The Passive-Aggressive Organization

When we say healthy organization means hard to commit mistakes because their managers have access to good, timely information, the authority to make informed, and the incentives to make them on behalf of the organization in which they promptly and capably carries them out. This could also be mean that such organization is not only be based on the annual acquisition and rate of return does company has but the harmonious environment they have on their working place where employees are empowered on doing right things on their own towards company’s success because there employer is giving back the price they deserved.

Upon hearing this topic during the presentation, I was wondering of what type of organization I am with. I was amazingly notice that companies do really have characteristics of being passive and/or aggressive.

As I read the Harvard Business review article by Gary L. Neilson, Bruce A. Pasternack, and Karen E. Van Nuys with the title “The Passive-Aggressive Organization”, pointed out that resilience is the key of a healthy organization. It means, organization can react nimbly to challenges and recover quickly from those they cannot dodge. But based on the global online survey of Booz Allen Hamilton, it turned out that most of the companies are not resilient, result shows that fewer than one in five of the approximately 30,000 individuals described their organization that way. This falls to a label of “passive-aggressive” type of organization. It can be described as quiet but tenacious resistant.

The following are the classic failings of organization that makes it a passive-aggressive:

1. Unclear Scope of Authority

Knowing scope of authority is very essential for its effectiveness of position. How can you be an effective manager when you do not know what are your job descriptions? When you don’t know these, surely you don’t know the scope of your position. This could be very fatal to organization’s impact. It’s like you were sailing a ship without even knowing how to sail, what are the challenges and consequences of being the captain of the ship, how far you are sailing, and wide horizons you are heading.

For almost two years – term of our new administrative officer, I found him incompetent for the position for he has unclear scope of authority. He misunderstood the term delegation. Well, delegation means giving responsibility to somebody else which he often did it. But, giving those responsibility doesn’t mean that somebody would be responsible of all the sense of initiative, knowledge required and to face the consequence might come later. It means that you delegate a certain work to somebody with your guidance of expertise. The question is, “Does he have the expertise?” For what I heard from our bookkeeper who always happens to be that SOMEBODY, he doesn’t know the actual operation of the school that is the reason why he didn’t know how to consolidate the reports given to him by the cashier, registrar, career adviser and bookkeeper, even doing his report. This is always the problem every time the Head Office calls for AO meeting and presentation of school’s operation status. Since he doesn’t even know how to make reports, our bookkeeper will be obliged and forced by him to make one.

2. Agreement Without Cooperation

In every organization, doing works requires great cooperation to be successful. Of course, this could lessen the load and done quicker. It is very hard for the manager managing the entire organization without the help of his/her subordinates. Imagine a boat that is about to sink and all passengers are panicking except for one that is busy paddling. Can be that one be enough for them to escape the life threatening tragedy? If those passengers would not cooperate to the one who is paddling, then definitely the boat will sink.

What happen to AO-bookkeeper situation is, our bookkeeper give him consideration for he promised to learn the operation for him to know how to make reports. Disgustingly, he delegates his work to her not once, not twice, not thrice but many times. Our bookkeeper is very willing to teach him yet the willingness to learn the operation by heart of our AO is not seen. His actions convey his unwillingness because up until now he didn’t even know how to balance the sales report. Therefore, agreement of cooperation is acted upon on this case.

3. Misleading Goals

On a managing organization process, evaluation or assessment should be undertaken. In here we could align the behavior or actions acted by people in the organization if it’s leading to the established goal. If the manager doesn’t know his scope of authority, then he could mislead the organization to its goal. It’s like sailing a ship to destination A but going to a route of destination B.

Relating to our scenario, our AO doesn’t know much of his role and this is an exemplar towards misleading goals.

“Misunderstandings and misrepresentations concerning who really has the control over which decisions are often the first signs that an organization is slipping into passive-aggressive territory”, is the quote stated by the authors of the article which I strongly agreed.

Based on the factors given, my observation to my organization I am with is not slipping to passive-aggressive territory but really residing in it. I just pray for the quick healing of relationship of us the subordinates towards our AO and the managing power of the HO. I just hope that if our OA is still incompetent, he will peacefully resign from his post and HO will provide competent and reliable manager.