Old Guard New Guard 3PC issues
3PC is Personality, Politics, Persistence and Culture, while this is one of those cutting room floor blog entries, when you have old guard and new guard, the 3PC concept becomes more than viable, trying to reach out and bridge the gap between old and new employees can sometimes be very difficult.
New employees are out there trying to carve their name in the company, doing things, working hard, and still have enthusiasm for the job, they want to do something, take the job somewhere and have some fun with it. These folks want to change the world and do something wonderful.
Old employees are often the ones who have tried, failed, tried, failed, and persist in the job for whatever reason, they think they are safe, they might be comfortable, or they might be perfectly happy with the way things are, the status quo. These are not people who want to change the world, they are by their own definition of success exactly where they want to be, doing exactly what they want to do, and change is very difficult for them.
Bridging the gap between young must make my name upon the world and old who have made all the name that they want to has become a tension point in the organization. There are not two armed camps yet, but eventually it will happen if they do not figure out a way to bridge the gap between the two groups, and this is where 3PC comes in. How do you bridge cultural divides in technology, personality formed before the touchy feely approach, clear roles and responsibilities, along with personality clashes because of the difference in core performance metrics? All the new guard has exceeded their core performance metrics in one case doubling the metric while the old guard has maintained their 100% rating.
It was an interesting consult/off site yesterday, and for the process to work, both groups have to meet somewhere in the middle. However, the old guard often resorts to bad behavior or controlling behavior to reel in the younger group. Cutting off conversation, leaving no room to negotiate, working in a world of absolutes, while the younger group is all over the map, let’s try this approach and willing to take on the failure if the approach does not work.
In all very interesting to meet with these two groups in the same company over coffee while they tried to work out their differences, with the major agreement yesterday to just call it a day, both groups separate and do their thing. The good part is that the parting was friendly overall, and no one is going to get in anyone’s way over the issues and concerns. At least they agreed to disagree over the context of their personal, cultural and in some cases personality issues. What is interesting is the amount of drama that accompanies the situation, while I personally have a very low tolerance for drama, the issues, concerns, tears, screaming, yelling, and host of other behaviors points to a larger body of stress within the organization that management has not dealt with at all, if the senior managers even see it.
Cultural norms and politics with a shifting culture between old and new is what keeps this puppy interesting. We have another consult next weekend, that should prove to be equally interesting as we see if there is any way to bridge the gap between old and new. At least we got a partial agreement this weekend during the off site, the next week will be even more interesting I think for this group.
Tags: management consulting, 3PC, personality, culture, politics, process, people, interesting, weird, agree, disagree
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