Organizational design (OD) hinges upon a caveat posed by Myron Tribus, “what does the business organization [leaders] desire?” Business organizations can be designed in a myriad of ways and possess a plethora of leadership styles. Tribus remains correct; the entire design can be simplified into a single decision about the organization’s makeup and summed as the business is either a money tap or a socially involved mechanism trying to improve society and culture. If money taps, there is not much left to say. The organizational design, culture, and climate will reflect the owner’s desire to collect as much money as possible until the tap runs dry and the business is cast off by industry. If socially involved, the decisions are obvious, and further delineation is superfluous.
For several years now, I have researched corporate training; from the start of recorded history, corporate training has protected business knowledge as much as it is screening people out for not being the “right fit” for a business and as a means of controlling behavior. Originally an untrained youth would be indentured to a master, who agreed to do work in exchange for knowledge and ultimately be trained to become a journeyman, then master of a trade, craft, or business. Your options were controlled long before interest was gaged and contracts for services were purchased.
Schools sprang up, and indentured servitude was expected to fall away. Instead, only the indenturing of people went slowly away, but the servitude remains and is as healthy today as it was in the 1600s. Currently, servitude is cloaked in terms of culture, competitive stance, and corporate knowledge, and the corporate trainer remains the arbiter of entry into a business, trade, craft, etc. The trainer does not impart knowledge but exemplifies behaviors, attitudes, and mannerisms that the business leaders consider tenets of competition.
Finally, let’s name the 800# gorilla in the room, servitude is captivity, and captivity is how a person is described who changes into what the company desires of its long-term employees. Thus the phrase “Captured by the system” indicates this phenomenon. What does it mean to “Play the game?” the same thing, change your attitude, behaviors, and ideals, and become one of us, doing what we tell you to do.
By naming this phenomenon, I am not being cynical. Multiple researchers of peer-reviewed research have discussed this phenomenon in their research and called it key to business success, placing the onus onto trainers and training to expound and exhort compliance of the human element. Trainers are considered mentors, managers, job coaches, HR representatives, supervisors, etc.; if you fill a leadership position and trust, it is because you exemplify the business’s manners, attitudes, behaviors, and culture. Understand compliance is neither good nor bad. Non-compliance leads to ostracization and eventual unemployment. However, submission does not guarantee long-term employment either, as those businesses relying most heavily upon human compliance tend to burn out fast and bankrupt themselves.
All operational processes and procedures rely upon changing behaviors, not necessarily upon gaining new knowledge. In making this statement, I am not discounting gaining new knowledge, as new knowledge can arrive in many shapes, sizes, and encounters, but the primary role of a trainer in corporate offices is not new knowledge imparting but behavioral controls. The indentured servant model of a Master training Journeymen and Journeymen training Novices has not changed these many centuries and remains firmly set in the “modern” principles of organizational learning.
Why is this important to know?
Not understanding the model and putting into place a person who does not comply is as dangerous to the health of a business as a thief, a liar, or a con man. ENRON did not fail only because of the action of the leadership team. ENRON failed because the model of behaviors exemplified by the leadership team and taught to employees poisoned the organizational body. Hence the corporate trainers led the failure of ENRON, for the corporate training model follows GIGO (Garbage In equals Garbage Out!). Understanding that the trainers were responsible for ENRON’s collapse does not excuse any person’s conduct. Instead, it more fully places the blame on the leadership team who exemplified behaviors anathema to good organizational health.
Take any business, successful or collapsed, military organization, or non-profit; these distinctions do not matter. Review them closely, and you will find Tribus’s choice personified in the employees’ actions, cultures, desired attitudes, behaviors, dress styles, mannerisms, etc. Suppose a learner is preparing to train others, and doesn’t understand these fundamental aspects of corporate training and organizational design. In that case, that trainer will teach poorly, and those employees will have short careers in the business.
Hence the most extraordinary aspect of controlling costs does not arrive in cutting people but in training them for compliance, improving the understanding of the role of behavioral adaptation, and improving the incentives to adopt the culture of the business. A client of mine is facing this exact scenario; the economic downturns have hit them hard. Instead of focusing on improving costs through behavioral adaptation, they have begun cutting people, leaving in place the trainers that are fundamental to the problems the company is facing. Proving the maxim, “You cannot correct the problems with the same thinking that spawned the problems.”
