Injelititis: Why businesses fail – 2

Congratulations once again to Dr. John Kayode Fayemi on the verdict of the Appeal Court upholding his election as the governor of Ekiti State. With this verdict, I would like to appeal to the opposition to allow sleeping dogs lie and join hands with the Fayemi government in the task of moving the state forward. In democracy, you win some and you lose some. This is evidenced in the recently concluded elections across the nation. The interest of the state and the nation should be paramount in the minds of all now that the courts have spoken. Back to our discourse.

Injelititis does not only affect businesses. Induced inferiority or palsied paralysis, as it is also known, can affect any collective, government, church, club, society. According to Parkinson, injelititis begins in an innocuous way; which makes it even more dangerous. An ‘infected’ person infused with a generous dose of jealousy and incompetence joins the hierarchy of an organization. Initially, this may not be so evident since a significant number of people manifest traces of these vices. Two millennia before Parkinson, Jesus Christ told a story about tares sown in the midst of wheat in the unguarded moments of the gardeners. With this infected character, it is only a matter of time before there is an overflow and outflow of these unchained emotions. Their combined manifestation is what is known as “injelitance”. An injelitant, having thoroughly messed up his department or area of function, now tries to couch his incompetence by constantly interfering with the functions of other departments to the point of attempting to gain control of happenings in the entire organization’s administration. They play ‘nosey parker’, trying to ‘straighten things out’ in other departments even when things are falling apart in their own department. Talk about taking analgesics for another’s headache!

If not nipped in the bud, the disease continues to the next stage where the injelitant has schemed his way high enough in the organization to be in control – partially or completely – of the organization. Sometimes, the problem begins in an organization directly at this second level when the injelitant is actually hired into the organization at the executive level. At this stage, the injelitant is known by his frenzied effort to distance himself from everyone who has any semblance of brilliance in a way that could challenge him. This he does by either posting them into functions where they are rendered effete or irrelevant, or by ensuring that they are denied promotion while less productive or intelligent ones are promoted over them in a move designed to frustrate them out of the organization. Not one to be caught acknowledging that any person is capable of superior intelligence, he would always make snide comments about intelligent people to deride any suggestion of their brilliance. The disdain for brilliance is so palpable that any spark of intelligence is seen as defiance and a challenge to the established order. Sometimes he goes beyond that to fire them outright for being too outspoken or insubordinate. In time, he surrounds himself with mediocre people who cannot look him in the eye because they owe their position to his benevolence, not to their performance or skill. The injelitant is forever content to work with people who are of inferior intelligence so that no one could ever challenge his position on any issue. The scenario? A second-rate leader surrounding himself with a third-rate directorate, which in turn, ensures fourth-rate subordinates. It is akin to an all-comers’ marketplace of stupidity.

If not nipped in the bud at this point, injelitance proceeds to the third and terminal level where the entire organization is so permeated with mediocrity and pathological stupidity, that there can be no spark of life anywhere in sight. Everyone in the organization is involved in fawning sycophancy and practically worship the very ground on which the injelitant leadership walks because they owe their continued existence in the organization to the grossly insecure leader whose ego must be massaged even at the expense of corporate progress. At this level, nobody cares about performance or corporate progress. The real concern of everyone is self-preservation or survival. And the only way to do that is to constantly massage the Emperor’s ego. When he farts, it must be interpreted as sweet fragrance. Internal politicking, fueled by suspicion and pervasive nonchalance about performance, becomes the order of the day. Mediocrity has not only moved to centre stage, it now runs the show! Injelitance has come full cycle and is now king of this kingdom!

• It’s time to use it, if you have it (part two)

Unknown to those within – even if they did, they couldn’t care less – the organization is already in a coma.  It is this comatose state that precedes actual corporate fatality. The tragic part of all of this is that it could last for several years before its final demise. Sometimes, the situation is fortuitously redeemed. More often than not however, the situation is too deeply entrenched to be redeemed.

Is the situation always irredeemable? No. Suffice it to say that any attempt to impose anyone from outside the organization to do the necessary reinventing and corporate rejuvenation would be stiffly resisted because everyone in the system, in their quest for self-preservation, will do everything possible to either make him conform or frustrate him out of the system by sabotaging his every effort. To exorcise injelitance therefore, the approach of using a virus to develop a vaccine against a viral infection must be employed. The ‘exorcist’ must first identify with and ingratiate himself with the system, participating in its inane banter and interminable intrigues, while in the meantime taking time to study the nuances and the driving dynamics with the intention of knowing what strategies to deploy as he works his way up the corporate ladder with no one ever suspecting his real motives. This is because the injelitants in the system have become so inure to any sense of brilliance, like bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics, that they cannot even recognize the presence amongst them of this potential star who is mysteriously in everyone’s good books. Because he appears like one of them, they never feel threatened seeing him rise through the ranks such that they never see him coming! In the words of a Yoruba proverb, until a man’s hands are on the hilt of a sword, it would be foolhardy of him to start enquiring about how his father died, lest a similar fate befall him! Before the injelitants know what hits them, he is perched at the top of the corporate ladder and “bang!”, he draws out his sword, or shall we say scalpel, and begins the much-needed surgery to rescue the dying soul of the organization. Where this fails, the organization is ready to take a bow, sing its swan-song, and be handed over to the undertaker!

Can you diagnose injelititis in the organization you belong to? Are you going to simply walk away in coward surrender to mediocrity, or fold your hands and be part of the rot?

Or will you step up to the plate and be the ‘exorcist’?

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!