Our response in red....If you have a question that you'd rather not post, email us at wicburycrapper@gmail.com and let us know if you would like your question answered privately or as a general post like this one.
Dear Crapper,
That article that you put up about a dysfunctional company was really interesting because I looked it over and at least 7 of the 15 signs apply to where I work at WCSO as a civilian employee lol. Why can't people at the top see the big elephant standing there?! I have never seen morale lower than it is now at our department. I really just can't understand why our bosses don't see or care about what's going on?
- Sign No. 2: Bringing up a problem is considered as evidence of a personality defect rather than as an observation of reality. Sign No. 4: Double messages are delivered with a straight face.Quality and quantity are both job one. You can do it both cheaper and better, just don't ask how. If you're motivated enough, you should know already.
- Sign No. 5: History is regularly edited to make executive decisions more correct, and correct decisions more executive than they actually were. Those huge salaries require some justification.
- Sign No. 7: Directions are ambiguous and often vaguely threatening. Before you respond to a vague threat, remember this: Virtually every corporate scandal begins with someone saying, "Do it; I don't care how." That person is seldom the one who gets indicted.Sign No.
- 8: Internal competition is encouraged and rewarded.The word "teamwork" may be batted around like a softball at a company picnic, but in a dysfunctional company, the star players are the only ones who get recognition and big bucks.
- Sign No. 9: Decisions are made at the highest level possible.Regardless of what it is, you have to check with your boss before doing it. She also has to check with her boss.Sign No. 10: Delegating means telling somebody to do something, not giving them the power to do it. According to Webster's Dictionary, you delegate authority, not tasks. In dysfunctional companies, you may have responsibility, but the authority lives in the office upstairs.Sign
- No. 11: Management approaches from the latest best-seller are regularly misunderstood to mean what we're doing already is right on the mark. "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," "Good to Great" and "Who Moved My Cheese?" all seem to boil down to, "quit griping and do more with less."
- Sign No. 12: Resources are tightly controlled. Your department may need upgraded software, but there's been a spending freeze since 2006. Cost control is entry-level management, but in a dysfunctional company, anything more sophisticated is considered too touchy-feely. Whatever you propose, the first question you will be asked is if it can be done cheaper.
- Sign No. 13: You are expected to feel lucky to have a job and know you could lose it if you don't toe the line. Dysfunctional companies maintain control using the threat of punishment. Most will maintain that they also use positive rewards ... like your paycheck. A few people are actually fired, but most of those who go are driven to quit.
- Sign No. 15: The company fails the Dilbert Test.Dysfunctional organizations have no sense of humor. People who post unflattering cartoons risk joining the ranks of the disappeared. When an organization loses the ability to laugh at itself, it is headed for big trouble. If you'd get in trouble for printing this article and posting it on the bulletin board at work, maybe it's time to look for another job before this one drives you crazy.
We will try to answer your question as generally as possible.... We assume the question is why can't people see the elephant?
Well, police departments are interesting animals because they generally don't adhere the the way a company functions because they don't "make money" and for the most part are not a customer friendly business. But, that doesn't mean that they should ignore all aspects of what makes a good company function. Essentially any police department is still an organization that should be planned and operate like a good company in several ways. Your "clients" or criminals or the general public you are there to take reports for should be generally happy with the services provided (less the criminals) and it is incumbent upon administration to ensure that their employees are happy or you get huge turnover, such as some city police departments (cough, cough).
Multiple studies have shown that the happier an employee is the more that employee will produce or at least not become anti-productive thus causing a cancer from within the company. Unhappy employees are a cancer that rapidly spreads, effecting the entire work place. Some believe or have been told that employees create their own morale. This is a very foolish viewpoint and essentially allows managers who adopt this viewpoint to ignore the needs, issues, and problems of their employees with a simple phrase therefore, making managers lazy and exempt from caring for their employees. Thus the cancer spreads.
So, how do you fight a cancer? Well you can use chemotherapy (threats, write ups, reassignments, and discipline) which kills all the bad tissue but also kills a lot of the living tissue and makes the organization sick, hairless, and vomiting. Or, you can use a lesser invasive method of observing, gathering information on how to improve the body before acting harshly, and working with all organs (or branches of the organization) in order to make it healthy again.
If the leadership in your organization never admits fault or that they are wrong or have made a mistake this too is a serious indication that something is very wrong. Everyone makes mistakes but, hey it doesn't apply to me because I have to save face. You are the one that's wrong, that report never made it to my desk and it's not because I lost it, you must have not turned it in or it got sucked into a black hole. Not my fault.
So if there is no mechanism in place for listening to concerns from personnel OR leadership is unwilling to admit there is a problem and is never wrong, things will not improve internally until this issue is fixed. There will always exist an "us vs. them" in these cases.
The funny thing is that some managers are reading this response and rolling their eyes. These people are the problems within an any organization because they think they are always right and peons are not smart enough to think beyond them and are only good for following orders. We crap on you. Poop poop.
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