Command and Control, A Story

I realized during my journey in acquiring Smart Chemical’s completion division, now Refined Completions, that the transformation of a culture from Command and Control (C&C) to Trust and Inspire (T&I) isn’t without its challenges, and that’s something I wanted to talk about.

But before I can dive in and talk about the hardest part of transforming a culture, I decided to back up and explore what the differences between Command and Control and Trust and Inspire really are, because to be honest, it’s easy to get lost.

So many leaders want to be Trust and Inspire leaders, and so they adopt T&I language and slap it on a C&C culture. Or they will personally try to (notice the word: try) practice T&I leadership but they’re so far removed from the day to day and not committed to a fundamental culture change, that change doesn’t translate down through all the levels of their organization.

Being a T&I organization isn’t about a pretty mission statement, or a vision board, or anything else that is based on words only and no action. Culture change is an action, not an idea.

I want to tell you a story to illustrate what a traditional Command and Control organizational culture looks like:

It was a Monday morning and a new hire, Rachel, was ready to get started. Her manager John had seen her resume, interviewed her, and was completely satisfied that she was a smart and capable team member. She came in to work, excited about her new role, and her manager handed her a checklist.

“Here, this the checklist you’re supposed to follow in this position. I know you’re smart and experienced, and I have no doubt you’ll be amazing. Let me know if you need anything!” he offered as he smiled and went back to his office.

Rachel took the checklist and read over it. She’d done this kind of job before, but she was smart enough to know that every organization was different and sometimes used different kinds of machines, and she wanted to understand the why, or the thought process, behind some of these checklist items in order to do her job well.

Approaching her coworker, Mike, she asked, “Hey, John just handed me a checklist, can you help me understand the thinking behind these tasks so I can understand what’s going on and make sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to?”

“Hmmm,” Mike murmured as he read through the checklist. “Yep, that looks like our checklist. As long as you do everything on the list, you’ll be golden!”

“But what if I make a mistake?”

“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll know if you make a mistake.” Mike chuckled. “John will make sure of that.”

Rachel sighed. “But how am I supposed to know how to fix the mistake, or avoid it, or get better?”

“I don’t know." He shrugged. "I tried to get John to explain this when I got started and he said I was supposed to just follow the checklist and I didn’t need to know the why behind everything. So I follow the checklist. Except number three, no one does that one.”

“Why?”

Mike shrugged again. “No one’s done that for a year and nothing bad has happened. So we quit doing it. Don’t tell John though, he’ll freak out.” He leaned over and whispered, “I haven’t done number six in three months.”

“Why are they there then?”

“I have no idea,” John said as he laughed and walked back to his desk. “Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine.”

This is what I call the “Tell-Trust-Fail” method, and it’s pervasive in C&C culture. That was the “Tell” and “Trust” part. Rachel’s manager has told her the basics of what’s required in her job, and trusted her to do it without taking the time to educate her. Let’s see what happens next.

“I am in so much trouble,” Rachel said as she ran into Mike’s cubicle and plopped into the office chair opposite his desk.

“What happened?” Mike frowned.

“You know number three? The one you said nobody does? Well guess what, apparently it’s to make sure the bevel gear doesn’t need to be replaced. Guess what happens when the bevel gear fails?”

Mike’s eyes widened. “I don’t know what a bevel gear is but that doesn’t sound good.”

“No, it’s not. The printing press just blew up. I mean, it didn’t actually explode, but it might as well have. It’s going to have to be replaced, and it’s on me. I’m going to get fired,” Rachel groaned and lowered her head into her hands. “What am I going to do?”

“John won’t fire you, don’t worry, he’ll just yell at you. A lot. And maybe give you some tasks no one else wants to do.”

“This is why I wanted to know why those things were on the checkli—”

“RACHEL!” Rachel sighed as John’s summons echoed through the office.

“Wish me luck,” she said as she slowly stood and walked toward John’s office.

That was the “Fail” portion of “Tell, Trust, Fail.” No, Rachel shouldn’t have skipped a step in the checklist, but she trusted her coworkers who assured her it was fine. No one knew it wasn’t fine.

Bevel gears can last for several years, and due to the work environment in this company, turnover was high, and Rachel’s longest-lasting coworker had been there for less than two years. This may have been a failure on her part for skipping a checklist item, but the ultimate failure rests on the management team who didn’t educate their team members.

This management team probably thought they were practicing Trust and Inspire leadership because they “trusted” their employees to follow the checklist and didn’t want to micromanage them.

They didn’t intentionally set Rachel up for failure, but because of the culture, she was destined to fail. They didn’t “trust” – they “commanded” (telling Rachel what to do, but not why).

“How could you let this happen!?” John’s face was an alarming shade of red.

“I-I didn’t know what that step was for and didn’t realize it was important.” Rachel didn’t want to throw her coworkers under the bus by revealing they’d told her it didn’t matter. Her frustration became evident as she continued, “You didn’t explain anything and I wasn’t able to make informed decisions because I wasn’t educated on how this process worked. How am I supposed to do my job if I don’t know why we do things?”

“Are you really blaming me? I gave you a checklist and you were supposed to follow it. End of story. You didn’t, and now you’ve cost the company thousands of dollars. When I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it without question. That’s how things work here.”

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said, her voice wavering a bit. “It won’t happen again.”

“It better not, or you won’t have a job here anymore. I can’t have employees who don’t follow instructions.”

Rachel’s face burned with shame. She knew now why that item was on the checklist, but wondered about all the other items. What awful things might happen if she skipped them? She was determined now not to skip any items, and hoped that would be enough.

Six months later…

“What? How did that happen?” Rachel couldn’t believe that the printing press had broken under her watch… again.

“I don’t know,” Sherri said as she shrugged her shoulders. “It got halfway through the process and stopped, then I couldn’t turn it back on. I followed the checklist you gave me exactly.”

Rachel sighed as she thought of the inevitable confrontation she’d have with John later. Sherri said she followed every step, and Rachel certainly had after the bevel incident.

“I figured out what happened,” the repairman said as he approached and explained the problem in detail.

Rachel frowned. “That doesn’t have anything to do with anything on this checklist.”

The repairman looked over her checklist, as well as Sherri’s. “You’re right, you needed to check the pressure on the impression cylinder after switching to printing a thicker product. But anyone who knows even the basics about how this machine works wouldn’t need a checklist to tell them that.”

Outwardly, Rachel appeared calm, while inwardly she was fuming at John for not educating her on how this process worked. If she knew how this worked, she would have known to check for that.

“Rachel, please come see me in my office.” John was quieter than Rachel had expected.

Rachel sat down in the chair opposite John’s desk. “John, the repairman explained what was wrong and when I showed him our checklist to ask how this could have happened, he said there was nothing pertaining to that on the checklist. He said anyone who knows how that machine works would have known to check for that, but no one taught me how it works.”

“I can’t believe that after working here for six months, you don’t know how that machine works. You should have known the pressure has to be adjusted. I am really disappointed in your lack of initiative.”

“My lack of ini— You know what, I quit.”

“I think that’s probably for the best.”

Rachel failed once because she skipped a checklist item. She failed again because her boss didn’t educate her on how the machine worked, so when there was an item missing from the checklist she didn’t realize it.

Had John taken the time to educate her until she was at least consciously competent, then given her ownership over the process, she would have understood what happened and could have prevented it. But John wanted her to follow the checklist with no guidance and to figure it out on her own. He wanted to Command and Control and ended up losing a valuable team member.