The Last 5 Elephants In The Room (Part 3 Of 3). (And Why Elephant Management Is A Waste Of Time.)

Here are the last 5 elephants.

There are lots more, of course, but the 17 discussed here (in three parts) may be the biggest ones.

1. Corruption

This elephant has lots of faces. Sometimes he’s “legal” and sometimes he’s not. As big as he is, he works the sidelines like a wide receiver, but he’s not above going out of bounds when the refs aren’t looking. He’s a master at lobbying to prevent legislation that might hurt his business. He knows that bribery is “common” in business – at least 15 spectacular times. He’s also familiar with kickbacks, extortion, solicitation, collusion, information trading, influence peddling, embezzlement, favoritism and cronyism, among other nasty activities too many elephants know so well. He also knows that when bad things happen many of the bad guys go unpunished, like when mortgages tanked the global economy and everyone just figured things were too big to fail, or when banks do really bad things and no one seems to care.

These elephants work in disguise.

2. Consulting

One of the largest segments of the business industrial complex is consulting, which we all know is far from satisfying. Old jokes notwithstanding, there’s good reason to wonder how consultants bill their clients and hedge the advice they provide. We all know consultants exist for several purposes. One is to create air cover – blame – for projects that explode. Another is to provide expertise that internal teams just don’t, though should, have. Another is to placate Boards of Directors that recommend outsiders be used to solve tough business problems. Most of these purposes are green fields for consultants who charge huge fees precisely because of why they’re hired. Unfortunately, consultants are sometimes incompetent, late and arrogant (or worse) – in addition to being expensive.

This elephant isn’t going anywhere. He has the keys to the kingdom.

3. Start-Ups

While he roots for success, this elephant knows the overwhelming number of start-ups fail. He wants to encourage everyone to try, even though he knows they’re doomed. The problem, of course, is uncertainty, talent, funding, customers, demand, competition, technology, IP, leadership and marketing – among fifty other things that can go wrong. So what should we tell aspiring entrepreneurs? On Monday the elephant talks about the search for cash and on Tuesday about how well-connected entrepreneurs must be. Incubation can be productive but is often the opposite. There are best practices here that are routinely ignored – at great expense. Corporate venture capital (CVC) also fails way too often to inspire new products and services. Budgets are unnecessarily threatened and disruptive opportunities lost by companies unfamiliar with the chaos that surrounds most start-up activity. Oh my.

This elephant’s in an incubator looking for food.

4. Emotions

Biases – there are at least 50 of them – often drive business decisions. In fact, even though we seldom label executives and managers by bias type, we sure talk about them a lot, like the “ostrich” bias, the “gender” bias, the “selective perception” bias, and, of course, the venerable “confirmation” bias. We know people get angry – and stay angry – when things don’t go their way. We know people hold grudges. We know they’re jealous. We know they’re attracted to each other in spite of how inappropriate the attractions might be. We know they’re defensive. We know they’re insecure. We know they fear change. All this knowledge is keenly felt in every workplace on the planet. But it’s never a good idea to hurt this elephant’s feelings – so we don’t discuss it here.

Be nice to this elephant; he’s sensitive.

5. Leadership

There are 57,000 leadership books for sale on Amazon. There are hundreds of executive leadership programs and thousands of leadership courses. Leadership “Master Classes” are all the rage from celebrities (who in many cases have never actually led anything). So with all this guidance, why are there still so many bad leaders? By now you’ve guessed that the Alpha Elephant in the room is named Leadership. Incredibly, when a company faulters, there’s very little discussion about the quality of leadership – blame is often assigned “elsewhere.” There are plenty of CEOs who drove their stock price down during their tenure. The data is easy to find. But why is it seldom publicized? Some of the more egregious examples are now business celebrities sitting on boards who give speeches for thousands of dollars a minute. Is that why we don’t identify these “leaders”? Most of them monetize their failures until they die.

These elephants are available through any number of speaker bureaus – for a fee, of course.

Elephant Management

Elephants are destructive. They continue to grow in number and size. As suggested throughout these three rants, they’re still ignored, which is amazing since they’re so expensive to house and feed. But what if we confronted these elephants in the room and asked them some tough questions? Might they lose some influence? Would they even respond?

Some people actually deny the existence of elephants or the impact they have on business, which are two ways to manage the smell. Elephant deniers are data free, in much the same way antivaxxers and flat earthers are. It doesn’t matter what anyone says or what evidence can’t be found: elephants just don’t exist, and if they do, their impact is minimal. Ignore people wired this way. They’ve lost their business souls.

Perhaps the reason why we seldom discuss the elephants in the room is because we’ve learned how to ignore them for personal and professional gain. Executives, boards, investors, educators, legislators, journalists and reporters all see the elephants. But if the truth be told, we’ve normalized elephant sightings. There are so many things we all know, but never discuss, especially if these conversations upset any golden apple carts. But what about how much elephants cost? The normal progression from what’s-the-problem-to-what-does-it-cost-to-how-to-fix-it doesn’t seem to apply to the elephants in the room.

By the way, business isn’t the only elephant zoo – they’re everywhere. We know automation will displace millions of workers, and we know there will be enormous social consequences to this inevitable trend. We know the criminal-justice business is incredibly profitable, especially the privatized prison business. We know life-saving drugs should be cheaper. We know money should be removed from politics; we know gerrymandering predicts election results. We know the opioid crisis can be managed – and might have been prevented. We know public education is grossly underfunded. We know there are too many Glocks and AR-15s on the streets, and we know too many kids get shot in their schools. These elephants are empirical. We can deny and debate them forever, but the numbers won’t change. So don’t be too hard on business. There are herds of elephants wandering around everywhere.

None of them are going anywhere.