What is needed?
Unfortunately, what is needed is not what is currently wanted, but the path forward will require pieces of the following solution. What is needed is a new model for corporate training, and the model has been historically proven to be successful. Joseph Smith Jr., an early American religious leader, founded several highly successful communities and launched a leadership revolution and a religious organization. His leadership style was based upon the following principle, “Teach them (people) correct principles and let them govern themselves.”
Technology has removed the brick stick to beat compliance into employees. Technology has also leveled a lot of playing fields, putting employees into a position where they must act for themselves, guided more by self-interest and self-preservation than any generation of workers previously. Add in COVID lockdowns that spurred the rise in remote workers, and technology has released a lot of employees to work outside the accepted strictures of an office. The release of employees has done two things, changed the behaviors compliance spectrum and removed the front-line supervisor as a primary trainer in monitoring and controlling cultural acceptance.
Several years ago, a researcher was told by front-line supervisors, job coaches, and mentors of a company that communication and training were not in the specific job roles of these people. Thus, they could not be held accountable for poor communication on their teams. Remote working has eliminated these aspects on the part of the front-line supervisor. Therefore, if the supervisor is not teaching independence, allowing for self-preservation, and promoting the freedom of thought and action in employees, those employees are now acting outside the company culture and operations, and disaster is looming. To their horror, the New York Times just discovered that company-forced cultures are being called into question when employees are not in the office, and demanding employees return hurts bottom lines.
Thus, the front-line supervisors must adapt. Adaptation in managers nullifies a manager’s power and authority, sparking fear of downsizing into these mid-level managers. Fear mixed with self-preservation leads to more problems for a company’s leadership (C-Level Suite) to consider. The self-interested but not free mid-level manager will crave their benefits, perks, and powers, like any drug, and the withdrawal process is never pretty. Again as recently exhibited by the New York Times, their trainers are proving that they do not understand people and technology and do not know the role of the trainer in corporate training.
Since the mid-1990s, technology has risen, coinciding with the need to provide front-line employees more freedom to make decisions and take rapid action. Mostly, this freedom has clashed with “traditional” models of behavior demanded of by what is considered novice servants. Yet, technological growth was not considered a fundamental threat to tradition until the COVID-lockdowns. Regardless of the politics in the lockdowns, the truth remains, the traditional roles have fundamentally shifted, and the businesses that embrace this new role for the trainer, including a new model for operation, will reap success in the whirlwind.
Hence, while not wanted, the model suggested is what is needed. Employees must be taught correct business principles and fully granted the freedom to govern themselves. Thus, the role of the trainer shifts from behavioral compliance to knowledge instruction and behavioral exemplar. More to the point, all levels of a business need to conduct themselves differently. Relying less upon behavioral and attitude adoption and more upon individuality, expression, and thinking to complete business tasks.
Front-line and mid-level managers are, by necessity, going to have to decrease in the new model. Relying upon layers of managerial oversight is not going to work, and honestly has never worked, and the costs of this oversight have proven too expensive. The gap between C-Suite Level decision-makers and the front line has grown too large and too expensive, and until this is acknowledged, the role of the trainer will continue to be hindered by old-model thinking. The 1960-1980s saw the exponential rise of middle managers, coinciding with significant cost increases and a tripling in government influence, all in the name of controlling behaviors, dictating attitudes, and demanding compliance.
The growth of the middle manager was considered “new thinking,” and history has proven this idea is as false as fools’ gold and as worthwhile. Middle management restricted freedoms, and while employment laws have granted, since the 1940s, employers the ability to take these controlling actions, these actions remain fundamentally unfair. The employees have slowly gotten more freedom back from their employers. Each business will find a balance between the extremes of absolute liberty and the oppressive regime of stolen freedom. The proposed model helps strike a balance as nothing else will, but caution is needed here; there is no one-size-fits-most solution in this balancing act.
