations that operate as true meritocracies? While many espouse to be, fundamental things get in the way – like ego, habits, biases, personalities, nepotism, favouritism … the list goes on. One of the key things that gets in the way of open dialogue and the right people contributing to problems is hierarchy. Titles and rankings, while they can be well deserved badges of achievement, they can also feed egos and drive insecurities.
Consider the scenario where 5 directors are working on a problem / program. One director decides to invite the sr. manager from their because of a specific expertise. The other directors, feeling it unfair their sr. managers didn’t get invite, won’t have it and invite their people as well. An efficient working team of 5 has now grown to 10, not because of contribution, but because of the seeming need to be “fair”. In the case – the platform for fairness is a ranking.
This has many negative impacts to the organization:
- It’s inefficient – too many cooks in the kitchen (especially ones not contributing) slow things down – leading to….
- It’s costly – piling on resources to a problem doesn’t help it get solved any more quickly. The number of bodies in a room is directly related to burn
- It reinforces egos – condoning this behaviour perpetuates the ego underneath the rankings and titles
- It drives lower performance – by bringing in potentially irrelevant voices, the discussion cannot get to a higher level
I don’t have a solution for this deeply embedded behaviour other than to call it out when it happens and changing my own behaviours and decisions to focus on merit, capability and experience over titles, rankings and ultimately ego. How would you handle these scenarios?
The Objective Co 