Organizations and Toddlers

Mar 11th 2019

Over time I have come to the conclusion that organizations mature at roughly the same rate as children.  

For example a two year old organization will behave like a two year old child.  

Before we go further I should point out that by organization I do not mean the age of the company, but the age of the age of the organized group of people.  For example a 100 year old company that just started a new division, then the division age is the organization's age.  They might have a very mature parent, but they are still a new born. 

With the organizations it is the 2 year old that are the most entertaining,  that is when an organization gets to be 2 year old they start learning to be self aware and use words like "No".  They also become stubborn about themselves and walk around with dirty diapers, because it is mine and no one is going to change it until I say so. 

The really interesting thing is that the people in these organizations might be smart, experienced, highly skilled individuals but together they act like toddlers.  

Some of the behaviors you might see in these toddlers are:

Taking my ball and going home

In toddlers you often see a group playing ball together, and then often the one who brought the ball gets made because he is not feeling as special as he things he should, after all he brought the ball.  So eventually he gets upset, picks up his ball and goes home. 

This happens in organizations too, the classic example is  where one group or person will not share their work. This could be stuff like people asking for a documents and being told they do not have them for effect. Or worse is when people will not share their work products, for example they will not share their code for code reviews. 

It is My Dirty Diaper

This one is real funny, it is where the people refuse to change, even with all the facts in front of them.  For example, here is the test results and the product fails the test. Often they will say "I do not believe the test is correct, therefore we should ship product anyway."  Another example is when someone says "we have always done it this way." 

Group Attacks

Like a group of toddlers (maybe middle school girls) you will often see the group attack of one individual. This is often view as a team building exercise, that is lets all get together and complain about this one guy and how much better it would be without him.  Often this one guy is the one trying to get the team organized and working toward the goal. Often it might be the guy who took the ball home. 

No

This one can be funny to watch. You have a group of mature people in a meeting and one person crosses their arm and says "No." This visual image is funny when you think of a mature grey hair man in a business suit doing it. The funny part is that it really happens. Here that one person feels he knows more than anyone else or his way of doing things is being challenged and he does not like it.  

Sabotage Behavior

Like the group attack this one scares me. It is where an individual or group does stuff to bring down the group so that they are right.  For example a product needs to ship quickly, however an individual says it can not be done.  Then that person will intentionally not deliver on time so that he will be correct in the end.  This happens a lot, usually others start to notice this quickly, as