Playing Well With Others
Office cliques sap morale and kill productivity. Does your firm have them?
Published January 2005
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEAlan Canton knew that developing a sophisticated new software product would present a few management challenges. The president of Adams-Blake Co. in Fair Oaks, Calif., would be overseeing an 18-month project in which 12 programmers, working in three teams, would write some 200,000 lines of code. When completed, the Web-based accounting software would serve as the company's premier product, replacing two less sophisticated programs that were to be mothballed. Getting it done on time and under budget was key and Canton, 57, knew he'd have to wield both carrot and stick with great skill to make sure that happened.
Canton's first real quandary presented itself about two months in. Reviewing one team's progress, he noticed that one programmer's coding differed markedly from that of his teammates. "I called him in and asked him why," Canton recalls. "He told me that he'd never had the chance to see the work the others did." Why not? "They wouldn't show it to him."
Canton investigated, and found that indeed, three members of the programming team had joined forces. They held informal meetings of their own, helped solve one another's problems -- and essentially ignored the two other teammates. Canton knew that daily life had to be pretty miserable for the two guys who were shut out of that cozy little cabal. But he was more concerned about what it might mean for the development project. "I had deadlines to meet, a budget to keep, things that needed to get done," he says. "I needed five people to do it, not three."
Canton's task as manager was clear: He had to bust that clique. But how?
It's tempting to dismiss cliquishness as a relic from high school, along with midterms, lockers, and prom dates. But the fact is, adult workers often behave much more like teenagers than they care to admit. Put people together in any group and it won't be long before they coalesce into subgroups, says Virginia E. Schein, an industrial psychologist and professor at Gettysburg College. "We grow up and move into organizations, but we don't necessarily change much," Schein says. That's not a problem if groups remain reasonably inclusive. But as Canton learned, a benign subgroup can rapidly become a malignant clique. And the issue is much larger than simply wanting your employees to be nice to one another.
Cliques can have a profound effect on an organization's productivity, says Rob Cross, professor of management at the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce and co-author, along with consultant Andrew Parker, of The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations. The book grew out of a study of 60 companies at which Cross mapped employees' informal connections with one another -- who they turned to with workaday questions, who they socialized with, and so forth. Cross found that employees rely extensively on these informal networks to get their jobs done. In fact, according to Cross, the more co-workers employees know, and the more aware they are of their colleagues' particular skills, the easier it will be for everyone to share information, solve problems, and perform at peak productivity.
Cliques get in the way of all of that. People shut out of a group seldom talk to those on the inside, Cross found. Similarly, those in a clique don't tap into the expertise of outsiders. In other words, if you've got cliques, your company isn't as productive as it could be, and you're probably not getting full value from your employees.
Alan Canton couldn't afford to get less than full value from his staff. So, he decided to end his next companywide meeting with a strong statement. "I'm the one who's writing the checks for this team," he said. "This is a team effort. If I come across any instance of anyone withholding information from anyone, they're out the door." He calls it his "big stick" approach, and says that it was effective. The cabal of three began including their two colleagues in their work -- and Canton was relieved when the new software was completed on time and on budget. "These guys were young, they didn't have a lot of time in the sandbox," he says. This made them more responsive to a "tough love" approach, he believes.
Threats may result in short-term clique dispersal, but experts say they may not be the best way to clique-proof your business. "It's a Band-Aid approach," says Joshua Estrin, a consultant and psychotherapist in Plantation, Fla., who counsels small-business owners.
Cliques generally become a problem during periods of uncertainty, such as when job cuts loom.
A more effective approach may be to examine why the cliques formed in the first place. Experts say cliques generally become a problem during periods of uncertainty, such as when job cuts loom or senior managers squabble. Other warning signs: when one group of employees is physically isolated from the rest of the company or when some employees have a prior relationship. At Canton's company, for example, it turned out that members of the clique of three had all worked together in the past.
