#459  from Innovative Leader Volume 9, Number 3          March 2000

FORUM—from our readers

Secrets

I’ve been with my company for six years and have, until recently, enjoyed the atmosphere of trust here.  The executives in my previous company liked to share conspiracies and secrets that we were not privy to.  We hardly trusted any “fact” that was allowed to permeate this executive wall.  I learned, first hand, of the damage that suspicion fertilizes.  For instance, only three weeks after the staff was told there would be no downsizing, guess what the company did?  It downsized! Guess how much less trust the remaining staff, including me, had for our company?  No wonder many of us willingly left.

I enjoy working in my new company, so I was really surprised when I found out that my division will be relocating to a new site twenty miles away.  It’s not that the decision was just made--the site and building have been under construction the past two years.  And we now know that our move had been planned long before then.

Two years ago I bought a house just five minutes ride from my current office.  The new site will be take forty-five minutes, including traffic jams over a bridge.  If I had known about the planned move, I would have found a home closer to the new building. 

I assume my division vice president knew that we were going to move.  It would have been nice if he would have told us.  Turns out that he recently purchased a home very close to the new site.  Perhaps he didn’t want to upset his people, when there was nothing he could do. Perhaps the CEO ordered executives to keep the move quiet for some reason.

Anyway, this surely makes one suspicious.  Keeping the move secret, itself, really is not that big a deal.  It’s just an annoying inconvenience. What is a big deal is that it seems that the executives obviously don’t feel obligated to inform about items that are important to the staff.  I guarantee that the staff will now be less dedicated to the company and, therefore, to their work.  Did the executives ever think of this?  They should have--it’s obvious!  From my experience now in two jobs, I wonder if the quality of being inconsiderate comes with the executive status?

Anonymous