3 major dangers of a 'personality-based' organisation

Apologies, I should clarify. I don't mean 'personality' that is defined as 'the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character' but rather the one that describes 'a famous person, especially in entertainment or sports'. Well, you can certainly add work to that list these days.

After all, startup CEOs are this age's pop stars. The people every one aspires to be and die to read about. The people, whose words, common salary men of these times, would hang existences on to. Some of them even date supermodels. The media inches on the words they say and what they write. Many of us openly want their story to be ours.

To be fair, a 'personality' in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Many modern organisations thrive because of charismatic heads. A strategic and influential leader can at the very least, turn a mediocre organisation into a potentially successful one. The examples of this are almost endless.

But there are also flip sides to that coin. For starters, organisations that were forged to support the ego of one's success. In such organisations, all roads do not lead to Rome but to the 'personality's' room. In such a scenario, the preferences of said-personality is often spoken in hushed tones, no one is empowered to make the right decisions and there is never a clear and agreed baseline on anything. People eventually become disillusioned over time in this environment and fundamentally demorialised.

Both sides of the coin can lead an organisation into the dangers we are going to discuss in a moment, so neither is really less absolved from these eventualities. After all, Newton's third law has read the riot act to us since 1687, volition or not, things are often set in motion, some beyond our control. And as much as these personalities may sometimes have positive intentions with the decisions they make, the magnitude of their aura could mold and shape their organisations into something they never intended for.

Here are some common trends that occur in a personality-based organisation.

Measures are replaced with opinions

Can a company function without predefined and well-considered measures? Sure, but I doubt you would want to work there. Measures are like rumble strips, they keep us straight on course when whims and fancies seek to barrel us off course. Measures will hold the baseline of any organisation's numbers and facts and keep things consistent through challenging changes in both processes and personnel. But like a lot of good things in life, they are only as useful as you allow them to be. As soon as you chuck them out in favor of momentary opinions of a select few 'personalities', you've consigned your organisation to a fact-free purgatory.

Truth is replaced with preferences

If it's the truth, it doesn't matter if nobody believes it, it still remains the truth. Personality-based companies have a tendency to push the truth aside occasionally in favor of what is preferred by said-personality. This is usually the death knell for a productive and energetic culture. Nobody is ever really energised to just serve the fancies of one person, no matter how charismatic that person is. It's manageable for a while, but it's unlikely to be sustainable. Never mind that it's not the right way to do things, "he/she likes things done that way". How many of us has heard that before? Too many of us unfortunately.

Productivity is replace with redundancy

Replacing truth with preferences often results in productivity giving way to redundant work. Why? Because everyone is no longer searching for the most efficient and productive way to achieve the organisation's goals, they are searching for the best way to please the personality. And that's not always the best way to get something done. So not only do things take longer to get completed, employees would most certainly be gradually demoralised over time from the lack of efficiency and general logical reasoning.

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