Title: Breaking the Fear Barrier: How Fear Destroys
Companies from the Inside out and What to do about It
Author: Rieger, Tom
Subjects: Management-Psychological Aspects; Organizational
Effectiveness; Success in Business; Corporate Culture; Psychology, Indutrial
Call Number: 658.401 R554B 2011
ISBN: 9781595620545
Number of Pages: 151 p
Book Description:
In
companies, fear can take many forms: fear of not meeting a goal, of not getting
a bonus, of losing decision rights and respect. Fear compels employees and
managers to protect themselves by creating seemingly impenetrable barriers
fortified by rules and practices that benefit one group while harming others.
Left
unchecked, fear driven barriers can spread at an alarming rate in a company.
Workgroups start to define success not by reaching the company’s overall goal,
but by fulfilling their part of the process. Restrictive policies pile up until
managers start to exert extreme control over headcount and resources. Other
managers feel compelled to build empires-taking over other departments’
functions to regain or enhance their self-sufficiency. In the midst of these
counterproductive activities, employees suffer, success deteriorates, and
efficiency dies.
While these
barriers might seem insurmountable, they are not. They were built internally,
and the can be destroyed internally.
By learning
from the real-world lessons in this book, leaders, managers, and employees can
overcome the barriers that plague their company. It takes courageous
leadership, and it can be difficult, but the result will be nothing less than
transformational (from the inside of book cover).
My Read:
In this
book the author pictures a pyramid of three levels bureaucracy: parochialism, territorialism, and empire building. Each level creates different degree of
barriers rooted of fear, fear of loss. Survival instinct and fear of loss drive
a manager to react and respond to situations or condition with self-defense
behaviors and decisions that might benefit only to her group with a price of
sabotaging the company’s overall performance.
I agree and
admire the saying in this book: to create an environment where courageous
behavior can flourish and thrive, though I reserve doubt about the idea been
practiced into reality. The author also states in this book that people should become
managers because that’s what they do best not because it’s time for people to
be promoted to a position they are lack of skills (p84).
There are
four categories of workers listed in this book that I found similar to the
other four kinds of employees the other article stated existent at workplace.
In this book the four kinds of workers based on their levels of empowerment and
accountability are:
Top Performers
(25%), Loose Cannons (21%), Broken Spirits (5%), and Prisoners (50%). The other four kinds I found
in an article are: Players, Complainer, Passengers, and Prisoners.
Interesting, isn’t it?
The other
idea I found appealing to me is to have an organization to craft a vision or
simple value statement of what the company can become to improve performance,
improve the workplace, and strengthen customer relationship. It states that an
organization can not become aligned around a unified mission by reactive. Good
leaders are obsessively proactive. Leading means inspiring. Be reactive or
responsive is not at the head of a tide. If one has to lead with direction, one
has to be able to create a simple vision as guideline and lead with direction
toward the outcome one envisions.
If
“excellence” is a value a leader envisions that will help direct and navigate
her team toward success then what plans she and the team designate can make the
vision into reality. The value and the vision should be simple enough for
everyone in the team to understand and work on to boost performance and the
expected outcome a reality.
Leading
means inspiring. And it starts from breaking the fear barriers.
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