One of the topics I frequently inject into presentations to senior manager groups is the danger that bubbles can present to our businesses.
Most folks think of bubbles as disconnects between the inflated price of assets and the true, fundamental value of those assets. Those aren’t the bubbles that I climb up on my soapbox to talk about.
The bubbles I more often see are internal ones. They can happen unbeknownst to leaders, who can go to work day in and day out, unaware that they are dwelling in information and feedback bubbles.
These occur as leaders become shielded from negative news and even honest questions. Keeping bad or upsetting news from the boss becomes a pattern and often leaders are unaware that it’s happening.
This was driven home to me a few years back with one of my better friends in banking.
He was a senior manager at a regional bank. One day, I casually referenced a festering problem his team had been dealing with for many months. It was common knowledge. I had listened in on conference calls he was not on where members of his team openly discussed the issue and the individuals causing it. I received emails from members of his team expressing exasperation over my friend’s seeming unwillingness to address the situation.
I couldn’t understand why this was the case but trusted that he had good reasons. It was beyond belief to me that this person — one of the smartest bankers I knew — was not in the loop on something that was having such a deleterious impact on his team.
Yet, when I casually mentioned the situation over dinner, his blank stare surprised me. I thought he was simply a great actor. Only, he wasn’t acting. He was embarrassed at first. Then he grew irritated.
When I realized I was the first person to (unintentionally) bring the problem to his attention, I offered possible reasons why he may have been out of the loop. I suggested that his direct reports may have taken ownership of the problem, not wanting to bother him with it.
He laughed and said, “Nice try. You should see the minutiae I have brought to me.”
The more likely reason was that his team knew the situation would annoy him and they simply hoped it would resolve itself. It hadn’t.
After my friend learned of it, however, it took less than one week to resolve the long-festering issue.
He and I joked later about that unplanned fact-finding dinner. That said, he began making more of a point to check in with and pay visits to people and departments who seldom complained or asked for assistance.
He began communicating more regularly not only with direct reports, but with team members several layers of management beneath him as well. It wasn’t done to circumvent his direct reports. He simply realized that keeping bad news and negative feedback from supervisors had become far too common.
Over a couple of decades, I’ve witnessed scores of instances in which top-performing branches and bankers didn’t follow managers’ edicts by the book.
Yet, many of them “checked the boxes” and pretended that they did. They simply did not want to risk management’s ire by pointing out bad or ineffective policies, or where they were making adaptations. None of these high-performing folks or teams were ever breaking laws or behaving unethically.
But they weren’t following the official playbook, either. Because of this, management would often continue to stress ineffective practices to branches and bankers who were underperforming.
Why wouldn’t they? They believed that the most successful people and teams were effectively executing the same plans. If Branch A is succeeding under those plans and procedures, why weren’t Branches B and C succeeding? It would shock many managers just how often this occurs.
The past 18 months of pandemic protocols have forced leaders to implement new and/or altered strategies, policies and practices on a grander scale and in a shorter period than at any time in memory. But remote work and restrictions on physical visits to facilities have, in some ways, created even greater potential for information bubbles.
Effectively running a business requires sound decisions and timely adjustments in normal times.
These have not been normal times.
More than any period in recent history, now is a time for leaders to identify and resolve information and feedback bubbles up and down their management chains.
