“Sometimes it seems like it was better down in the warehouse you know.”
-Daryl, from “The Office”
If you watch “The Office” you might remember this line from a couple weeks ago. I thought the storyline between Daryl, the former warehouse worker who is an up and coming entrepreneur, and Michael Scott, the quintessential middle manager was well done. Daryl has a pattern of generating good ideas. Michael is threatened by them and functions in a way as to not be upstaged by those “under” him. After sorting out tons of politics and drama, Daryl reflectively utters the quote above which maybe you can resonate with in some way the more you get involved in higher levels of organizational leadership. The episode mentioned is a great example of innovation killing and how empowerment efforts die. The corporate values say one thing, leaders’ actions in the belly of the organization say another. Michael tends to ignore, hijack, or block great innovation.
My team has been discussing the frequently mentioned book here, Orbiting the Giant Hairball and one particular passage captures this and I’ll give credit here to my dad who made some great connections as it relates to this particular passage. Gordon Mackenzie writes,
“Unfortunately, while the heart of [your organization] sings the virtues of creativity, the company’s intellect worships the predictability of the status quo and is, thus, adverse to new ideas. This incongruity creates a common corporate personality disorder: The organization officially lauds the generation of new ideas while covertly subverting the implementation of those same ideas.
The consequence is that, on any given day, umpteen people at Hallmark, responding to official corporate invitation, come up with concepts for new methodologies or fresh, original products. Then those ideas, by nature of their newness, are deemed fundamentally unseemly by the same authority conglomerate that asked for them in the first place. This makes for a lot of frustrated ideamongers.” (pg. 147)
The belly of an organization is where empowerment and innovation is either reinforced or killed. There are tons of “Daryl’s” out there with ideas and passion and energy. It seems there are just as many “Michael’s” who get paralyzed in the face of newness and ideas.
If you have ideas and passion, you’ve probably wondered whether it was really worth it to deal with all the politics and drama of organizational bureaucracy. You can’t help wondering if you were better off in the warehouse. There are some seasons where maybe you are. But like Daryl, sooner or later everyone will benefit if we keep pushing, keep innovating, keep creating.
I love the end when Daryl concludes his reflection with, “I do have big plans for this organization.”
Do you have big plans for your organization or ministry?
How are you moving towards them?
For a couple weeks more you can watch this episode online and I’ve embedded it below if you want to watch it. Be warned that it is a “Halloween” episode so all the above action takes place with the characters in various costumes.
Permalink: http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/video/costume-contest/1256768
