Me First!

Some Thoughts On: Workplace Narcissism

“I’m expanding my empire” is hell of a way to start a post advertising the newest role in your team. Yet, that’s exactly what I found when I opened up my socials a few weeks ago.

Now perhaps the post was tongue in cheek, so we can give the poster the benefit of the doubt here. But what happens when this type of ‘me-centred’ thinking in taken to the extreme?

Well, you get organisational Ivory Castles. (They’re no longer Ivory Towers because modern technology means they can surround themselves with a moat and raise the drawbridge.) These are organisational units that have embedded cultures of ‘main character syndrome’, and who believe they are the royalty who feed the peasants. Of course, those peasants are dirty - so they avoid having any meaningful human contact with them.

If you think I’m exaggerating here?

- I’m not.

The worst case of this I’ve come across was a corporate shared services function that tried to rollout a policy that stipulated:

“If you need an out of cycle pay run processed then you will need to meet our hardship criteria.” (Even when the mistake was on their end, and you were underpaid…)

And what does proving hardship mean you may ask? - Oh, nothing more than proving that you don’t have enough money for food that week!

“Please sir, may I have some more?”

…Can you imagine having to do that? Sharing personal account details and receipts just to get the money that you were rightly owed?

Insanity!

For this unit, it was clear that there was workplace narcissism at play. (Something that was clear with just one look at their ‘service catalogue’ - a catalogue that only seemed to talk about how great they were, not how they could help). But these types of units are insidious, and are a real risk whenever you look to centralise key corporate functions.

The good news is that Ivory Castles are relatively easy to diagnose and the root causes are simple:

1. There is a clear misalignment between what success means for them, and what success means for their internal clients This is an organisational alignment problem.
2. They are staffed with people that don’t understand the day to day workplace demands and experiences of their internal clients. This is a workforce capability problem.

So how do we (start to) remedy the Ivory Castle?

1. Realign what success means for them.
2. Introduce and incentivise some form of internal client satisfaction measures and targets.
3. Instigate empathy and exposure through staff rotation or shadowing programs.

Unfortunately, you also often need to replace the king or queen that closed the gates in the first place too.

Question: Where is your organisation infected with ‘me-first’ thinking?

And A Quick Note: ‘All The Best’

Is it just me, or has “All the best” somehow become the passive-aggressor’s favourite way of saying “F-off, don’t let the door hit you on the way out”.

Surely we can do better than that.

Final thoughts

Recently a client told me that it was a week of ‘interesting stories’. Whether those are positive or negative, truly, what more can we ask for?

See you all next week.

BB