Since the industrial revolution began, businesses have competed upon their employees’ skills and influence to serve customers, which is the fundamental truth that cannot be ignored any longer. By the C-Level Suite, the skills, freedoms, liberties, behaviors, attitudes, and investment of the employee dictates the company’s ability to compete for market share. While much lip service has been undertaken to this fundamental truth, action has lagged considerably, and this trend can no longer survive in the global markets. The front-line employee must be taught to understand this truth that they currently grasp like a fish in a stream, and they must become empowered more to act in this role. Requiring the trainers to know, prepare, and teach these principles to power action by the front-line employee.
Teaching correct principles and allowing employees to govern themselves is cyclical. The employee will rely more heavily upon trainers to teach the correct principles. Increasing the need for value-added, timely trainers who support individual liberty and freedom in employees to generate customer-centric solutions. These trainers will need to be taught so that they can teach more perfectly, and the cyclical process will continue. Needs for training will drive new training, producing more freedom to act and driving more demand for training.
Returning to the decision posed by Tribus, regardless of whether to be a money tap or a community-building organization, embracing a new model for the role of the trainer will prove beneficial. Reducing mid-level managers will produce direct bottom-line cost reduction. Increasing the freedom of front-line employees while also training them to generate customer-centric solutions will open new lines of business and new opportunities. There are no downside consequences to adopting these changes earlier than your competition and proving the concept. As a business leader, are you brave enough to embrace these truths, or will you watch what you have built be destroyed by those who are? The choice, as always, is yours, and if you would like help, please feel free to reach out.
© Copyright 2023 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
Monday and Tuesday this week, 28 and 29 June 2021, the Department of Veterans Affairs – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) returned three more investigations, inspections, or criminal reports. While no veteran is dead in this batch of reports (Thankfully!), the behavior exhibited remains egregious and blatantly criminal, and the bureaucrats and bureaucracy remain intact to continue to commit 
Contracting officers and third-party contractors act under Federal Regulation called “Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). FAR is like the Bible; it has everything in it outlining duties, responsibilities, and authorities. Contracting officers are supposed to know the regulations before contracting goods and services, and they teach the contractor their responsibilities. Especially where a PIV has been issued, the contracting officer, as the liaison, IS THE Responsible Party, not the contractor.
I cannot understand how a contracting officer, with all the training, re-training, and refresher training that is mandated, could use the excuse, “I didn’t know that was part of my job!” As a person who has worked around contracting officers, I knew this was their job, and I am not a contracting officer. It is simply common sense; if you facilitate obtaining identification, keys, and access codes, you are responsible for getting these things back!
Thus, I call upon every American to share my disgust and demand action! Stop allowing this detestable behavior, paid for by taxpayers, to thrive. End the abuse! Not just for veterans harmed by the VA bureaucracy, but for your hard-earned tax dollars and the disrespect the elected officials display towards you, the boss! Tell me, if your employees displayed the same behavior witnessed by elected officials and bureaucrats of all stripes, how long would they keep their jobs? If your boss showed you the same disrespect, how fast would you be looking for new employment and telling everyone not to apply there? Now, answer this question, “Why do we accept this abuse by government officials and elected representatives?”
The annual audit is conducted by a third-party, “CliftonLarsonAllen LLP,” who audited 48 major applications and general support systems hosted at 24 VA sites that support the VBA, VHA, and National Cemetery administrations. The VA-OIG reports the following:
While the VA deserves congratulations on closing two antique audit items, they were expected to close ALL aged items during the 2020 FY. Yet, the administrators were still able to skate responsibility, skirt accountability, and act like Sonja Henie at Oslo. Tell me, if your boss expected you to complete a bunch of items, gave you a full year to complete these items, would you be fired for only completing two items? I know I would! As a project manager, if I didn’t have a plan in writing, showing completion dates, inter-relationships, and explicit action items set up within 30-days of being assigned the tasks, I would have been fired! Yet, somehow these VA Administrators, hired to perform these functions by the Government, cannot even communicate, let alone accomplish tasks assigned! Who were the project managers, contract officers, and program managers, and their respective administration officials, line them up and fire them!
