Gary Drumm – PMP, ITIL

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about a concept known as “the mushroom theory of management”. Basically, the idea is that a company’s management team makes the decision to treat their employees like mushrooms: Keep them in the dark and cover them with excrement. That is to say they don’t really let their employees know what’s going on with the company and they cover them up in so much busy work that they (the employees) don’t have time to really even care.

The problem with this idea is, of course, that eventually some of your better employees are either going to get to a point where they have enough free time to care, likely because they’re very efficient at what they do, or they’re going to get promoted to a level where management has to clue them in, even if only a little bit, so they don’t mess things up by providing too much information to their staff.

This, of course, leads to distrust and paranoia. If an employee pours their whole heart into something, becomes a real thought leader within the organization, and effects massive positive change, then imagine how disheartened they become when they find out they’ve been lied to. Perhaps not lied to directly, but certainly allowed to believe whatever they wanted to believe because it was beneficial to management because the employee’s performance was good for the bottom line.

Have we become so jaded and cynical as a society that this is really what it’s all about? Governments lie. Companies lie. Communities lie. People lie. Isn’t society simply a reflection of the values of individuals? So is it the company lying to it’s people, or is it the management team as a whole? And if it’s the management team, aren’t they made of of individuals and isn’t it actually the individual manager/executive who’s doing the lying?

Call me crazy and old-fashioned, but I think leadership is about integrity. Integrity is doing what’s right when no one is watching. Doing what is right because it is right. Can we really call the people leading companies “leaders” if there is no integrity? If you’re not telling your employees the truth, are you not, in fact, lying to them? Isn’t the so-called “mushroom theory” just an institutionalized method of not being truthful and honest with those who actually do the work?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a “worker’s united” guy. I’m a management guy. I understand there are certain things you simply cannot divulge: trade secrets, potentially lucrative contracts in the works, etc. But it seems that many companies, in today’s environment, have taken the legitimate need to protect certain information and used a much broader brush to include things that they shouldn’t.

Take, for example, GM’s decision to close their plant during the summer in order to reduce inventory levels and costs. This is not a popular decision among the employees, but at least the employees have information that they can now act upon in order to prepare for the reduced income levels during the shutdown. Management made the difficult decision to perform the shutdown and communicated it accordingly.

Will their stock take a hit? Possibly. Will their employees be unhappy? Probably. But was it the right thing to do? Definitely. By providing employees and shareholders the information, they give them an opportunity. If I’m an unhappy shareholder, I can sell my stock and place my money somewhere else (I’d suggest gold and silver personally, BTW – ). If I’m an employee, I can decide whether or not I want to stay at the company.

Does GM really lose anything by being honest about the situation? Not really. They may lose employees or stockholders who are unhappy, but those who are unhappy are probably not as productive for them anyway. So perhaps this will give them an opportunity to upgrade their workforce to people who actually want to be there.

In my opinion, companies should be as transparent as possible to their employees. Transparency doesn’t mean divulging all of the secrets to everyone all the time. But it does mean you don’t try to cover things up. You face the difficult decisions head-on. You be open and honest with your employees. If difficult times are coming, you tell them about it and give them the option to make decisions for themselves.

The right thing and the easy thing are seldom, if ever, the same thing. I contend that the “mushroom theory” is the wrong thing.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 16th, 2009 at 11:10 am and is filed under Leadership, Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.