Organizations succeed or fail as whole systems. They can no more thrive on the strength of most-favored aspects than a car can use a functioning drive shaft and carburetor to make up for a dead alternator and flat tires.
Systems whose elements are mismatched, sub-optimized, disconnected, or otherwise disunited will, therefore, inevitably fail to reach their maximum potential. This is as true of coworkers, offices, and departments as it is of spark plugs and serpentine belts.
Yet the ability to work together as a unified whole – while maintaining necessary differences and celebrating diversity – is a concept rarely mentioned leadership discourse.
Indeed, virtually all contemporary organizations are characterized by low-grade levels of disunity and discord. Turf issues, silos, cliques, self-interested competition, politics, and outright hostility represent just a few of the chronic maladies that countless leaders have learned to accept, learned to live with, and even learned to ignore.
But no matter how adept we might become in ignoring these symptoms of disunity, their long-term costs – in terms of reduced productivity, impaired communication, dampened enthusiasm, and recurrent conflict – can be steep indeed.
Many leaders choose to simply put up with organizational disunity. At some level, this is their prerogative. But not unlike financing one’s life with credit cards and never paying off the balance, the costs of such a choice cannot be avoided indefinitely.
We might learn to survive the penalties imposed. We might even learn to acclimate to the hardships our decisions give rise to. But no matter how “normal” these circumstances may come to feel, precious resources are being squandered each and every day.