If you’re a Marvel Cinematic Universe or Comics fan, you are familiar with the only time the Avengers broke up – and it was in the movie Civil War.
When the Spy and Intelligence division of a certain country wants to topple off a regime, they will always do it from the inside – with the involvement of its own people.
When you want to break a strong organization, the only way to do it successfully is if you have someone from the inside who does not have your core values at heart, who does not believe in your vision, who allows for gossip and short verbal jabs at what your company values, who might discourage others from loving your culture because he/she shows others that your culture not really that important.
All these might sound superficial but I’ve seen it far too often happen to profitable, money-making organizations.
And it happens ever-so-subtly.
The thing is, the people who wield enough influence to be the organizational assassins are usually those who perform well – who hit their numbers and who produce results.
After all, the Avenger’s civil war wouldn’t be much of a movie if a lesser hero who didn’t really matter would be one of the main components of the internal conflict.
After enough hearts and minds are influenced, or shall I say, assassinated by these people – it may gain the momentum to become a small uprising. A rebellion of sorts.
When it snowballs to this, the main leadership team might find it much harder to instill and enforce the core values and processes it has to uphold its best culture.
I’m writing this as a reminder to organizations out there who may be reading this (as well as to myself) to question ourselves from time to time. And the question to ask is: How far are we willing to allow for organizational assassins to stay onboard because of their productivity? What would tip the point to make it worthwhile to keep them?
If the answer is to protect your organization and culture at all costs – then why are we keeping such organizational assassins onboard?
Food for thought.
