How Mandates Backfire: A Case Study

All around us, we see leaders making a classic error.

And when it comes to the changes they're trying to lead, it's a fatal mistake.

Too many leaders, whether in global corporations or federal governments (or, um, both?), fundamentally misunderstand one of the great paradoxes of leadership, which is this:

Nothing kills momentum faster than a mandate.

To be fair, this is counterintuitive. (That's part of what makes it a paradox.)

But it's true: Telling people what to do, especially when you're trying to change their behavior and most especially when what you're telling them to do appears to be against their own interests—is going to backfire.

We're not just talking about resistance to change. That’s a given anytime we're talking about change, although mandates will certainly exacerbate that resistance.

Because mandates inherently restrict autonomy—one of our core human needs—they also have other unintended (but quite predictable) consequences that leaders seem to forget, or at least overlook, in their craving for compliance.

We can use WPP’s recently announced 4-day RTO mandate as a case study to illustrate these consequences, but I assure you these aren't specific to this company or that change. You'll see the same results emerging around any mandate you investigate.

I've grabbed a handful of comments from the company's Fishbowl feed to illustrate the textbook ways we can and should expect people to respond to mandates:

#1 Policy Resistance

Resistance to change is inevitable but we can work with it. Resistance to a mandate will be something else entirely.

Case in point: The "Demand WPP to Revoke its Four-Day Office Return Mandate" petition has topped 20,000 signatures and garnered a ton of media coverage. Again, we shouldn't be surprised by resistance, but I'm willing to bet WPP leaders didn't see this groundswell coming.

#2 Gaming the System

People will find loopholes that allow them to officially follow the rules, but actually run counter to the rules' ostensible outcomes. To be clear, this happens when the rules are rigid or unreasonable, not when humans are misbehaving. This is what we humans do. You might even call it creativity.

In this case, we can clearly see how the rules are actually in service of the wrong goal: Presenteeism, not authentic engagement in the work or the company.

#3 Escalation

This is where it gets ugly, as each side digs in deeper.

Important: I find what often moves leaders to put down a mandate in the first place is the misguided belief that their people are their problem. And thus, a vicious us vs. them cycle is born.

Small grievances become symptoms of the bigger conflict. Lack of trust in one's people erodes their trust in you. You become the villain, and it's your mandate that did it.

The point is: Mandates don't bring us together as a team—they push us apart. If you want your relationship with your people to be adversarial, lead by mandate.

BONUS #4: Distraction

Now that people are resisting the change more than ever before, finding ways to get around your bad rules and seeing you more and more as their antagonist, one more thing is certain:

This is all a tremendous drain on your time, energy and attention.

It's safe to say the leaders and managers throughout WPP (please correct me in the comments if I'm wrong!) have spent an inordinate amount of these most precious resources dealing with the fallout of this mandate—and it hasn't even gone into effect yet.

Is getting RTO right really the best use of leaders' time? Or is it a distraction from the deeper issues and more salient opportunities that exist in the culture?

One thing seems clear: For everyone, regardless of role, it's a distraction from the actual work.

What about intended consequences?

You'll notice I haven't mentioned the fact that people will quit. That's often an intended consequence of unpopular mandates. "Don’t like it? Good, quit." It's a strategy used to let employees while avoiding heavy severance payouts.

All I can say is: In this market? Not likely.

What's the alternative?

The opposite of a mandate is NOT letting people do whatever they want.

It's working together to build momentum toward the vision of change you're pursuing.

Building momentum takes thoughtfulness and structure. It takes care and collaboration. It takes integrity and courage. You can see why so many leaders prefer mandates over momentum. This doesn't sound easy or expedient. But as we've seen, it's actually much easier than the alternative... and, I would argue, vastly more effective.

To build momentum, you must have:

• A purposeful vision to guide you, ground you and galvanize people to join you [if you don't know why you're working, it's easy to get distracted by how work is getting done]
• A shared set of core principles about what matters most in the service of your vision [for example, a point of view on how connectivity and flexibility both foster creativity]
• A commitment to co-create (with your people) and iterate (over time) the structures and practices that will serve the vision [ways of working fit in here]
• A willingness to allow change to do what it does best: compound over time

We had an opportunity, coming out of the pandemic, to design the future of work together in a thoughtful, collaborative and future-focused way. I believe we still have that opportunity. And I believe the opportunity also extends to the kind of country we (in the States) want to be, and the kind of societies (across our beloved planet) we want to create.

But to leverage this opportunity, leaders will need to resist the mandate impulse, to keep their "because I said so"s to themselves and work with—not against—their people.

That's truly creative, transformational leadership. Anything else is merely transactional.

Nothing kills momentum faster than a mandate.

But don't take my word for it. Look to your own experience. Do you agree?

What other unintended consequences have you seen emerge around mandates?

What other leadership strategies do you employ to bring forward the change you want to see?