The VA-OIG reports, “Despite VA’s commitment that the recommendations would be closed, some of them have been repeated for multiple years [emphasis mine].” Is the connection between the administration officials, their assigned workers, and the failures and designed incompetence clearly observed? I ask because the VA-OIG closed this report with the most useless conclusion I have seen in years of reading these reports! “The VA-OIG remains concerned that continuing delays in effectively addressing the recommendations could contribute to reporting a material weakness in VA’s information technology security controls during the FY 2021 audit of the department’s consolidated financial statements [emphasis mine].”
That the VA administrators continue to hinder improvement at the VA should be grounds for immediate dismissal! Yet, these administrators are allowed to retire with full benefits, cushy benefits packages, and the veteran is left with nothing! Where is Congress in enacting legislation that enables the Government to reduce, remove, or refuse a retirement package for administration employees who cannot or will not act in a manner that reflects competence and ability in following congressional demands and meeting operational standards? Where is Congress working with the VA Secretary on productivity problems caused by administrators who actively hinder improvements at the VA? Why is designed incompetence even allowed as an excuse for failure?
Privacy is the paramount right of individuals. To be free inside their own homes, their papers (business), and their actions. Except, from every front, an individuals’ privacy is being stolen through technology, government edict, and the courts’ power. Do you even realize how much of your privacy is being subverted for the gain of others? The more I research privacy, the madder I get!
1961, Griswold v. Connecticut Justice William O. Douglas declared there are “zones of privacy” that allowed Griswold to purchase contraceptives against the State of Connecticut’s desires. Except, in ruling this way, the “zones of privacy” became the black hole sucking in all the abuses of privacy by technology companies, by the government, and by the courts. Under the “zones of privacy,” abortion has been made legal along with gay sex, both of which fall into the founder’s old legal phrase, “The privacy of families.”
The statute of “The Privacy of Families” stretches back into history and means exactly as it states, the government, the lawyers, and society have no business sticking their noses into “The Privacy of Families.” Only to violate individuals’ privacy and intrude into an individual or family’s business, “Privacy of Families” has been used as a legal excuse for violating privacy and destroying individuals. Consider the sale of educational research data from K-12 students, the sale of HIPAA data for research purposes. If you live in a socialized medicine country, you have even less protection for your private medical data. The business of buying and selling data for research purposes is vast, and anyone who can create an excuse can meet the legal standards of violating your privacy for “science.”
Doesn’t America have laws like FERPA and HIPAA and other privacy legal requirements; absolutely, but are you going to trust the government to protect your records? Were you affected by the OPM Federal Government data breach (2015), the multiple VA data breaches since the loss of 26.5 million unencrypted veterans records (2006), or been a victim of the DMV selling your personal data? I guarantee you have been affected either as a primary, secondary, or tertiary victim of a data hack. Yet, the FISA courts and the “Patriot Act” were explicitly invented to destroy individual and family privacy as unconstitutional actions by a legally elected government.
Hence, the next time you hear about the government “working hard to protect your privacy,” ask them about those data centers in Utah’s desert that hold private data for the government alphabet agencies. Ask about the OPM and VA data hacks. Better still, ask about the IRS data hack in the spring of 2015. While the IRS claims “only 104,000 taxpayers were involved, the reality is much higher, and politicians play games with the truth. Eventually, the game of political hot-potato will end, and that will indeed be a great and dreadful day!
To remember is to do something necessary or advisable, which brings honor to the past and freedom to the present. Remembering is the power to become aware that you are more than the singular person and many others have held a hand in making you, your personality, strengths, and weaknesses. A greeting card reads, “I am a strong person because a strong person raised me.” Remembering is also the power that propels the person from their starting point into a glorious future. Ralph Marston has the last word on remembering, “Remember why you started, remember where you are headed, think how great it will be to get there, and keep going.”
