This is often the result of actions the organization takes that carry a long tail of unintended consequences. Why does that happen? One way to view this phenomenon is the large psychological distance that had been created between the top executives and the staff. I venture to say that most readers of this blog who have worked in an organization with a few hundred people or more will be able to recount a similar experience, if not one that is more extreme. I suspect that if anyone had gone to some of the senior people and asked whether they wanted the staff to put in untold hours preparing and obsessing over this presentation, that the answer would have been an instant and resounding “No.” But apparently no one dared ask. An interesting data point: the final presentation was numbered “V19.” The ultimate cost of what seemed to some of us to be a fairly routine presentation had spiraled out of control. They conducted multiple dress rehearsals. Staff members spent countless hours trying to “psyche out” how the various members of the executive group might receive the message.
As the project unfolded, I was witness to an unfathomable amount of time spent in revision after revision of the presentation. I was working with a group that was in the process of preparing a presentation they would make to the senior team. But even beyond that, a recent experience reminded me of the high price executives pay for creating a chasm between themselves and their people.
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