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Contemplating The World

While at Graduate School a friend drilled three words into me that shall always remain at the pinnacle of my lexicon for life and business. They are Authenticity, Congruence and Transparency. I don’t think that any of these words needs a technical definition but I will offer my interpretation of them.

Authenticity: A person that is authentic is someone who is: Genuine, Real, Pure, Truthful, Honest, Dependable and Trustworthy. You will always know where you stand with this person.

Congruent: A person who is congruent demonstrates that there is harmony and consistency between his/her thoughts, words and actions. They walk the talk. There is rarely a word or an action that confuses or confounds you.

Transparency: A person that is transparent is someone that is open, easy to work with, and that generally does not have a hidden agenda i.e. everything is clear and nothing is cloudy. Typically this person could be said to wear their heart on their sleeve and does not maliciously distort information for personal advantage.

In the world of academia the debate as to whether the practice of Management is an Art or a Science has raged for years and I believe this will continue, but for me that is not the most important debate.

I believe that what matters the most is how professionals engage and behave with each other in the practice of management. Marshall Goldsmith once said that it’s not the understanding of management practice that is difficult, it is Practicing the understanding of management that is difficult. So as people engage in the practice of management, I continually hear people (including executives) express the desire to have more honest and forthright conversations, better decisions, less bureaucracy and more speed. I also notice a general desire for more freedom and less control to be exercised from their superiors.  However I then notice that those same people that want freedom don’t actually give much of it away and many times engage in very controlling ways i.e. they do not trust or empower their people as much as they think they do.

So in this simple example I believe people are not behaving with Authenticity, Transparency and Congruence, therefore it is essentially an ACT. In other words they are managing their image to the degree that others will have a certain favorable impression of them, which they can use to their personal advantage. This takes huge amounts of wasteful energy and effort. What it generally leads to, is an organization driven by self interest, where people keep things close to their chest, have a low level of trust, where information is managed and does not flow freely, which in turn creates unnecessary bureaucracy. It can also stifle creativity, reduce risk taking and problem solving, and causes people to become more afraid to fail so as not to dusturb the status quo. This ultimately slows down the business system, often leads to poor decisions and results in sub-optimal performance.

So as you look at your organization and in the mirror, ask yourself whether your work environment is full of ACTors or is it full of authentic and real players. What do you do?  How do you behave ? and How do you contribute to creating the future that you want for you and for your organization ?

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