When Failure Feels Like Justice
Schadenfreude is a German word for taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune.
Most people assume it is about enjoying failure.
In organisations it is usually something else.
It is what happens when accumulated frustration, perceived unfairness and unresolved resentment finally find an outlet.
Every manager has seen it.
The budget-setting process has taken months. Directorates have submitted carefully worked-up bids. Business cases have been scrutinised. Benefits quantified. Risks assessed.
Some proposals are stronger than others. Some are more ambitious. Some stand a better chance of delivering real improvements.
Yet when the decisions are announced, the lion's share of the investment goes, once again, to the Chief Executive's favourite directorate.
Nobody complains openly.
People smile politely.
They congratulate colleagues.
They say all the right things.
But another small deposit has just been added to an emotional account that has been building up for years.
Leaders talked endlessly about creating "One Organisation". They had to. Because they knew perfectly well that underneath the corporate values and team-building exercises, directorates were competing fiercely for money, influence and survival.
The language was collaboration.
The reality was competition.
Competition for resources.
Competition for the support of the Board.
Competition for the confidence of the Chief Executive.
And increasingly competition for protection as budget cuts became a permanent feature of organisational life.
Competition creates winners and losers.
And losers have long memories.
To be fair, there may be perfectly good reasons why a Chief Executive has more confidence in one director and one directorate than another.
Perhaps they have delivered before.
Perhaps they have earned that trust.
The problem is that trust is visible only to those at the top.
What everyone else sees is different rules for different people.
Middle managers are often close enough to see the consequences of decisions but too far away to understand the reasoning behind them.
They see one directorate receiving investment while others face cuts.
They see recruitment continuing in one area while vacancies elsewhere remain frozen.
They see ambitious programmes approved despite concerns that would have sunk anyone else's proposal.
Whether those perceptions are accurate is almost beside the point.
People respond to what they believe.
Research into organisational justice shows that employees care as much about whether decisions are perceived as fair as they do about the decisions themselves.
Eventually the flagship programme runs into trouble.
Targets are missed.
Timescales slip.
The promised transformation fails to materialise.
An audit report arrives containing uncomfortable conclusions.
The issue appears on the agenda of a management meeting.
The room falls briefly silent.
Someone says, "This is disappointing for everyone concerned."
Several heads nod.
Then somebody asks for the next agenda item.
The meeting moves on.
The conversation everyone really wants to have starts afterwards in the corridor.
Nobody says it during the meeting.
They wait until they are back in their own office.
"About time."
"Not before time."
"Serves them right."
It is not a reaction that appears in the official minutes.
But it is there.
And that should make leaders curious.
Because the emotion is rarely about the failure itself.
It is about the verdict.
The verdict that the rest of us were right all along.
That the concerns people raised were justified.
That the questions which were dismissed deserved answers.
That the people who always appeared untouchable are not untouchable after all.
The same thing happens when a Chief Executive whose ideas always seemed to receive the benefit of the doubt leaves unexpectedly.
When the consultant who claimed to have all the answers fails to deliver.
When the ambitious colleague who bypassed established processes gets into trouble.
When the expensive IT system collapses under the weight of its own promises.
Officially there is disappointment.
Unofficially there is relief.
Sometimes a senior manager's biggest contribution to organisational morale is not the success of their latest initiative but its eventual failure.
An uncomfortable thought.
But a revealing one.
Schadenfreude is not evidence of a cruel organisation.
It is often evidence of an organisation where people believe success and failure are not distributed fairly.
The stronger the perception of favouritism, the stronger the satisfaction when favourites stumble.
That is why leaders should pay attention to it.
When people secretly celebrate failure they are telling you something important.
They no longer trust the organisation's version of success.
By the time people are exchanging knowing looks over a failed programme, trust has already been damaged.
The audit report did more than expose weaknesses in the programme.
It exposed something else.
The depth of frustration that had been building elsewhere in the organisation.
Officially the report was disappointing.
Unofficially it was reassuring.
Perhaps influence had limits after all.
Perhaps scrutiny would finally be applied equally.
Perhaps success still had to be earned.
The programme failed.
But for many people the real story was something else.
The favourites had finally been treated like everyone else.
They got away with smoke and mirrors under the previous leadership but hopefully this new Chief Executive will see through all that.
blairmcpherson.co.uk
