Weaknesses and Strengths
If you prompted some people I’ve worked with, they’d say I have two glaring weaknesses – I’m stubborn and I’m impatient.
Yet another group might say I have two clear strengths – I’m persistent and I bring a sense of urgency to my work.
They’re both right, of course. It seems to depend on the context of the situation, and also the paradigm of the person you ask. One thing’s for sure, though. A big part of my story is my tenaciousness and how hard and fast I push… for better or for worse.
I feel like my acknowledgment of this component of my character is helping me mature as a leader. In the past couple weeks, I’ve been invited to participate in a couple of committees. My answer? Well, I thanked them, first. Then I said, “I’ve never met a committee I didn’t disagree with,” explaining that I’ve learned that I’m not always at my best when I need to coordinate an opinion and an action with a group. Sure, I share their desire for outcomes and positive change, I’ll even work with them, but joining the committee? I’m not sure that helps anyone.
That’s not to say I can’t work with others, but committees put a lot of agendas in a room. To come out of it with agreement there often needs to be compromise. For some problems, a reconciliation of diverse agendas isn’t the answer we need. Sometimes, it just prolongs the time until we can get to the heart of the matter.
I think there’s hubris in that statement, but I’d also like to think there’s also an unwillingness to compromise a vision for the security of a team approach.
I wrote just a little while ago about “Beware the Invitation.” Sometimes, committees are a big, distracting invitation. They offer a venue for you to roll up your sleeves and to “see and be seen” working the issue. If your passion and knowledge of an issue drives you to act, it will likely also generate these invitations to align yourself with others. I’d suggest you need to ask if it is going to help you or hinder you in pursuing your original reason for action.
Sorry committees. I didn’t mean to rail on you. I think I’ve just realized that you’re not always a fit for me and it’s OK to say no.
Another interesting post Nevin that touches on something that I’ve observed first-hand, yet is nearly impossible to escape in a large organization — the ever present committees of various stripes. Depending what day it is and what I’ve been experiencing with respect to committees, they can either be the devil incarnate, reflecting and re-enforcing all of the worst aspects of bureaucracy or a godsend that helps to bring together divergent views into a healthy compromise. More often than not though I find that committees lead to dysfunction.
I have never had the privilege of being a member of a corporate committee (probably a good thing because I have pretty much the same attitude towards such bodies that you described in your post!) but my experience reporting to them has been less than inspirational. I find that committees as a governance mechanism can proliferate, putting too much group decision-making authority for too many issues into the hands of too few people. This causes decision-making gridlock and slows business down considerably. It can take unbelievable amounts of time for even simple decisions to be made (and, as you pointed out such decisions often become watered down compromises by the time the committee is through with them). The organization that I work for is extremely beholden to senior management committees as a decision-making and governance mechanism. Frustrating beyond belief! More empowerment and de-centralization of decision-making authority would go a long-way to speeding things up. But, the danger is that such de-centralization will simply lead to other types of grid-lock and lack of cooperation — perhaps even organizational civil war!
The bottom line for me with committees is that they appear to be the most efficient senior management “ass covering” mechanism ever invented! If a particular decision is results in a resounding success, then the group is rewarded and everyone involved is a hero. If a different decision goes south, then individual accountability is difficult if not impossible to uphold as the committee members run for each other’s cover! Brilliant!
Kudos to you for saying no to these invitations. That takes some courage given that participation can have some definite benefits from a networking and ass-kissing perspective.
I admire the fact that you’ve tried to avoid this throughout your career and that you try to do your best to “tell managers what they need to hear, not what they want to hear”. That also takes great courage. Seems to me there was another guy named Scott that I know who had this same philosophy!
Chris
“The bottom line for me with committees is that they appear to be the most efficient senior management “ass covering” mechanism ever invented!”
I laughed. It’s brilliant.
Nevin,
Thanks for this. You just helped me make a decision.
T
That’s a lot of pressure. I hope we made the right one. Thanks for reading.