What's Really Dragging Your Business Down

Think your competition is the biggest threat to your company's prosperity?

Not even close.

The Japanese have a saying: "The nail that sticks up gets hammered."

What this means is that if someone goes against the grain, stands out and perhaps starts to make a name for himself, it is the responsibility of his peers to slam him down and put him back in his place.

Japanese culture values conformity about as much as American culture cherishes individuality, so for years I took this saying as reflective of an ethic that set our nations apart.

I'm a bit older and, in this case at least, a whole lot wiser now.

It doesn't matter the culture, humans are jealous creatures. Even when there is plenty for everyone, we're quite often more concerned with the other guy - notably, with making sure the other guy isn't doing better than we are.

I see this in my two little girls all the time, as I saw it with my sisters and myself when we were little. Even though in a healthy family there's plenty of parental love to go around, children are incensed by the idea that a sibling may get one more Popsicle, or an extra ten minutes of alone time, or... fill in the blank. It never ends.

And I've seen it in workplaces for years. I've observed it so often that I'm convinced this is a universal human trait.

...But so is rage, and we don't tolerate that in the workplace. Jealousy has no place at work, and it stifles most business' progress. When staff and managers are more concerned with keeping the other guy from the boss' favor than they are happy for a peer's success, that only hurts.

And not one in one hundred companies is truly free of this drag on its productivity.

Several years ago, I had a client with a number of retail locations. I spent quite a bit of time at a number of these spots, and got to know the store managers well. One of these managers, whom I'll call Bob, was highly innovative, and one of his creations was a program that taught math to area school kids in a real-world way that was fun for them, fun for Bob and his staff, and a great PR boon as well. His store thrived as he involved his community in this program. Within a couple of years with him at the helm, they really were the neighborhood store.

Bob was recognized by a trade organization in a national award ceremony. Great for Bob, right?

Well, of course it should have been great for Bob. But before he returned from his trip, the other store managers were poisoning the grapevine with jealous chit-chat about Bob. They teased him relentlessly for being the company's golden boy.

It got so bad that this is what Bob told me a few years after returning from his trip: "I wish I'd never won that stupid award." He was practically shaking as he related this. Not one ounce of him was proud or grateful for the recognition; he was just resentful of his peers and regretful of the entire experience.

There are a hundred different ways that jealousy can manifest itself within an organization. The result is always the same. Jealousy acts like a weight on a company's potential. A culture that tolerates it, even in much more subtle ways than Bob's firm, is paying a huge price in lost morale and de-motivated talent.

How jealous is your culture? And what is even a little jealousy costing you?