By John Carroll
Carroll on Work

Perhaps you’ve heard that denial is not a river in Egypt. The practice of denial in business could be as long, as winding and as treacherous as that famous river. But while the Nile sustains life and business for many in the region, denial in your organization spells nothing but trouble.

In fact, you can count denial ahead of intentional action to do harm as the league leader in damage to your organization. Here are four key reasons why denial leaves a much larger wake of crisis and problems:

• Greater secrecy. By its very definition, denial hides well. Denial is an unconscious mechanism we use, individually or collectively, to buffer ourselves from anxiety and fear by choosing not to believe in the existence or reality of things that we find too much to handle consciously. With the light of day only occasionally shining on the practice of denial, it grows and prospers.

• Greater odds. Many attempts at crime are foiled or fail on their own. As a result, an action intended to harm doesn’t always accomplish what it sets out to do. Denial of a problem doesn’t make the problem go away.

• Greater frequency. Despite what the media would have you think, intent to damage occurs in only a miniscule percentage of the population. By most estimates, only five percent of a given population acts maliciously to cheat the system or harm another party. Denial, conversely, happens across the population with alarming frequency.

• Less prevention. Think of the steps we take to prevent acts of terrorism or lessen the impact of natural disasters. What do we do to counteract denial? We invest less time, money and energy combating denial, despite the fact that the undesirable outcomes can be as bad or worse.

Here are some examples of denial in organizations. How many have you spotted in your own?

1. Not listening to your own people. Consultants regularly listen around the company and report to the CEO what they’ve heard. The input is often valuable, but the C-level executive doesn’t want to hear it, has never listened for it or is tired of hearing it.

2. Adopting the latest fad or fashion in management circles. Denial here is the inclination to believe that there’s a magic pill to solve the entire issue quickly and with no mess. Reality says we took our time and dug this hole. Now we’ll need to give our chosen solution time to dig us out.

3. Seeing the problem in everyone but oneself. A man is searching the sidewalk under a street lamp for his keys. A passerby joins the search and after several minutes asks the man if he remembered where he dropped his keys. “Oh yes, I was down the block several houses from here.” Why, the stranger asks, are you looking for them under the streetlight? “Because it’s dark over there and I can see more clearly here under the light.” Leaders will often shine the light brightly on the wrong area and completely miss the top causative factor of the issue: themselves.

4. Managing without facts. This shoot-in-the-dark management style requires no fact-based thinking. On the contrary, it relies heavily on intuition, the way we’ve always done it and the familiar response, “I’m the boss and I say so.”

5. Management by double standard. This often rears its ugly head in family businesses, usually in situations where one family member simply doesn’t follow the rules. Late arrivals, long lunches and early departures are the norm for the silver spoon kid. If it weren’t for family ties, this person would be both unemployed and unemployable. Co-workers do a slow burn while ownership won’t rock the boat, denying that a problem even exists.

6. Adopting a program from across town. Jones Supply has an effective incentive plan. Mr. Jones mentions it to Mr. Smith, who wants the same results. Jones shares the details with Smith, who carries it straight to his conference room, announces the new program and hands it to someone to implement. This is a denial that the company would benefit from analyzing its own issues and creating its own solution.

7. Failure to take specific, decisive action. When it’s obvious to everyone that the problem resides in a single team member who simply doesn’t fit well, it’s time for that person to be reassigned or released. The unwillingness to reassign or relieve that person represents a grave threat to progress, sending a message that this person’s obviously unacceptable performance is somehow passable in the eyes of management.

Be clear on what constitutes denial in your organization. Identify it without delay, isolate it before it becomes contagious and eliminate it before it does damage.

John Carroll is a business consultant, speaker, author and president of Unlimited Peformance Inc. in Mount Pleasant. E-mail him at jcarroll@uperform.com.

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