So much has been written on what effective leaders do and do not do.

Much of what has been written is pie-in-the-sky. Recently I even read something about the selflessness of leaders, which I thought was science fiction or humour.

Leadership is not only impacted by the personality of the leader. 

Leadership is also very much impacted by unrealistic and dangerous expectations of followers. These expectations forge leaders’ behaviour, in the same way that a tweet (as opposed to a fact) impacts the response of many current politicians.

In this brief post, I want to point out the most salient dangerous expectations that followers have from leaders and how the leaders REACT to these expectations and themselves follow the mob.

• Resolve complex issues of what constitutes moral behaviour
• Mitigate ambiguity when it is impossible to do so
• Provide “meaning” for random events
• Recreate a sense of preserving greatness or uniqueness that perhaps never was
• Perfuming pigs
• Focusing hatred externally

And I can go on and on.

We tend to focus on what leaders do to garner influence. But leaders are often led, and kowtow to the desires of the followers for their own ego needs. This type of leadership is very very common. 

I think it is time to talk a bit about the ways followers create dysfunctional leadership with misplaced expectations. And to put all this in a proper cultural perspective.

Oh yes, the cultural context of leadership. How heretic this is for traditional OD which assumes that everyone wants or needs democracy. Egypt, Yemen, Eye-raq, Afghanistan, Russia, China.

But that is another story, widely addressed in other blog posts and articles of mine.

Does anyone remember the TQM (total quality management) craze, which was a cure-all for everything from faulty service, poor recruitment, shitty products and poor planning? *

What ever happened to JIT-just in time-the  Olympic gold-medal planning process, rendered totally irrelevant by changing circumstance?**

And MBO, management by objectives-a scheme which died of a heart attack cum stroke when things started changing so quickly that goals are now defined almost ex post facto.***

If you storm forward, you either become a war hero or come home in a box. If you wait a while, you lose the financial benefits that many early adapters get, but when the going goes sour, you don’t sink with the ship. And the going ALWAYS goes sour. ALWAYS. No wars end all war; all total solutions fails and breed a new set of problems.

AI does not replace human intelligence. It’s a change and  a meaningful one. But it is just another change. But it is not a game changer for the complexity of human organizing.

I prefer to wait and see what damage AI does, and help clean up the mess. I do not want to be vaseline used admister AI. For me, that is not OD.

*The software industry taught us that releasing products that don’t work well is a very good business.

**Oh yes, disruptions to global supply chain can occur. It takes years and years to fix. Wars also break out, which ruin all assumptions.

***I do not know of one industry that can define goals a year in advance and stick to them.

Recently my car was stolen, as were another 43 Hyundai vehicles the same night in the “Sharon Area” just north east of Tel Aviv.

The cars were stolen at 22.00 (10 PM)  and appeared on a security camera at 22.14 in the Palestinian town of Qalqilya, where the cars disappeared and were dismantled, with the spare parts sold back to Israeli garages the very next day in a rare form of Palestinian/Israeli cooperation.

Getting reimbursed and re-equipped with a new car turned out to be a major challenge. The bureaucracies of the (almost brain dead) Israeli police, the insurance company, the Ministry of Transportation and the various authorities was a nightmare.

One of the more interesting things I noticed was that how few people really cared about the issue at hand. Rather, they cared about filling out the various screens and not getting in trouble. Nearly no one gave a flying fuck about me.

For example: to get reimbursed, I need to provide a copy of my stolen car license. But the license was in the car’s glove compartment. And the Ministry of Transportation would not issue me a copy because “the car appears to have been stolen. Please contact out help desk”, where no help was available “for this specific issue”.

Another example: I needed to provide a copy of a receipt for the last time my car was in a tune up, detailing what work had been done in order to access the state of the automobile. When I called the garage I was told that “due to the long line of people waiting now, please drop by the ( לקפוץ) garage in person and we will try to assist you”. The aforementioned garage has a severe parking problem; extracting the receipt and job order took me 4 hours.

