MISTAKE #41: There is conflict of interest

One of the key reasons I left corporate America was from seeing how so many people were rewarded for the wrong behaviors.  Individuals could be recognized and gain personal benefit from doing things that actually harmed the larger corporation.

The most disheartening examples I saw involved launching new products. 

A manager’s entire year (and future career path) would revolve around overcoming every barrier in his or her way to get a new product into the market.  Shortly after launch, that person would get a promotion and a raise, and a nice new assignment on a more prestigious brand in recognition of their efforts.

They’d have progressed far enough up the ladder to avoid accountability by the time that new product failed a year or two later.  In fact, the more it was clear that the product had limited odds of success, the more some people were rewarded for actually getting it launched.

These people know greater reward comes with getting a dog to market over killing it peacefully before it gets there.  People just don't get praise for killing things.

I’ve helped other individuals along their way by getting extremely creative in how to craft a story to support the perception that the product was going to be successful.  Because I, too, was rewarded for playing a role in getting the product out the door.  Clients rarely hire me to tell them they've got a bad idea.

The problem, you see, was the fact that a whole lot of people knew these products were dogs that had little chance of success long before they ever got to market.  Yet no one was given the incentive or the voice to call this out.

New products were typically sponsored by more senior people so any questioning could be viewed as insubordination.

No one wanted to risk eliminating their position by eliminating the project and budget assigned to it.

And we've all learned it is possible to ‘buy’ the first 6 months of sales.  This also buys enough time to manage the career path and be onto the next project before the dog dies.

I had similar eye-opening experiences when I saw the relative value of political prowess versus work results.  I had coworkers that openly advised me to shift more of my work hours away from doing my job and into the social dimension of getting people to recognize and know me.  Their philosophy was that people, not results, get promotions.

And the examples I've got of below-average employees being protected by allies they've made is enough evidence to convince me it is true.

When I had a job, I tried to focus on what I was paid for and assumed (hoped) that my manager would do the necessary PR work to make sure that work got visibility.  Unfortunately, I saw others quickly progress through the ranks and get the sought-after jobs by spending at least a third of their time building and serving their social network.

WHEN SELF-PRESERVATION REALLY ISN’T

For the sake of this article, let’s remove any ethical or moral obligation an employee has to ensure his/her employer is doing all it can to maximize long-term profit.  And let’s remove the fact that some amount of socialization and networking is clearly beneficial to removing inter-personal barriers, making unexpected connections, or to improving job satisfaction.

Unless you’re the inventor of your product or you have substantial stock options or for some reason, you are completely unemployable by the rest of the world, you probably face similar conflicts of interest. 

Doing what is right is not synonymous with doing what is best for you.

You’ve got lots of reasons to go through the motions of your job even when you have strong suspicions that bigger issues need to be addressed. 

You’re getting known for your ability to run reports and find more and more creative ways to spin data to tell the story your salespeople want to tell.

You’ve used the product yourself or looked at the marketing materials and realize they’re not even compelling enough to get you to want to buy.

You see ignorance or unsupported assumptions as the foundation of critical decisions and realize leadership has long since stopped caring about finding new truth.

You already see the product’s future failure and are shifting more of your attention to finding another job before that failure becomes public.

You’re miserable because you feel so conflicted with how your days are spent.  You want to do great, honest work and produce something you are proud to tell your family and friends about.  But there are so many things you do that just make you feel dirty.  They make you feel like you’ve sold out or compromised a little more integrity or embraced the world’s most liberal definition of excellence.

Know that I’m not just preaching to others here.  Despite being out of Corporate America, I have continued to experience these conflicts from even more dimensions.   

I regularly face the conflicting challenges of wanting to prepare and empower my clients to have the best possible odds of success while feeling a need to deliver some hard truth.  How do you tell a client that you've worked with other companies in the same position, refusing to make the same tough decisions, and the outcome is unpleasant?

I face similar challenges when working on multi-phase projects where the decision to continue is made after each phase.  I obviously lose revenue if the project is cut short.  But I also realize that projects shouldn’t be prematurely killed before they can be fully optimized and validated.   Should my bias be to kill the project to save the client money or to move it forward despite significant questions about viability?

Perhaps ironic.  Perhaps self-fulfilling. 

I’ve learned that the clients least likely to listen to my advice to modify a project are also less likely to consider my advice to kill the project.  This puts me in the unpleasant position of being responsible for polishing a turd.  These are projects I’m not proud of and don’t share as success stories with my friends.

DO THE RIGHT THING FOR YOU

If this article spoke to your situation, I’m sorry.  I’m not going to try and over-simplify or over-encourage you to stand up and be that lone voice saying what you hope everyone else on your team is thinking. 

However, I would suggest that you consider what needs to happen in your career to break the cycle.  What do you need to do differently so you’re not in the same position 12 months from now or you don’t repeat the same experience with your next job? 

Your current situation likely reflects the fact that you work with management that doesn’t want to hear the truth.  However, it may be helpful to seek out confidence or friendly coworkers that also feel alone in that crowd.

The fact is that you’d be acting in the best interest of your company.  You’d be sincerely trying to help them maximize long-term profit…and employee satisfaction.  And a good manager…the type you should want to work for…would really appreciate that.