6: The Power of a Crisis
The chapter opens with the description of a hospital with a toxic culture, manifested in the contentions relationship between doctors and nurses. In a culture such as this, it is only a matter of time before the habits lead to a crisis.
A study is mentioned that looks at the way organization decisions are made. In truth, it is not a rational or deliberate process, though rituals are in place to make it seem so. Instead, organizational decisions generally follow in the pattern of previous decisions - which is to say that an organization has decision-making habits that lead to a given outcome, regardless of the process.
Moreover, it is seldom a solitary decision made at the highest level, but merely conformity to many smaller decisions made at lower levels of the organization.
Various policies and procedures represent "truces between potentially warring groups or individuals within a corporation." The author refers to the idea of a company as an organization focused on a single goal as "idyllic" - and asserts that most organizations are made up of fiefdoms where executives compete for power and credit, pushing personal agendas that seldom have a direct correlation to the mission or the profitability of the firm.
And so, routines are generally developed around the most critical operations of the firm - those that are directly related to the purchasing, manufacturing, and selling of its goods. These routines ensure that the core business of the operation is attended, and that the firm remains profitable, in spite of the waste that occurs in the non-critical areas of the organization.
There's some talk about employee handbooks, which cover various policies and procedures - but never tell a person how to be successful at a given firm. Success depends on a lot of informal and undocumented knowledge - which executives have the most power, which subordinates have the greatest influence. You have to learn the informal power structure and learn to work around the bureaucracy in order to get things done. Those who break the unwritten rules will be drummed out, but those who play by the book tend to stagnate. Those who succeed are the rule-benders that can navigate through a complex web of organizational routines.
Then follows another lengthy narrative about a fire in a London subway interchange, in which the various policies and division of responsibility among multiple departments led to a hazardous situation and a very slow and painfully incompetent response to a fire that broke out. Much of this relates to the departmental siloes, lack of communication, and fear of everyone to do anything that was beyond the bounds of their negotiated authority.
And generally, toxic cultures and insane policies are ignored and permitted to perpetuate until there is a crisis - and only then is any effort made to examine the system and rectify the problems. Furthermore, it is often a wise leader who will aggrandize and prolong a crisis in order to make widespread changes, rather than addressing only those few problems that led to the most recent crisis.
"Never let a serious crisis go to waste ... [it] provides the opportunity to do things that you could not do before."