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Issue #1
(please see Request Form
on current Newsletter page for
permission to copy
content)
During our team building work with client
organizations, we've compiled a collection of barriers that we see creating
enormous stress for individuals, blocking performance in teams, and robbing
organizations of productivity.
Each month, one of these barriers will be addressed in
our newsletter.
We'll include some suggestions for breakthrough
thinking to give you ideas for how you might begin busting through these
barriers.
"Management
withholds information."
Some examples of what we hear from employees during change:
I could get my job done if they would tell me what
I need to know!
They only tell us about half of what they know
because they don't trust us!
What are they hiding?
We're not babies. Why don't managers
tell it like it is?
Think
about a time when you made a personal decision (we have all done this) and
didn't tell everyone right away. How about the last relationship that
didn't work out? How about a problem with your child's teachers or
school? A problem with your banker? Your landlord? How
about the last time you decided to pursue a career change? Why didn't
you tell the people involved the minute you started thinking about it?
Particularly those that were going to be seriously affected? Probably
your answers have to do with your needing time to think things through, to
gather information, and to make good solid action plans.
Yes, management does sometimes withhold
information. Often, just like with our personal decisions, it’s because
they haven’t collected enough data from the marketplace to make a firm
decision. With technology enabling information to literally move around the
world in seconds, organizations are more conscientious today about how and
what information is released. Admittedly, that sometimes does seem like
deliberate withholding of information.
More often than not,
senior management has a big picture and a sense of direction, but perhaps
they haven’t yet worked out all the bugs and details. Your manager may be as
much in the dark as you. So, don’t take the silence personally.
It isn’t that you
aren’t trusted or that someone wants to withhold information from you. On
occasion, management has to safeguard new plans so they don't leak out and
harm the organization. They may want to share the information with you, but
for the benefit of everyone involved, they simply can’t.
In an economy in
which knowledge is now a commodity, it only makes sense that some
information has to be held back for carefully timed release. It would be
all too easy for a competitor to beat your organization to the marketplace
if proprietary information got out.
This does not
absolve you of finding out all you can by appropriately asking your
management to level with you – as much as they can. Let management know that
you are sensitive to the needs of protecting vital trade secrets and
potentially explosive information. But within these parameters, ask them to
let you know as soon as they can.
Don't simply adopt
the attitude of "they’ll tell me when they are ready." There’s no harm in
asking … but don’t feel rebuffed if you don’t get an immediate answer.
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