Thursday, January 22, 1998

Too many yes-men bad for business

By DIANE STAFFORD / Knight-Ridder Newspapers

A few years ago, seminars on "workplace diversity" offered advice on diversifying race and gender. That still happens.

More often now, though, "workplace diversity" means diversifying thought. In that regard, skin color and gender both are important and irrelevant.

Most of the success gurus of the day submit variations on this theme: Successful managers and successful organizations hire and promote people with complementary skills and ideas.

Don't confuse that with complimentary.

"Complementary" means Manager A is hired or promoted because A is strong where Executive B is weak.

"Complimentary" means Manager X is hired or promoted because X is a yes-man and Executive Y is a wad of ego-challenged insecurity.

OK, OK, I exaggerate. But not much.

The problem of bosses hiring and promoting people who think the way they do is getting scads of critical attention these days. Here's what three acclaimed thinkers said recently:

--Tom Peters, author of "In Search of Excellence" and "In Pursuit of Wow!," championed a quotation he attributed to Jerry Krause, general manager of the undeniably successful Chicago Bulls: "If you have two people who think the same, fire one of them. What do you need that duplication for?"

--Stephen Covey, leadership trainer and author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: "If two people have the same opinion, one is unnecessary."

--Tony Buzan, expert on creativity and how the brain works, proclaimed last week: "A great leader finds people who are different from and better than he is, and he isn't threatened by them; he's stimulated."

So what happens to an organization that fills its ranks with people who think and do just like their bosses?

All together now: It stagnates. Or worse.

"You see it happen all the time," Buzan said. "When the top is replaced by someone they've chosen to be inferior to them -- and when the inferior moves up -- the organization becomes even more inferior.

"When the top chooses people better than them, people who challenge them and lead them, they gradually escalate the excellence and the quality of the organization."

Diversity of thought can threaten insecure managers. Rather than face challenges, insecure bosses find it easier to surround themselves with people who compliantly agree with them.

Diversity of thought can threaten insecure organizations. Rather than giving employees freedom to try and fail, or empowering them to make decisions without permission slips from above, it's easier to adhere to set policies or hierarchies.

Words to the wise: Get over it.

Can you think of one growing, industry-dominating, cutting-edge company with "my way or the highway" leadership and a rigid adherence to some musty operational blueprint?

No? Neither can the top organizational consultants of the day.

Diversity of thought brings energy, a wealth of ideas and change to an organization. Acceptance of that diversity brings mutual respect among workers and mutual "ownership" of an organization's goals.

Anyone who doesn't believe in the value of such diversity is assigned to read the fairy tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes."