Beware of firms with insecure leadership

What is the biggest barrier to a company's success? Some might say incompetence, but I would suggest it is personal insecurity on the part of senior managers.

I was having coffee with a friend last week who told me a classic tale about organizational resistance to change.

My friend — let's call him Joe — is a consulting executive of deep experience and quality. He had recently joined a national consulting company with a niche focus as a senior individual contributor and quickly noticed that they were sorely lacking in best practices.

Being a corporate veteran and a reasonably subtle fellow, he went out of his way to tread lightly and not immediately point out the gaps in their knowledge and performance. Unfortunately, while he was present on client visits, he found himself having to play mediator between the account representative and the client when actual arguments broke out.

Before he reached his sixth week with the firm, he was called to the corporate office and told that he did not fit stylistically with the firm. His stepping out of line ever so slightly, with the best of intentions, had violated the informal rule of the company demanding absolute loyalty.

Now this is an extreme but not uncommon occurrence. I've written in the past about the critical success factors for being a fact-based organization: that the data be available to users in a consistent and reliable fashion; consistency and standardization of processes; alignment with business goals; and fact-based leadership.

At the root of fact-based leadership is integrity — emotional, intellectual and moral. How afraid of change are you? When confronted with feedback that suggests you are doing things wrong, which do you react with?

2. A grudging acceptance. Some leaders are inconsistently open to change. They will enable progress while sporadically sabotaging efforts for change, again out of insecurity.

3. Freaking out and putting head in the sand. If the senior executive team is insecure and resists being a learning organization, the entire organizations will develop a head-in-the-sand mentality.

I explained to Joe that, metaphorically, he is a sheepdog, looking to guide the organization to greener pastures. The problem is, he joined a firm of rabbits. And to a rabbit, a dog and a wolf are indistinguishable. His desire to be proactive and attempt to save the account, in the process mildly criticizing the firm, was taken by the warped corporate culture as disloyalty.

So next time you are interviewing with a firm, politely ask some tough questions. If they respond protectively, consider the possibility that the individual hiring manager — and perhaps the entire firm, if it's a small- to medium-size one — has a culture that is insecure and treats mistakes as threats rather than learning opportunities.