Toxic Companies, Hubris & The Shadow

From Mike Green's Transitional Space:

You’ve probably read quite a lot about Goldman Sachs recently, with one of their employees describing them as Toxic.

So what exactly is a toxic company and is there any way of surviving one? Well toxic means poisonous and liable to cause ill-health.

In Goldman’s case Greg Smith described the culture as “toxic and destructive” citing examples of senior managers describing their clients as ”Muppet’s” and ripping them off.
Interestingly in his resignation he mentions a number of stakeholder groups:

The leadership – He pointed the finger firmly at the CEO and the President “leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today if you make enough money – and are not an axe murderer – you will be promoted”.

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In the same way as we all have a shadow side – subconsciously suppressing the bits of ourselves that we don’t like or are ashamed of or that we believe others will not like – organisations can be very good at that in the short term. Argyris and Egan amongst other have written extensively on how the expoused values of the organisation can be supplanted by the values-in-practice which are the values which really drive behaviour and which inevitably are demonstrated by the leadership in their behaviour towards staff or towards customers or towards the community and the environment.

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