Each step of the way, it was clear to me that no one cared. No one wanted to advocate for me. Why? Because a system has been put in place to prevent proper customer care. The customer is no longer a customer, but a pain in the ass. The maintenance of the system, however stupid, is the customer.  A new form of Leninism. The centrality of the Party, or in this case, the system.

It seems to me that people who care for the customer are people must be willing to take on their own organization, fight their own employer tooth and nail, in order to give service. They need to care about the customer, not the system, to get things done.

Like the lady from the parking meter company. I called her to cancel my parking meter subscription for my old car and transfer it to my new car. Her system was down, but she promised to call me back-and she did. “In the meantime, if someone uses your parking meter, I’ll strIke off the bill. Don’t worry. Here is my email if something slips through the net. I’m not supposed to do it, but I see you waited 25 minutes waiting for me and I’m sorry for that”.

Or the insurance agent who told me that “I’ll make sure that you are reimbursed without that God dammed car license. The insurance company is trying to get you to do their work”.

What actually is caring? In this case it is

• Over-extending your role as needed to get the job done
• Putting the client’s legitimate needs first
• Following up on your own initiative
• Using common sense when the system does not work
• Challenging the system when needed

And I wonder just how many companies recruit for a caring attitude? I am sure that very few. Customer care is really not in anyone’s interest. You only get cared for by caring people.

Your flight is 4 hours late? You have a problem. Call our agent, in Budapest at 3 euros per minute.

You haven’t saved your receipts from 1999? You have another problem? No refund.

You changed credit cards and cannot remember the last 4 numbers of your previous card? You have a yet another problem. You cannot stop paying for something you did not buy.

Your car was stolen? Welcome to a digital hell.

And so on and so forth.

Oh yes: you need to talk to a customer service agent: wait until you have listened to entire irrelevant voice menu, then press 9 and you will be told to “please call later, as all our attendants are presently busy”.

You do not need to be a rocket scientist to get the drift of why this had happened. All you need to do is read this post, albeit I myself am not a rocket scientist: just an old OD consultant with a brain that still works.

Here we go:

• The voice menu-which not only directs you where you need to go, but also makes sure that it is very hard to reach an attendant.
• Digitalization erects a firewall of business processes which always seems not to work, or, not address that specific problem that you encounter.
• Working from home which eventually lessens the bond between the service provider and the sense of belonging to the company that provides the service.
• The culture of “shadow work”, whereby the service provider gets you to work for them. “Do you see that red cable under your router? It’s green? Ok. Take it out and put it in the yellow hole. You don’t have a yellow hole? Take a picture and send me a picture of what your router looks like”.
• The low cost of goods. You bought a ticket from Rome to Copenhagen for 40 Euro return. You get what you pay for.
• The low level of solidarity between brands and their customer base as well as employees and their company.
• Good service and customer loyalty are not worth it in the short run. And in the long run? Who cares, really? Yes, we say we care but actually we don’t. Most businesses don’t give a shit anymore.

What can OD do? Nothing for the most. It’s a societal trend much more powerful than we are. The only thing we can do is help develop niche businesses who are interested in truly serving their clients. In action, this is a very small market.

George, my 14 year old poodle, accumulates a lot of pee at night, and so the first thing in the morning, I take him downstairs to allow him to get something off his mind.

And my car was not there.

Nor was that of my neighbour.

Gone.

I called the police 100. They told me to call another police station. We only have one police force is Israel, but apparently several numbers to report thefts. For a stolen car, press one; for an apartment break in, press two. For stolen phones, press three. Anyway….

I was told that I could report a theft which would be valid for my insurance claim via their website. Just a few problems: I had to open a user with gov.il using a long complex password which I fucked up a few times. Then I had to enter ‘POLICE’ and navigate to ‘thefts’. There were many types of thefts-and several times I was booted off the site for refreshing a frozen web page. Finally, I reached ‘car thefts’, yet since there had been no witness to the crime, I was not allowed to continue lodging the complaint. The help desk (which I reached after an hour) suggested that I try again in a few days ‘and hopefully that bug won’t be there’.