Captivity comes in many shapes, by many names, and is visible only through the suffering of those held captive. Some captivity comes from external forces, including military conquest, law, religious beliefs, and more. Some captivity arrives through individual choices as consequences, including sex, food, drugs (legal and illegal), alcohol, TV, Social Media, or any excessive habit-forming action. Consider the captivity caused through debt. For example, our children’s children’s children’s children have not been formed yet, but they are already in captivity to the National and State Debt burdens carried right now! Is this fair to them? We get benefits, and they get captivity, all through government refusal to act responsibly; how are those retirement benefits?
As a child of 8, he was separated from his tribe, family, and the reservation he knew, loaded onto a bus, and sent to Oklahoma for a “White Man’s” education. He spent 10-months of every year for the next 10-years going to school in Oklahoma. During that time, he never received a single letter from his parents. He was not allowed to speak his native language, and all native culture was forbidden. He credits this traumatic period of his life as the crucible for all the good that has come to him through education. His children and grandchildren all completed college, becoming engineers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, and more. He had two great-grandchildren just entering college, and his first great-great-grandchild was soon to be delivered. He told stories of his parents’ captivity to his children and grandchildren, and they are better people for remembering the captivity of their fathers.
Another example is a similar question about our fathers’ captivity; how many generations back before your fathers never left a small land plot? Whose only views of the world were restricted to that single plot of land due to law, debt, religion, melatonin, or some other chain. One answered, his family had hated his grandfather for leaving a place of comfort in Scotland, for a rough life in America’s western states. Many of his family only ever saw the titles, the land, the benefits and wanted those things. The family desiring these things never saw the captivity, and the family remains broken and separate to this day. Captivity of appetite is still captivity.
I see the welfare state in America that strips pride and accomplishment and replaces it with appetite suppression, and I see millions in captivity to the government dole. Captivity that breeds wasted and blasted lives, people who have potential are dying under government handouts, forever stuck in subsistence living and not knowing how to escape their choices’ captivity. Where but for the work requirement for welfare assistance, that same person would know and understand different lessons and potentially choose a different path; thus, discovering that captivity is broken through work.
Recently, I was part of a discussion on technology; I mentioned captivity and technology and was mercilessly attacked for suggesting that technology is a form of captivity. Thus, I put it to you, dear reader, is technology a form of captivity or not? Are video games addicting and represent a form of captivity or not? Are the needs for technology a type of captivity leading to large debts, broken families, and changes in how people think and act?
Consider the frozen feet and fingers of Valley Forge; what was a little frostbite when compared with the glorious vision of freedom to the soldiers on duty there? Consider the bloody battles of the Civil War, the fear, the anger, the soul-shattering pounding of the guns. Both sides considered themselves correct, both sides wanted a vision of freedom, but only one side could win, and in winning bring complete freedom to all the people of America. Consider the soldiers, sailors, airman, and marines in Afghanistan, South Korea, Africa, and every other place America sends her military might, can we sit at home comfortably and not feel gratitude for their sacrifices, the heat, and cold they suffer, the wounds, the physical and mental strain?
Remembering is an action, a thought process with the impetus power to drive an individual’s commitment and effort. Let us not forget our fathers’ captivity and by remembering act in a method that will secure liberty, justice, and freedom for our children’s children. America is in danger of being lost; this great Republic, blessed with a Constitutional form of government, is in danger. I, for one, refuse to sit idly by and lose this precious country. I implore you to remember the captivity of your fathers and join me in voting intelligently, join me in throwing off the shackles which threaten to bind us down in captivity to communist and socialist styles of governance. Join me in taking back America!
How ironic that the root causes of a VA-OIG inspection would find people being paid to perform a job, but are not actually doing the job because they lack proficiency, training, managerial oversight, and are unclear on what they are expected to do in their jobs.
The following suggestions are offered as starting points to curb structured incompetence, improve performance, and effect positive change at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which includes the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), and the National Cemeteries.
I – Care about the VA!
As the image reflects in the convergence of the three channels of 360-degree feedback, the power of communication is enhanced by the technology employed as a neutral variable in the human technology work relationship. If technology fails, the relationships in the channels remain and the relationships are not separated or closed. When discussing flexibility and adaptability in organizations, clearly understanding the roles of technology and communication empower the combined user, leader, and organization relationships.
DNC-Consulting 