As you probably know there are hundreds of ways to mess up a culture and a lack of authenticity is one of the big ones.

There’s a lot about written about authenticity, but are you aware that one of the quickest ways to announce your lack of authenticity is to issue ultimatums?

Thousands of times a day, day after day, bosses in every industry, in companies both large and small, issue “or else” ultimatums, sometimes without even realizing it.

These threats aren’t always direct (Do it or start looking.), more often, they are subtle (“I expect employees who work here to be team players.”), but the threat is there: Do X if you want to keep your job.

Obviously, this is not only atrocious management, since

• threats are tremendously debilitating to those receiving them, often costing them the confidence to do their job; but
• the manger who uses threats loses the most—the credibility to run the organization.

Bad enough, but beyond the direct effect of the threats, there is a ripple effect that is far worse—the seeding of a self-propagating culture of intimidation—as with hazing people start thinking, “I’ll do it to you because the person above did it to me [and I want to get even].”

Ultimatums kill creativity, innovation, motivation, caring, ownership, in fact, everything it takes to create a culture that allows a company to successfully compete in today’s economy.

If intentional you need to look long and hard at your MAP and decide if that’s who are and how you want to be, then change—or not.

When not intentional, ultimatums are often the result of poor communications but they can be stopped—the choice is yours and yours alone.

If you do it you can change it.

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It seems that more and more people these days confuse accountability and consequences with ultimatums and punishment.

I thought it would be a good idea to sort this out, since the former is a part of a strong, healthy culture, while the latter is a major factor in an abusive one.

Accountability stems from the public nature of an action, whether planned or unplanned, and usually includes an unstated request for support and a greater incentive to follow through because others know (the reason for making it public).

Weight Watchers offers accountability and support through its public nature.

Consequences are the result of an action; they may be good, bad or depend on your view of the situation.

In other words, cause and effect—doing A results in B.

• The consequence of studying hard is a good grade on the test.
• The consequence of writing a check with insufficient funds in your account is having it bounce.
• The consequence of not immediately responding to an email may be neutral for you and frustrating for the sender.

Even if you don’t like the idea of consequences there’s no way to stop them. Everything you do, say, even thing has at least one effect if not more.

Business, obviously, is a hot bed of cause and effect—both little and large and often a domino effect.

The vp of engineering announces that the new product will be ready for the big trade show.

Accountability!

But…

The developer out for a week of jury duty is late finishing her part of the project, which slows the team and the project itself is late. Just-in-time purchasing finds a crucial part that was available at the original deadline is now on back order slowing the project still more; by the time the parts arrive manufacturing is in the middle of a scheduled software upgrade that can’t be interrupted, which forces marketing to use a prototype instead of a production version for a crucial trade show making it more difficult for the sales team to convince customers that the product will ship when they need it.

Consequences!

Everybody knows that actions have consequences and you lose credibility if you claim there are none, but consequences have nothing to do with punishment.

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Image credit: flickr