So in the blistering heat, I walked to the police station. Luckily, those before me in line were all complaining about car thefts; I was number 7 and I was out of there in an hour. Reporting a car theft in person takes but a few minutes.

Then, the insurance claim. The insurance company asked me for a copy of the car license. Of course it had been stolen. But they wanted it anyway-that is what their site told me. I called them, but there was no one to speak to; whatever I dialled, I was always sent to their site. So I tried to download a copy of the car license, at the Ministry of Transport-but the car was stolen so no notice of ownership could be issued. I called their help desk as well, and was referred to their website.

The wall between me and people with basic common sense and or a sense of ownership was blocked by a firewall of mindless software, which turned me, the user, into a miniscule meaningless speck of dust.

They all beat me.

And just to make sure I was dead, I got a text from the insurance company telling me that ‘your complementary car is available on Friday, not Wednesday, due to temporary unavailability.’ The complementary car can be picked up at a one hour drive from my home, “at your convenience”.

I did not even try to change that, although there are rental services near my home.

I know when I am beat.

Thanks heavens for my insurance agent, a real person, who called me and told me that he, not I, will take on the beast and get me reimbursed.

Digital-based services will eventually be seen as a crime against humanity.

PS. Cancelling Road 6 subscription was done easily by web. Cancelling Road 6 North was a nightmare; they wanted the last 4 digits of my credit card, and I was driving so I could not access it. Then, it took me another two days to get a reply that I sent them to their web site.Cancelling Carmel Mountain Tunnel subscription is a work in progress. There is no answer to the cancelling request that I submitted.

And my car was spotted in a security camera entering the Palestian Town of Qalqiya-and by now is long gone, chopped up into spare parts and resold both in Israel and in the PA. (Palestinian Authority)

The plan was to travel from London Euston to Crewe, switch trains to Holyhead in Wales and cross the Irish Channel by boat. The plan worked, expect for the cancellation of the Crewe to Holyhead train which was impossible due to a rail strike. No problem, I’ll write the railway and get a refund, I assured my son. The railway immediately acknowledged my complaint by email, detailing the arduous process I would need to go thru to get a refund, and that due to an overload of complaints, it “may take a few months”.  Stuff it- we took a 250 pound cab.

Arriving at Dublin Harbour, we prepared our passports, but in the end, we just walked thru because the passport booth was unmanned. We were told that “this happens at times; we are a bit laid back”. There was no cab or bus at Dublin Harbour, but a friendly lady “who had married an Irishman” took us in her cab using the taxi app that we had not yet installed. My son subsequently installed the app. I did not.

The car rental was the last hassle before the brilliant trip began. Due to someone’s error, the car we ordered was unavailable-we were a no show; at least we were registered as such. We were there, but we were registered as a no-show. This reminded me of a scene from Seinfeld. There WAS a car, but it was a downgraded version, that is, smaller than we ordered. We agreed to take it, BUT the system did not allow the clerk to downgrade us. There was no way to upgrade us either, because we ordered a large car due to my height. So, the system blocked any solution. The attendant told us that this was the ultimate impact of software on Irish informality, and promised us a solution. She called someone, spoke for an hour, got us the car that we had ordered which suddenly appeared (as well as a 200 Euro rebate), and off we went.

From Dublin to Waterport to Cohb to Cork to Killarny to the Ring of Kerry to Doolin to the Cliffs of Moher to Westport to Galway and back to Dublin went we. Slowly over two weeks, laughing all the way about our idiosyncracies, we discovered the beautiful Republic of Ireland. The easy-going nature of the people, the beauty of the landscape, their suffering, their history, their struggle with the British, their informality, the ubiiqutous green colours, the coastal roads, the sheep and cows, their intricate beautiful language in which they have pride. We listened to Irish songs on Spotify, went to listen to Irish music in pubs at night, drank beer, and were never deterred by the constant rain and piercing cold as we ploughed thru this gem of a country.

There is nothing so rewarding and bonding as a father and son trip, except a father and son trip to Ireland.  Thanks to Amir for making this experience of a lifetime, and for driving properly “on the wrong side of the road”.

