GALT Consulting LLC

Are you a football fan?  I am.  Who is the best football player in the history of the game?  Some of you might say Joe Montana or Lawrence Taylor.  Others might say David Beckham or Pele.  Let's debate it.  Who is a better football player, Lawrence Taylor or David Beckham?  Our debate wouldn't be very fruitful because one side would be talking about American football and the other would be talking about Soccer (called "football" everywhere else in the world).

This analogy is actually very common in business.  Large companies are often accused of doing "stupid" things from the outsider's perspective, which are actually very clever on the inside.  In an extreme example, Enron managers repeatedly entered into reckless, short-term deals that eventually helped to bring the company down.  Dumb, right?  Depends on what game you are playing.  The very structure and culture of Enron was one of short-term thinking.  Managers were quizzed regularly and rewarded (or punished) for the quantity and size of deals they closed.  Many of these managers were rapidly promoted, collected their big checks and got out before the house of cards collapsed.  They were playing a different game... and they won.

This phenomena also occurs between different roles within an organization.  A manager holds a very different perspective than an employee.  The two perspectives are not right or wrong, they are just different.  When employees are treated like a commodity, their game evolves into surviving day to day.  They start doing things that management regards as "stupid" because they are playing a different game (ex: running out the clock vs. growing the company).

These perspectives ALWAYS exist and they are different between every individual and between groups of people.  This is why it is absolutely critical that you allow "groups" of people within your company to continuously mix and interact so that you can build a common perspective around the organization.  When management has very little interaction with a certain level of employee, how do they expect to effectively communicate?

Mix up your people.  Utilize cross-functional teams to solve problems within your organization.  Allow the lowest levels of employees to have real input on your organization.  Winning the game starts by getting everyone on the same playbook!