In these days, in the many accounts that have been featured in the press of the disappearance of the submarine which was taking its occupants to see the wreck of the Titanic, one detail has been glossed over. According to journalistic reports of the event, the only engineer to have previously expressed perplexities about the technical characteristics of the project was fired.
This is a circumstance which cannot fail to provoke a reflection in all those involved in governance models.
In this case, there is the precedent of the Titanic which makes everything so much more captivating in emotional terms, but what counts is the model which produced this event, too. A model which involves a style of governance in which the sense of individual responsibility is replaced by an uncritical fidelity and a devotion to the company cause which, in the end, becomes, more prosaically, fidelity to one’s own personal position (and interests) within the company.
Not that such absolute fidelity is always explicitly required by the company’s top management, at least not always. Quite often, indeed, it is members of middle management levels who act like this out of a misguided sense of team spirit.
The event of the collapse of the Morandi Bridge happened in Italy in 2018 and the failure to demand its necessary maintenance is emblematic in this sense. Why raise bothersome issues when everything seems to be going OK? Why take on the responsibility to denounce something that is wrong if you put your career at risk, when everyone else seems calm and sure that everything is going according to plan? Why force an ethical and moral level, when people only apparently share a common interest and, instead, are really intent on maintaining a status quo which is as soporific as it is uncritical?
Such attitudes can work well enough in “peace times”, when everything is going well and the biggest worry is that of guaranteeing the awards of good results. But such attitudes become tragically dangerous when problems arise and the time comes to take on responsibilities. At this point, the CEO who has adopted such behavior will find him/herself terribly alone, often deprived of the information required to make urgent and necessary decisions.
Certainly, it is easy enough to wallow in the senseless optimism of statistics so that, when compared with a Titanic, a Space Shuttle Columbia or the collapse of a Morandi Bridge, the majority of businesses carry on in relative tranquility, (and who knows how many disasters occur that never reach the headlines?). But it is equally obvious that faint-heartedness and acquiescence are hardly the characteristics that can lead to efficient and positive governance. Both for shareholders and stakeholders alike. Areas of psychological safety should be created within the company’s internal decision-making system which, by the way, would be the same as those required by employees. Here, doubts, perplexities and positions outside the company mainstream could be freely expressed. It is of vital importance both for the company and for people.
Indifference, which for some appears to be a reason to be proud, is, on the contrary, really the most dangerous kind of poison for a company wishing to grow, innovate, take care of its employees, and value sustainability and an authentic ESG policy. The dissonant, the outsider, someone willing to fly in the face of the majority, on the basis of substantiated arguments and valid data, rather than a narcissistic need for dysfunctional visibility, is a figure often lacking in today’s apical teams, but whose presence allows a new class of management to grow and respond to future challenges. Neither school nor university, or other forms of vocational training, cover this area, increasingly occupied, as they are, in achieving conformity, aimed at all too mediocre ideologies of organizational happiness.
The only true masters of critical thought and constructive dissent can be the direct heads, the crucial deciders of the organization, the CEOs and the founders, who are prepared to transmit the courage of their choices, rather than underrate and diminish those whom they place in their plans for succession. That is, should any such plan exist.
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