The Broken-Leadership Paradox

that fit well with the former executive and jamming it in). In both cases, the hiring manager has to pretend that the other team members will automatically fit, which they rarely do.

It's that lack of the puzzle-piece fitting -- more so than any conventional issues of skill set or past performance -- that explains how a completely competent employee can get a pink slip.

Context is $%#ing everything. I mean that in every sense. Those last two sentences should be the title and subtitle of Collins's new book.

The adjacencies
The jigsaw dynamic also explains why internal mobility sometimes actually works. Every organization has that one underperformer who, once moved, suddenly outperforms. It's the correction of a puzzle-piece mismatch.

This metaphor also sheds light on why brilliant managers who move to a new company sometimes crash and burn, even when they bring their teams along. We've previously explored the idea that companies are social organisms, so the rule of "unique breaks" applies to them also, manifesting itself as different cultures. In other words, the cultural constraints of an organization are a reflection of the way in which it is broken. Companies, like people, need leaders who complement their dysfunction, who fit their broken pieces.

Outside of business, people who want to address their brokenness turn to therapists. The corollary for business is cultural transformation. I'm not saying that you necessarily must bring in an outside leader to transform your company, but you do need a third-person perspective. Rare is the fish in the pond that understands water.

Good to meh
Having been the inbound executive multiple times -- and getting ready to be that executive again -- I've stopped framing the dysfunction that I usually find in a new organization as conventional "talent issues." More often, the problem is me, the inbound leader, the ways in which I'm broken, and what that means for the roles at my new organization.

It doesn't help that, more often than not, the previous manager was an absentee landlord, having failed to challenge artificial boundaries, define new ways to collaborate, align with business problems, and provide opportunities for learning.

But even if you understand those needs, the hiring institution's expectation doesn't disappear. The demands on the in-bound exec to do "spring cleaning" are both pervasive and rife with magical thinking. "This time it's going to be fast and bloodless," they think, "because this new exec has real charisma and gravitas." Like that's all HR ever really needed to throw their processes out the window: wit and charm. Or whatever gravitas adds. Density?

Nope. Working the guillotine at Big means a long, uncomfortable exercise. Everyone knows the drill: Write a performance improvement plan (PIP), wait six months, ignore any actual changes in performance, and then fire away. You must fire the employee under scrutiny because the PIP, a cold legal move posing as a warm HR concern, breaks the poor bastard. 

It all reminds me of this great Douglas Coupland quote in Life After God: "I realized that once people are broken in certain ways they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one." While a seemingly inexplicable PIP isn't as traumatic as life's other tragedies, it's the business world's contribution to the "no recovery" list.

Thanks, HR! You're awesome! Toyota jump!

Dysfunctions, too, are built to last
When I make my next hop, I will try my darndest not to push anyone out. Instead, I'll add a few of my own puzzle pieces to the existing leadership team. 

But that won't solve the problem, because leadership changes all play out the same way. The existing team members will see my expansion of the team as the quiet before the storm. Regardless of how many times I tell them that I want them to remain and that I value them, I'll sound exactly like all the leaders before me. Given that track record, they shouldn't believe me. 

If there's some prescription here, some out-of-the-box, solutionist thinking, it's that inbound leaders should be contractually bound to keep their team members for at least one compensation cycle. They should be able to expand the team but not contract it. Legacy team members should recognize the leadership paradox for what it is: an opportunity to recast themselves; to change their puzzle piece slowly; to learn, unlearn, relearn, and eventually pick up that most elusive of skills -- the ability to be the fluid piece. 

In that light, an empty management slot is a different, more meaningful kind of opportunity for growth.

Cheery optimism aside, the inbound executive is a bigger risk than anyone ever acknowledges. Let's be honest: At the end of the day we have no idea how to solve this problem and we never will.

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