It’s Never About the Money
It starts with an argument about money. How much was spent. What it was spent on. Why nobody seems capable of sticking to a budget. What happened to cutting back on clothes? What happened to saving for the holiday?
The discussion becomes increasingly detailed. Numbers are quoted. Previous spending decisions are dragged into evidence. Neither can remember what started the argument, but both are determined to win it.
Then comes the reminder about the unexpected expense of your brother’s wedding, followed by the car repairs after it failed its MOT. Voices rise. Doors close. For a couple of days they barely speak.
Then friends invite them out for dinner. The atmosphere softens. Conversation resumes. Life returns to normal.
Looking back, most couples realise the argument was never really about money. Money was simply the subject.
The real issue was something else. Perhaps one person felt unheard. Perhaps one felt taken for granted. Perhaps one felt they were carrying more than their share of the burden. The argument was about emotions. Money was simply where those emotions chose to appear.
Organisations have exactly the same kind of arguments. They just happen to be about budgets, restructures and hybrid working rather than holidays and car repairs. Many workplace problems look like management problems but are actually relationship problems. Leaders often try to manage them when what they really need to do is understand them.
Every long-term relationship has two dimensions. There is the formal relationship: the practical arrangements, responsibilities and agreements. Then there is the emotional relationship: the trust, loyalty, disappointments and expectations.
Organisations have exactly the same structure. There is the formal organisation: structures, strategies, targets, policies and performance indicators. Then there is the emotional organisation: hopes, fears, loyalties, disappointments, resentments and memories.
Most leaders spend their time managing the first. Much of organisational life is driven by the second.
This helps explain why organisations can be well managed and still unhappy. Targets are met, projects are delivered and budgets are balanced, yet frustration, cynicism and disengagement continue to grow.
A dispute about hybrid working may not really be about where people work. It may be about trust. Resistance to change may not really be about the change itself. It may be about accumulated disappointment from previous changes. The formal organisation sees today’s issue. The emotional organisation remembers yesterday’s.
Middle managers often understand this reality better than anyone. They spend their days translating between the formal organisation and the emotional one. Senior leaders talk about targets, resources and priorities. Employees talk about fairness, recognition and trust. Middle managers know both conversations are about the same organisation.
They also know that what appears to be a practical disagreement is often an emotional one. This is why organisations so often struggle to solve problems. They respond to emotional problems with technical solutions.
They rewrite policies, redesign processes and launch communication plans. Sometimes it helps. Often it doesn’t. The formal organisation is trying to solve a problem that belongs to the emotional organisation.
Anyone who has been in a long-term relationship knows that winning the argument rarely resolves the emotion underneath it. Organisations are no different. A restructuring may make perfect financial sense and still leave lasting damage. A new strategy may be entirely logical and still be met with cynicism.
People do not experience organisations as structures, strategies and performance indicators. They experience them as relationships.
That is why workplace behaviour can appear irrational when viewed through the formal organisation, but entirely predictable when viewed through the emotional one.
Every organisation contains two organisations: the formal organisation leaders manage and the emotional organisation people experience. The first appears on organisation charts. The second explains what actually happens.
The trouble is that most organisational problems begin in one and are managed as if they belong to the other.
blairmcpherson.co.uk
