Saw a very interesting bit of a talk yesterday, using how Seal Team 6 selects the team - two axes, Performance and Trustworthiness, and a grid, High/Medium/Low for each axis.
Obviously no one wants the lower left corner of low performance and low trust and everyone wants the High of both values.
But it really turns out that you will NOT want even the best performer with low trustworthiness — a very average performer with high trust is a better choice.
The problem in large organizations is that they have many methods and metrics to measure performance, and almost none to measure trustworthiness.
I've for decades observed that large organizations seem to actively filter-in and select for sociopathic tendencies at the top; there are only a few, ad seemingly by happenstance, who I'd rate high on the trustworthiness and ethical scale.
This talk made the mechanism immediately apparent -- all the selection is for performance, and there is little to no selection for trustworthiness. Fro trust, there's only a few rails that seem to resemble 'don't get caught breaking the law'.
Of course, when high-performance/low-trustworthy individuals get to the top, they are not going to institute or support systems to select for high-trust.
So, organizations will tend to ratchet in the sociopathic direction. And, sociopaths at the top can barely do anything but create a toxic culture.
Now we see the results: MIT studies show results "consistent with a large body of evidence that pay has only a moderate impact on employee turnover...In general, corporate culture is a much more reliable predictor of industry-adjusted attrition than how employees assess their compensation."
This correlates with many other studies I've seen that people to not really leave bad pay, but bad management, and often in particular, bad managers.
And now, the measurement of only performance and not trust has made toxic cultures endemic, and — surprise — nobody wants to work there.
Saw a very interesting bit of a talk yesterday, using how Seal Team 6 selects the team - two axes, Performance and Trustworthiness, and a grid, High/Medium/Low for each axis.
Obviously no one wants the lower left corner of low performance and low trust and everyone wants the High of both values.
But it really turns out that you will NOT want even the best performer with low trustworthiness — a very average performer with high trust is a better choice.
The problem in large organizations is that they have many methods and metrics to measure performance, and almost none to measure trustworthiness.
I've for decades observed that large organizations seem to actively filter-in and select for sociopathic tendencies at the top; there are only a few, ad seemingly by happenstance, who I'd rate high on the trustworthiness and ethical scale.
This talk made the mechanism immediately apparent -- all the selection is for performance, and there is little to no selection for trustworthiness. Fro trust, there's only a few rails that seem to resemble 'don't get caught breaking the law'.
Of course, when high-performance/low-trustworthy individuals get to the top, they are not going to institute or support systems to select for high-trust.
So, organizations will tend to ratchet in the sociopathic direction. And, sociopaths at the top can barely do anything but create a toxic culture.
Now we see the results: MIT studies show results "consistent with a large body of evidence that pay has only a moderate impact on employee turnover...In general, corporate culture is a much more reliable predictor of industry-adjusted attrition than how employees assess their compensation."
This correlates with many other studies I've seen that people to not really leave bad pay, but bad management, and often in particular, bad managers.
And now, the measurement of only performance and not trust has made toxic cultures endemic, and — surprise — nobody wants to work there.