14-Dec-07 11:00 AM CST

Transforming Entitlement: The virus that keeps your company small.

By Daniel F. Prosser, CEO, the BEST Places To Work

Chances are if you run a business you've thought about the impact of entitlement on your company at one time or another and not known what to do about it. You may have not even known what to call it but it's an issue that drives even the most well-intentioned CEO right up a wall. It's most noticeable in companies where leadership seems to be giving everything they can think of to keep their employees satisfied and remain with the company, while employees are demanding and expecting more from the employment relationship and appear to withhold their commitment and performance if they don't get it. Like a growing tree that uproots the adjacent sidewalk, it's a virus growing underneath the organization that has definite roots and can undermine your best intentions and vision for the future of your company.

Entitlement keeps you, your employees and your company small and unable to meet the challenges of competition and growth. It's important to understand what's at the source of employee entitlement mentality and what you can do to transform it. Your company's future depends on it.

Employees who have an entitlement mentality consider themselves victims.
A victim of management. But while entitlement is a real problem it's not the real issue. Entitlement mentality is merely the symptom of a greater and more dangerous underlying condition in the workplace. Entitlement can result in small covert acts of revenge.

Patriarchy is the root of entitlement
Entitlement is the result of a patriarchal belief system that most of us share; a belief system designed around control and a clear line of authority: it says that if you're the boss you are endowed with special privilege that others don't have. It usually gets set up when management is trying to avoid being seen by employees as taking advantage of the system themselves. It's a symptom of management's fundamental belief they are entitled to special privileges that others are not entitled to due to their rank.

Peter Block in his transformational book 'Stewardship' states, "At the heart of entitlement is the belief that employee's needs are more important than the business". Who believes this way? The answer is managers -- who are trying to avoid the manipulation of employees who know they're attached to not losing business, employees, clients, or even losing face. This is the very pretense that keeps the organization from operating with integrity. When managers are so focused on not losing or not failing, they can't be focused on winning, or holding employees accountable, or creating alignment, or building a healthy organization through communication.

I believe, through my observations of some of the more cynical employees in companies I've worked with in the past 30 years, that the cause of the 'entitlement virus' are summarized in these two issues:

1. The fear of losing - therefore making clients, employees and others more important than the business, and,

2. An inauthentic pretense of management that says employees are more important than management, when in fact management believes chiefly in its own entitlement. When management believes its own sacrifices entitle them to special benefits of their privileged class there will be feelings of entitlement exhibited amongst the 'rank and file'.

So, in both of these ways management is at the cause of the entire matter of entitlement. And therefore only management can transform entitlement into appropriate empowerment.

Attacking the Virus
If you want to attack the virus of entitlement in your organization consider these five ideas:

1. Entirely eliminate the conversation in your organization that 'we're like family around here'. Sure, it might seem like the desirable thing to create close familial relationships because they feel good to everyone, but the hard fact remains, most families are dysfunctional. Families tend to be either patriarchal or matriarchal by nature. So, even with the best of intentions, trying to be a family breeds resentments and undermines accountability. When employees become that familiar with each other the tendency is to stop holding each other accountable because nobody wants to step on friends toes and upset them. Start relating to each other as their accountability instead of their personality, and ask employees to make promises and then measure the results of those promises. When an employee doesn't keep a promise, rather than getting into an upset with them for not doing their job, simply ask, "What's missing that prevented you from keeping your word?" Then, close the gap by helping with what's missing.

2. Create a structure for fulfilling on promises. When employees know what the vision of the company is and how they contribute to the fulfillment of that vision they can make promises to accomplish those things that will make a difference to the bottom-line. That requires a different kind of conversation in the organization. Stop talking about the great ideas "you're going to do" and start making promises for what specific measurable actions you're going to take. Most organizations get stopped when they collapse 'talking about taking action' with actually taking action (they think it's the same thing). Like when there's a meeting to talk about a problem and a week later you have the same problem, and no action has been taken to resolve it. It's because no one is managing and measuring the promises for action - they're simply managing 'talking about it'. This is why so many business plans sit on so many shelves of so many companies. Employees are talking and their mouths are moving - but their feet aren't. Stop talking, start making promises, and get into action - hold employees accountable. Those are the only things that matter.

3. Communicate fully. If you have secrets and aren't telling the truth in your company you will surely build resentment and feelings of entitlement will emerge. Without information employees can't be expected to act in ways that support your vision. When you withhold you teach your employees that withholding is a value. Trust me -- withholding is not a value you want in your company. What's the alternative to fully communicating? The alternative is not trusting anyone with important information. And if you don't trust your employees then your employees will question their trust of you.

4. Alignment is a leader's work of art. My own coach taught me this many years ago and it was then I realized that alignment was my principal job as CEO. Nothing moves unless there is alignment with the vision and mission. Without alignment there is no accountability. No accountability - no alignment. They go hand in hand.

5. If I can't count on you doing what you said you'd do, then why do I need you? We hold on to employees longer than we should those who have no intention of keeping their word. But if employees in our organizations aren't keeping their word, the first place we need to look is at our relationship to our own word. If what we say and what we do, do not match, employees begin to believe it's not important. You'll know you have a problem in this area when you notice employees breaking agreements with clients. When we think we don't have to keep our word because of our position or rank in the organization we are breeding the strain of entitlement virus that spreads internally and is hard to knock out even with our best strategies.

Finally, entitlement mentality exists to some degree in every organization. But to effectively neutralize it requires that employees be put in charge of themselves and be allowed to choose how they will perform. Along with those privileges come responsibility, accountability and a purposeful alignment with the principle mission of the organization.

That presumes that the purpose of the organization is well communicated and well understood. With choice, employees are empowered to be responsible for their own future.

The choices are to take responsibility for performing and continue to enjoy the benefits of behaving like an owner. Or, choose not to perform as promised and accept the consequences of that choice. My belief is that when given choice some employees choose wisely and contribute purposefully, and those few who won't commit tend to wisely deselect themselves when it's clear they aren't on the same path. It becomes too uncomfortable to stay. The best antidote for entitlement is a well conceived structure for holding employees accountable and measuring promised results.

Because it's so automatic and so prevalent, the virus of entitlement has the power to dominate and prevent even the most gifted organizations from reaching its objectives. When leadership can see they are squarely at the source of this issue, they can examine their own conversations about entitlement. And only then will they be effective at opening up the conversations for alignment, accountability, and communication.

Dan Prosser is the CEO of 'the BEST Places To Work' and creator of The Accountability Scorecard™ Promise-Based Management System. He teaches CEO's and their leadership teams how to manage promises in their workplace as effectively as they manage other organizational resources by engaging employees in the overall mission of the company and raising the bar to exceed performance targets.

Published 2008 'Responsibility 911'Chapter 37 page 151, Executive Excellence Publishing www.leadershipexcel.com

Published April 2005 :Leadership Excellence Magazine www.eep.com

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Source: Dan Prosser