Dysfunctional organizations always out themselves. Despite their attempts to compensate for their incompetence with apologies and small gestures, they can never get the fundamentals right. It’s like a boat with a chronically leaky hull. You can bail all you want with as many buckets as you can find, but that boat is going down.
Case in point, my recent anniversary dinner with my wife, Marie. Not the anniversary part, but the dinner. We don’t usually make a big fuss about anniversaries or birthdays or most any day at all, but this celebration gave us an excuse to try an attractive and pricey Italian bistro in the neighborhood—I’ll call it “Dysfunction Junction.”
We arrived a few fashionable minutes late for the 7:45 reservation and were surprised there were no tables. The place was packed, but isn’t that what reservations are for? I had clicked on “anniversary” when I made the reservation and mentioned it again to the hostess, figuring I could milk it a bit. After a perfunctory congratulations the hostess left us hanging. A full ten minutes later, she returned to lead us to an outdoor table.
Before we could even glance at the menu, a waitress pounced. We shooed her away but not before mentioning our anniversary once more for good measure. It was a long wait before she returned to take our wine order, though. Then we just sat. And sat. What was going on? Nearly twenty minutes in, a young man brought breadsticks and water, which would sustain us while we pined for the elusive waitress. Somehow we instinctively knew to ration our scant provisions.
Soon our breadstick stash dwindled, though, and our water glasses stood dangerously empty. Worry crept in. Would we survive the night? Then suddenly the wine arrived, and just as suddenly the waitress evaporated. We watched as she busily took care of checks for other diners. Many were dressed in that shabby-chic look that dominates in wealthy enclaves like Carmel, California, or Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Marie and I just can’t pull off that look and would never try. Could this atrocious service be a snub?
At long last, our elusive waitress returned, and we begged for more water along with a wine refill. The waitress took our food order as well—just two entrees. Meanwhile, a couple at a nearby table who had come in half an hour after us was happily noshing on their meals.
We finally waylaid the waitress again, and she mumbled through an apology involving some sort of kitchen mishap and muttered something about comping dessert before scurrying off to find our entrees.
Then she returned! We were so excited to see she held two plates, but they were so small! As she placed them on the table, she explained that the chef had sent out a complimentary delicacy to apologize for the delay. With a flourish and a flush of pride, she described them as crostini topped with gourmet cheese and herbed butter. To our eyes, each plate held half a piece of Melba toast with a blob of ricotta and a glaze of grease. We should have laughed at it, but it made us sad.
The whole scene had become so absurd that we struggled not to take it personally. Was this an elaborate prank? The delays, the empty table, the empty glasses, the minimalist canapé cum recompense—we were being punked on our anniversary, right? It would get worse, though.
After another fifteen minutes, the entrees themselves finally arrived. By then, time had lost all meaning, but the food snapped us back to reality. We thought, “Hallelujah!” Would it be worth the wait?
I had ordered an expensive tagliolini and crabmeat entree. What I received was a plate of overdone fettuccine, not topped with the lump crabmeat I had every reason to expect but accompanied by a few dry pieces of crab claw meat—the kind fit only for soup. Marie had her own dish of overcooked pasta to contend with, this time drowned in a too-sweet rosé sauce.
We had been reluctant to make a fuss so as not to ruin the occasion, but enough was enough. We summoned the manager who arrived at our table with an apology and another offer of dessert, but we did not want dessert. Marie told her plainly that we expected to be comped for our anniversary meal—free dessert and the absurd round of crackers and cheese were just insulting. We had been there for 90 minutes with nothing but breadsticks to tide us over. To her credit, the manager instantly agreed. She even went way above and beyond, giving us a bottle of wine and a $30 gift certificate, which—nice as it was—would not purchase much at Dysfunction Junction. After all that, we just didn't have the heart to tell her why we left our meals largely untouched. The food simply sucked.
The Dysfunction Junction, despite its pretension, high prices, and shabby-chic clientele, was a gastronomic Hindenburg. “Oh the humanity,” indeed! The poor service was one thing, but there is no excuse for bad cooking.
Dysfunctional organizations, such as Dysfunction Junction, downplay their flaws, treating them as minor hiccups that will pass and that they can cover up. As long as the food eventually lands on the table whatever the circumstances, they congratulate themselves that they got the job done.
Meanwhile, the fundamentals aren’t there. A job done poorly is ultimately meaningless. You can’t dine on dysfunction. If the food is mediocre, if the firm’s report is subpar, if students are not learning at the school, then the job itself, whatever it is, is irrelevant. Sorries and coupons and free stuff will only make up for so much. This is the curse of dysfunction, and it will eventually out.
Gross dysfunction is a matter of culture and needs to be addressed that way. It is not about training or motivation or even pay. It is about the organization as an organization, what it stands for and what it hopes to achieve. The fix will not be not easy, but it will be impossible if you are dealing with denial on top of it all. After all, what good is a gift certificate to a lousy restaurant?
As for that fancy-schmancy hors d’oeuvre that Dysfunction Junction foisted on us by way of apology, I bit into one. It really was just what it looked like, ricotta with butter on Melba toast. Blech.
When have you encountered dysfunctional organizations? How did they make you feel?
Leaders must understand how to shape their organization’s culture in order to address and and prevent dysfunction, and I can help.
If you want to learn more about how to become a great leader in this world of bad bosses, visit GuidanceForGreatness.com.
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