Rising above injelititis

Although leaders are supposed to be the force propelling their organizations to success, on the contrary, they could actually be the albatross hindering organizational feats. To achieve a new level of success, an organization has to do new things or do old things in new ways. Hardly does the idea that births organizational transformation emanate from the leader, more often than not it comes from the shop floor or somewhere between the shop floor and the C-suite. But whether the idea flies or fails is dependent on the leader’s attitude. While some leaders are quick to recognize and welcome great ideas with open arms, others are antagonistic to ideas that do not originate from them. So, no matter how revolutionary or transformational an idea may appear, such leaders will work to ensure its incineration because they are paranoid about giving credit to the architect so as to deny him the required recognition and reward. Leaders like that suffer from injelititis.

Cyril Northcote Parkinson, a British writer and public administration expert, coined the term injelititis, to describe the state of a superior officer so seized by incompetence and jealousy that he ensures everyone around him is less competent than he is as a way of hiding his own incompetence. With time, the top hierarchy of the organization is filled with incompetent people who are unable to achieve corporate goals.

Leaders slip into injelititis when they are more concerned about self preservation than achieving corporate goals. Knowing that more competent subordinates will make their incompetence obvious, leaders suffering from injelititis either keep smart subordinates quiet or kick them out.

But leaders need not travel that route. Leadership is about mobilizing resources to achieve desired results. Hence, good leaders hire very smart subordinates and inspire them to get the needed result. Great leaders are smart enough to know that they get the credit when their subordinates perform beyond expectations.

How leaders can avoid sliding into injelititis

Many of the leaders who were bitten by the injelititis bug never planned to end that way but they did. So, unless specific steps are taken to give injelititis a wide berth, any leader can sink into it. Hereunder are ways to avoid being held hostage by injelititis.

Be a generalist

One of the functions of a leader is to proffer solutions to problems. As said by General Colin Powel, the first African-American Secretary of State, “The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” So, it is the calling of leaders to provide solutions to challenges encountered by either their subordinates or their establishments. But since no one can give what he lacks, the solution proffered by a leader is directly proportional to his level of knowledge and understanding. A leader’s ability to offer solution is a function of the capacity acquired by him. Therefore, a leader must never get tired of acquiring knowledge. As a matter of fact, the best of leaders expose themselves to knowledge from different branches of learning and they later connect these varied backgrounds to improve their lives and the lot of those who depend on them.

When a leader’s knowledge is broad-based, he cannot be overwhelmed by any brilliant subordinate because while the leader may not be an expert in a field, he cannot be totally ignorant of an issue if he consistently updates his repertory of knowledge.

Unleash the power of imagination

Some leaders are contemptuous of smart subordinates because they find it difficult to connect with the subordinates’ prognosis and, as a way of veiling their ignorance, muffle and muzzle the subordinates. The problem of such leaders is that they are weak on imagination. According to Albert Einstein, imagination is superior to knowledge because while knowledge is limited, imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress and giving birth to evolution. Imagination brings the impossible within reach. No one can be greater than his imagination. So, when a leader is lacking in imagination, he would see adversities rather than prospects, impossibilities rather than opportunities, and when pushed to the wall, he would see an end rather than a bend.

When a leader lacks the capacity to see tomorrow, he will resist any attempt to drag him into it before its eventual arrival. By the time the future he had fought arrives, he will unleash his anger on those who told him about the future he could not comprehend thereby making obvious his limitations.

Be receptive to new ideas

The world is not static, with time people change, government policies change and so does the environment. So, new services and products will always be desired. Therefore, the relevance of an organization in the marketplace is in its ability to keep up with the desire of the market. However, the ability of a company to meet the expectations of the market is tied to the disposition of the leader. For a leader to champion new trends for his organization, he must be cognizant of the trends and must be convinced that it is the way to go. That is why it is important for leaders to be receptive to new ideas. That a leader is not conscious of new moves in his industry does not mean that competition will be blind to it or that they will not pursue it. If a leader has not been held captive by injelititis and is not under any form of illusion that he is the livewire of the organization, his subordinates will have no problem intimating him with new trends so that his organization can seize the opportunities presented by the new trend. But if a leader is such that is threatened by subordinates’ competence or brilliance, the subordinates would keep their views to themselves even when they have no doubt about how adopting the new idea can revolutionize the business and enhance its profitability.

Avoid complacency

Injelititis is a product of complacency. If a leader makes it a habit to always challenge himself, he can never be overwhelmed by the accomplishments of his subordinates. So, the best way to rise above injelititis is to never succumb to complacency.

Complacency is having a feeling that you have done enough when you can still do much more. Complacency is not the absence of capacity, it is the failure to fully or adequately utilize capacity. So, complacency is the harbinger of incompetence. If an organization fails to make the most of its capacity, it will fail to realize its objectives and will be unable to attain its desired height. So, despite having the capacity of a giant, it may end up as a dwarf.

Nokia

Nokia used to be the world’s largest telephone company but it lost its prime position due to complacency.

The company was said to have come up with a phone that had a colour touch screen set above a single button many years before Apple launched its iPhone. Nokia was also said to have designed a tablet computer that had touch screen features just like the Apple iPad. But neither of these two products ever made it to the market.

The research team of Nokia got its acts right. The researchers got their predictions correctly but they were not able to convince the management to buy into the designs. As far as the management was concerned, the two devices, as designed, were too advanced and too expensive to interest the market. Nokia management would rather hold on to what it already had than to get itself into something it was not sure of, irrespective of the prospects. The management felt that with the performance of the company’s products, the business was doing quite well. So, when opportunity for growth presented itself, the leadership spurned it only for the company to pay dearly for it later when Apple released its iPhones and iPad. The market gobbled up the products resulting in a great loss by Nokia as its market share dipped to below 30 per cent.

Regularly shake up the system

When an organization settles into a pattern, creativity withers and everyone wants to stay in their safe corner. Thus, they become critical of new ideas and are reluctant to try new things. When you have done something the same way for a while, you no longer see anything wrong with it, especially if you are the leader. Rather than critique it to make it better, you defend it to keep it the way it has always been. So, to avoid being caught in that web, always shake up the system to beat rigidity and lethargy that arise from routine. When the system is shaken up, everyone in the organization is forced to think in a new way and that new thinking process can make all the difference in the fortune of the organization.

Last line

A leader who does not improve daily cannot improve the lot of his organisation on a daily basis.