Poodles tend to have weak rear legs.

Older people get cataracts, shingles and what not. Kids get measles, mumps and chicken pocks.

Boxers often get dementia. Tennis players get bad elbows.

People who sit next to a computer all day get various aches and pains.

All of the above “come with the territory”, and are almost unavoidable.

Similarly, different types of organizations have different pathologies. The pathologies are not avoidable because they come with the territory of being what they are.

In this post, I shall provide a short taxonomy of pathologies I have encountered in my long career in 4 types of organizations, and suggest how to best deal with them.

1. Bureaucracies eventually ossify to the point that that they work against doing their own job. Ministries of Housing slow down building of new houses; Welfare Ministries keep people poor. Ministries of Defense go to war. Income Tax creates a black market. My approach to working with bureaucracies has always been to work with empowered project teams from different functions to create a counter force to the functional structure and logic of bureaucracies.
2. Start Ups create new technology, but they do not change human nature. Start-up founders are often extremely arrogant, know-it-all, and believe that they are so special that their shit smells like a rose. They have little trust in consultants, until things get really bad. My approach with start-ups has generally been to try and create around the founder more common sense. The founder is often not part of the solution, but the problem itself which needs to be counterbalanced.
3. Organizations which are growing quickly often believe that they are doing everything right, and that is why they are growing quickly. This is very often total nonsense. They are growing because in the past, smart decisions were made. In the present, they are creating the reasons why they will stop growing. My approach to working with organizations which are growing quickly is to work on mitigating the damage to the “critical core” (people, ideas, behaviours) that made the company great; it is these very people who lose their power and influence when the company grows quickly.
4. Organizations of about 20-30 people have a problem of infrastructure. They are no longer a small company, but they cannot afford to create “staff” roles. As such, everything slows down and it becomes very hard to do simple things. My approach has always been to focus on hiring an over qualified individual who have vast experience in companies of this size. Hires from start-ups or very small companies have a hard trouble adapting to companies of this size.

One final comment. OD consultants must have domain experience. If you have done OD in family businesses, it does not “count” as relevant experience for any other type of organization.

“It’s a really slow and boring game, but let’s go anyway,” my Dad suggested in the first season (1969) that the Montreal Expos entered the  American baseball league. Dad added, “we can get ourselves a chien-chaud (hot dog) and a few Labatts (beer); I’ll doze off and you can wake me up when it’s over”.

Dad loved sports. He had played professional football after the airforce and he was an avid skier and golfer as well. Baseball was not his cup of tea but joking around with me about  baseball gave him a kick.

Dad knew no French at all (ok, he knew 30 words) but he knew that I loved French. He knew how interested I was in what words would be used to translate the various roles in baseball, and how the PA announcer would (mis) pronounce different names.

At Stade Parc Jarry (Jarry Park) he parked his Pontiac, lite up yet another Export A, and we tried to make our way to the seats. Dad was hard of hearing and the attendants who gave directions at Jarry spoke only French. Dad kept asking me ‘what did he say”? I laughed at that; he didn’t. “What a sick sense of humour you have, boy”.

A few things stand out in my memory from that game. First and foremost, I ate 3 hot dogs, chips (frites), popcorn and ice cream. Another memory: the the PA announced the name of the next batter:  “l’arret-court, the short stop, John Bocabellllllllllllllla.” I was ecstatic. The French word for short stop and the Bocabella name dragged out.

Later on in the game, a batter came up whose family had originally come from Quebec, although he himself was playing for an American team (LA Dodgers) , having been born and bred in the US. His name was James Kenneth LeFebvre. The announcer said “Second base, deuxieme base, Jim Le-Feeber, Jacques LeFebvre”. The crowd went wild.

On the way home, Dad asked me if I wanted to drop into the Dairy Queen for a sundae. Of course, he knew that I had eaten like a pig. After he asked me that question, he laughed for a long time, while smoking yet another Export A.

When we got out of the car Dad said, “Jesus what a f-cking back ache I have. I prefer watching boxing from bed, to be honest.”

Oh how I miss him.