It always upsets me when I visit different companies and witness what I call the “Them and Us” phenomenon. What happens is that someone from one part of the company refers to another person or a group as “them” and to their own colleagues as “us”.
This is subtle and often requires a trained ear to pick up the subtext of what is being said. I believe, and a lot of research seems to support, the notion that this peculiar way of referring to colleagues is actually at the root of organizational silos, conflict, and many dysfunctions, making collaboration and change less easy. So, I decided to comment a bit on why people see others as different and what that means for working together.
On a macro scale, the Them and Us phenomenon is universal and appears to be part of human nature. We learn from recent anthropological research that the internal ability of a tribe to come together as an entity, to internally define, unite, cooperate with, and nurture the tribe, “may give that group an evolutionary advantage.” Taken to a logical extreme, the more refined a group’s beliefs, values, and culture, the more likely it is to succeed and, along the way, be distinctly different from other groups. So far so good. We all need connection to a community for identity and affirming relationships. On the other hand, we are also familiar with the ugly history of prejudice and discrimination, “the most public and political manifestation of seeing others as separate and different.” Ethnocentrism, colonialism, fascism, Jim Crowism and other historical manifestations target the Other, while WE-WE are just, noble and blameless. A group becomes “better,” and the border between it and other groups is clearly defined in terms of positive and negative, good-bad, familiar-different, inside-out, believers-unbelievers, and the like. So the seeds are born for potential dysfunction.
In a contemporary organization, the difference between Them and Us is more nuanced and less primary. Ask a salesperson what they think about working with a service delivery team, and you’ll hear “Oh, they’re great to work with. Very responsive, lovely,” and the like. But when the time comes, that same salesperson can strike a self-centered deal with a customer that will be a sales advantage, but leave it to the service team to handle delivery specifications that are challenging and even potentially unprofitable for them. “That’s just the sales game,” would be the seller’s explanation. “They don’t like to collaborate”, would be the explanation of the service. They us.
Even members of the same team fall into this mentality. West Coast members are “them” and Headquarters members are “us.” Team members on a different floor in a building can become “them”, while people on “our” floor are “us”. While it may seem like an innocent reference, when you think about it, “they” reveals a distinction that doesn’t really exist.
While it is natural to fall into this pattern of thinking, it is contrary to what it takes to be successful in a complex global business. Instead, the organizations I have worked with aspire to become collaborative entities where talent and resources are harnessed across the board and where cooperation and shared power can become greater value for clients.
Them-Us: The Insidious Source of Silos
Despite the corporate goals and strategy based on collaborative initiatives, I find that people have trouble breaking away from their and us thinking, perhaps because if they were to lower their barricades, they would feel helpless without their own identity of “we” . Why is this so?
In Changing Minds, Howard Gardner points out that we develop theories (explanations) about how things work that are resistant to change. For example, salespeople develop the assumption that achieving goals at all costs is everything and are rewarded accordingly. If you’ve been in sales since the beginning of his career, that idea is, as Gardner puts it, “burned into his mind.” When working with Them, a service delivery team in developing a proposal, sales people tend to listen to other ideas but, without malice or deliberation, cast the Other’s opinion in a lesser light. The result is that these groups become “accidental adversaries,” an archetype of systems thinking defined by Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline and later by Jennifer Kemeny. Accidental adversaries describe how partners can unintentionally undermine each other’s success. These emotional links with Them and Us do not respond to rational calls for collaboration and cooperation. “We”, right or wrong, is who we are.
At the corporate level, the result is siloism, the breakdown of an organization into fiefdoms where the interface between groups is more conflict and stagnation than a flow of ideas and productivity. I recently came across a situation where the CEO of a multi-divisional organization reprimanded his highly experienced and well-paid direct reports (all division presidents) for “acting like kids” when they constantly couldn’t stop being “us.” “. in solving intergroup problems. And that was happening in an organization where cross-functional collaboration and leverage were a strategic priority.
When viewed from this perspective, the They and Us phenomenon becomes a key player in corporate change and organizational climate. I suggest that it is the hidden molecule that comprises the various forms of resistance to change that we have all experienced. Robert Kegan, in Immunity to Change, would call Them and Us a “hidden compromise” with big assumptions that help us maintain the status quo and remain impervious to change.
What does this mean for leaders who are striving to strategically turn their businesses into “Cultures of Excellence” or who promote “integrity, cooperation, compassion, creativity” and the like? Setting expectations from the highest level, explaining business plans and justification, describing benefits (the usual change management weaponry) can only go so far, it seems. The They-Us phenomenon must be part of the strategic equation.
Eliminate Them-Us Dysfunction
Create a performance management system that rewards collaboration
An obvious and tactical remedy is to eliminate the misalignment between goals and rewards by focusing on cross-functional achievements and team recognition. Eliminate conflicting goals, all opportunities to game functional goals, replacing or augmenting them with outcome measures that reflect accomplishments achieved through cooperation. If these goals are focused on improving the customer experience, each contributing function can claim a role. That changes the focus of what “the US” has done. how all of our assets, all of the “we,” have impacted our valued customers. Not surprisingly, this is currently a hot topic in education and health reform where value integration is a clear direction.
Foster cross-functional capacity in individuals and teams
Another approach is through capacity building. Working effectively in an organization requires that an individual demonstrate an astute understanding of how the entire organization works, appreciate the pressures and aspirations of different functional areas, have a strong ability to apply influence, and have team skills that lead to problem resolution. problems and progress. These are sophisticated “A” game level skills, requiring a higher level of commitment and prerequisites such as empathy, emotional intelligence, and trust. Developing these higher level skills or finding role models to emulate takes time and is ongoing.
Focus on the mechanics of working together
Every cross-functional interaction involves key “moments of truth” where each party has to meet each other’s expectations. For example, when starting an IT project, certain information must be exchanged, discussed and agreed upon in order for the work to start efficiently. How that meeting plays out in reality is a moment of truth: if done right, each party experiences value from a useful and productive interface; otherwise, inefficiency and trust issues will prevail throughout the rest of the project and beyond. Mutual engineering of this interaction carefully has a great dividend in eliminating actual or potential animosity between groups.
lead from the front
Probably the most powerful tool that can break Them and Us is leadership. When the head of an organization expects, he doesn’t demand, that silos break down and business units begin to cooperate, the cultural die is cast. All that is needed is a demonstrable determination. Former GE CEO Jack Welch once reported that one of his toughest decisions was firing a high-level, high-performing employee who wasn’t a team player. The message is clear: the culture values teamwork and collaboration; Them and us is over. The lesson is that talking about the vision of a united culture and harnessing talent across the organization is a worthy and necessary leadership move. Yet imposing and pushing organizational rules about how the culture will work and then enforcing those rules is what convinces anyone who doubts what the leader wants.
And then there are person-to-person relationships.
In the absence of that kind of dramatic display of intent from above, an individual contributor can take a personal leadership position in understanding the context in which their counterparts work as a first step to collaboration. Years of attitude research show that when people know each other and work closely together, their perception of the Other changes to something positive. Building personal relationships is a change multiplier and breaks down silos.
Of course, They and We will always be with us. We need to associate with groups; gives us uniqueness. The challenge in organizations is to change the “we” from an insular business unit to a larger, more cohesive organization. The goal is to build a multi-Us-es company. The challenge for people is to be aware of who they label as “Them” and what that means for that relationship. The goal is to establish relationships without prejudice.