RESULTS
Based on your responses, your organization has the following profile:
The Passive-Aggressive Organization
“Everyone agrees, but nothing changes”
So congenial as to seem conflict-free, this is the seething, smiley-face organization. Building consensus to make major changes is not a problem; implementing these changes, however, is next to impossible. Entrenched, underground resistance from field operations routinely defeats corporate initiatives. Lacking the authority, information, and incentives needed to undertake meaningful change, line employees tend to ignore mandates from headquarters, assuming “this too shall pass.” Confronted with an apathetic organization, senior management laments the futility of “nailing Jell-O to the wall.”
Passive-Aggressive organizations tend to strive for the mean. Mediocrity is not only quietly accepted, it’s often promoted. Decision-making authority is murky at best, and, once made, decisions are often second-guessed. The herd mentality runs rampant, trampling innovation and ownership, and information is locked down, inaccessible to those who most need it. Ironically, this profile is the most common among the seven we’ve identified and fits many Fortune 500 companies. Having secured a large and defensible market position, they are now fiddling while Rome slowly burns.
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Learn more about the Passive-Aggressive Organization
- Organizational DNA Executive Summary
Provides a comprehensive overview of the Organizational DNA framework, including the four building blocks, the seven organizational types, and headline research results.
- The Four Bases of Organizational DNA
Describes the four building blocks of Organizational DNA—decision rights, information, motivators, and structure—and how they can be realigned to improve organizational effectiveness.
- When Everyone Agrees But Nothing Changes
The Passive-Aggressive organization resists change, not because its people are subversive or ill intentioned, but because it’s easier to go with the flow than object to an infeasible plan. This pervasive lack of ownership and accountability explains why the Passive-Aggressive organization is so poor at dealing with abrupt changes in its competitive environment. This article explores how to align people, incentives, and knowledge to overcome such organizational inertia.
- RESULTS: Keep What’s Good, Fix What’s Wrong, and Unlock Great Performance
- Chapter 3: The Passive-Aggressive Organization Now available
Decision-shopping, accountability avoidance, stifled information flows, and consensus-driven inertia—these are the signs of a Passive-Aggressive organization. This company has lapsed into complacency; it is resting on past laurels. Its managers now ride out market disappointments and turnover at the top by doing just enough to stay off the radar screen.
Passive-Aggressive cultures, by definition, resist change and are, therefore, uniquely difficult to fix, as Chapter Three of the book RESULTS makes clear. Tackling the project building block by building block is a futile exercise with negligible impact, since they are all dysfunctional. To make changes stick, companies need to tackle all four building blocks at once—decision rights, information flows, motivators, and structure. While the action plan itself may be built on a series of small steps that build on one another, the intent and outcome of this organizational redesign should be nothing short of transformational. Success story: Symantec Corporation
- Harvard Business Review: The Passive-Aggressive Organization
It's a place where more energy is put into thwarting things than starting them, but in the nicest way. A startling percentage of companies, especially large, established ones, display the symptoms. (October 2005)
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