What would be the best way to describe corporate cholesterol in very simple terms? Let’s take a popular example of Duryodhana from our very own mythological scripture Mahabharata. Duryodhana as a character represents admirable traits as loyalty, efficient governance, honorable and skilled warfare, power, and boldness. However, at the same time wrathfulness and treachery, deception & dishonesty, malice, cruelty & disregard for honor have been the reason for his defeat at the battle of Kurukshetra.
Whatever Duryodhana did was in the interest of his ambition which overpowered his humanity and brilliance. Surely there are brilliant managers & leaders out there having admirable traits, yet at the same time their approach towards their teams is very much comparable to Duryodhana’s approach towards Pandavas. Almost every organization has a Duryodhana who is easily able to climb up the corporate ladder through his influential position or treacherous measures, while talented workforce like Yudhishthira or Arjuna prefer getting rid of such negative environment.
How many organizations are seriously able to identify the long term benefits of retaining a Duryodhana against a team of Pandavas? Not trying to judge, but the emerging trend of appointment of wrong & incompetent people at apex/top level who are probably connected to top management/BOD as mentioned in my previous post, is responsible for giving birth to a Duryodhana in every organization.
Is it Duryodhana or Dhratrasthra responsible for encouraging corporate cholesterol?
To explain this better, I’d metaphorically refer to the organization where I previously worked as Dhratarashtra. While, Duryodhana would better characterize the General Manager from one of my previous organizations that claims to be the best place to work.
Not pointing out anyone, but some organizations can never become the best place to work, till the time below-listed practices frequently take place:
- The apex management in an attempt to exchange favor hires unqualified people at the top level management, who have practically no experience or knowledge about the industry. In some specific use case scenarios, such managers does not even have professional written and verbal communication skills.
- The HR department practically has no policy in the benefit of employees, while everything related to employee evaluation, performance analysis and even appraisals are handed over to such unqualified managers, who only prefer to promote their blue eyed boys.
- The HR plays no role in resolving a conflict between the manager and the team; they instead prefer to harass the team members who speak up against such managers. In the end the employee who’s more credible and knowledgeable is forced to resign/quit.
- Such organizations do not practice principle of competency mapping and hence end up hiring people at middle management who are more educated, experienced, and highly skilled and better communicators than their reporting managers. This results in managers giving poor evaluation and below dignity work to these competent professionals, in order to keep their position and power intact. In fact, using their existing relationship with c-suites, they would try to malign the image of these competent professionals. As a result, either these employees look out or stop working to express their discontentment towards such corporate cholesterol policies.
- Though the company has highly qualified people working with them for more than 5 years; however instead of promoting them, they choose to hire unqualified people as managers above them, which is a sheer waste of budget and talent pool.
- The top level managers are incompetent in terms of utilization of their employee’s skill sets. It is even questionable whether such managers are aware of the strength of their core teams.
- Companies such as these have a “Corporate Governance” committee above the Human resource department to look into highly conflicting situations, but it plays no investigative role. Such committees are made for namesake to capture the interest & trust of employees in the name of corporate governance.
- Lack of transparency in defining KRAs and KPIs of the employees.
- Unplanned usage of workforce by managers and illegitimate distribution of work among the teams, and then blaming the teams for inefficiency.
- Forceful poor ranking of competent employees by such managers to malign their image.
- Creating barriers in communication amongst the teams, causing inter-department conflicts.
- Lack of humility and harassment by these managers to force competent employees to work beyond stipulated working hours.
After interviewing professional workforce employed with various other organizations across India, Asia, Europe, who shared the above mentioned irrational behaviors, it was clear that such organizations are facing issues of employee retention due to corporate cholesterol activities by handful of their incompetent managers.
Hence said, it’s always the Dhartrasthra in an organization placed either within the apex or top-level management, who gives birth to corporate cholesterol in an organization. Every Duryodhana in an organization is an encouragement & extension of Dhartrasthra who is blind-folded in his excessive attachment to material gains and immorality.
My Takeaway
As such there’s a huge pain point and latent requirement to guide and mentor managers and apex management team on correct and professional employee engagement practices that will go a long way in reducing employee attrition, thereby leading to optimum resource utilization, high throughput per employee, and reduce the employee replacement cost.
We at Improvisador are happy to associate with leading brands and curate effective internal mobility seminars to coach managers and show them correct path towards a holistic team approach. We’re proud to launch Retention & Corporate Governance program.
In order to enquire more about our service, you can directly message me or email at Sushant@thesushantkumar.com
