INJELITITIS: WHY GOOD BUSINESSES STILL FAIL – 2

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What makes injelititis even more dangerous, according to Parkinson, is that it begins in an innocuous way.

?Think of a hotel that opened to rave reviews and high customer ratings. Three months later, faucets in some rooms are broken. Bulbs are burnt but not replaced. Some beds are coming off the edge. TV reception has gone bad. Internet services have become sporadic and the signal abysmally poor. The furniture in the reception is getting torn at the edge. The towels are no longer white. The attendants in housekeeping see the progressive decline, but they do not care or have accepted it as the norm, having complained a few times without any remedy. Whenever a customer complains, he considered petulant and a bother. The staff give one excuse or the other for what is not working.

Injelititis does not only affect business. Induced inferiority or palsied paralysis as it is also known, can affect any collective, government, church, club, society.

An ‘infected’ person infused with a generous dose of jealousy and incompetence joins the hierarchy of an organization. Gradually, like a virus, he begins to infect others. As the virus spreads to more people in the organization, it is only a matter of time before there is an overflow and outflow of these unchained emotions. Their combined manifestation is what is known as “injelitance.”

An injelitant, having thoroughly messed up his department or area of function, now tries to couch his incompetence by constantly interfering with the functions of other departments to the point of attempting to gain control of happenings in the entire organization’s administration. They play ‘nosey parker,’ trying to ‘straighten things out’ in other departments even when things are falling apart in their own department. Talk about taking Tylenol for another’s headache!

If not nipped in the bud, the disease continues to the next stage where the injelitant has schemed his way high enough in the organization to be in control – partially or completely – of the organization. Sometimes, the problem begins in an organization directly at this level when an injelitant is hired into the organization at the executive level. At this stage, the injelitant is known by his frenzied effort to distance himself from everyone who has any semblance of brilliance in a way that could challenge his mediocrity. This he does by either posting them into functions where they are rendered effete or irrelevant, or by ensuring that they are not promoted, while less productive or intelligent ones are promoted over them in a move designed to frustrate them out of the organization.

Rather than acknowledge that any person is capable of superior intelligence, injelitants would always make snide comments about intelligent people, just to deride any suggestion of their brilliance. The disdain for brilliance is so palpable that any spark of intelligence is seen as defiance and a challenge to the established order. Sometimes he goes beyond that to fire them outright for being too outspoken or insubordinate. In time, he surrounds himself with mediocre people who cannot look him in the eye because they owe their position to his benevolence, not to their performance or skill. The injelitant is forever content to work with people of inferior intelligence so that no one could ever challenge his position on any issue. The scenario? A second-rate leader surrounding himself with a third-rate team, which in turn, spawns fourth-rate subordinates. It is an all-comers’ marketplace of stupidity.

If nothing is done to arrest the trend at this point, injelitance proceeds to the third and terminal level where the entire organization is so permeated with mediocrity and pathological stupidity, that there can be no spark of life anywhere in sight. Everyone in the organization engages in fawning sycophancy and practically worship the very ground on which the injelitant leadership walks because they owe their continued existence in the organization to the grossly insecure leader whose ego must be massaged even at the expense of corporate progress.

At this level, nobody cares about performance or corporate progress. The real concern of everyone is self-preservation or survival. And the only way to do that is to constantly massage the ‘Emperor’s ego. When he farts, it must be interpreted as sweet fragrance. Internal politicking, fueled by suspicion and pervasive nonchalance about performance, becomes the order of the day. Mediocrity has not only moved to center stage. It now runs the show! Injelitance has come full cycle and is now king of this kingdom!

Unknown to those within - even if they did, they couldn’t care less - the organization is already in a coma. It is this comatose state that precedes corporate fatality. The tragic part of all of this is that it could last for several years before its final demise. Very often, the situation is too deeply entrenched to be redeemed. Sometimes, the situation is fortuitously redeemed.

Suffice it to say that any attempt to impose anyone from outside the organization to do the necessary reinventing and corporate rejuvenation would be stiffly resisted because everyone in the system, in their quest for self-preservation, will do everything possible to either make him conform to the status quo or frustrate him out of the system by sabotaging his every effort. Yet, it is unlikely that the internal injelitant leader would desire change.

To exorcise injelitance, the approach of using a virus to develop a vaccine against the disease caused by the same virus must be employed. The ‘exorcist’ must first identify with and ingratiate himself with the system, participating in its inane banter and interminable intrigues. Meanwhile, he also should take time to study the nuances and the driving dynamics of the culture, with the intention of knowing what strategies to deploy as he works his way up the corporate ladder with no one ever suspecting his real motives. In a system corrupted by injelititis, the solution bearer must be very circumspect. This works so well because the injelitants in the system have become so inure to any sense of brilliance, like bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics, that they cannot even recognize the presence amongst them of this strategic ‘surgeon’ who is mysteriously in everyone’s good books. Because he appears like one of them, they never feel threatened seeing him rise through the ranks. So, they never see him coming! In the words of a Yoruba proverb, until a man’s hands are on the hilt of a sword, it would be foolhardy of him to start enquiring about how his father died, lest a similar fate befall him! Before the injelitants know what hit them, he is perched at the top of the corporate ladder and “bang!” he draws out his sword, or shall we say scalpel, and begins the much-needed surgery to rescue the dying soul of the organization. Where this fails, the organization is ready to take a bow, sing its swansong, and be handed over to the undertaker!

Can you diagnose injelititis in the organization you currently are part of? Are you going to simply resign and walk away in cowardly surrender to mediocrity? In the spirit of joining them if you cannot beat them, will you wring your hands and be part of the rot?

Or will you step up to the plate and be the ‘exorcist’?

Have you got your copy of my latest book, LEAD WITH COMMON SENSE? Here is the link to it: https://amzn.to/3tsmRMp

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!

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