THE YOUNG MANAGER stormed into his office, slamming the door shut behind him. An unprofessional display, perhaps, but in his present mood it was all he could do not to tear it from its hinges with his teeth. His heart was pounding in his chest, and even his airy, well-lit workspace felt close and claustrophobic. He had reached the end of his tether. It was fight-or-flight time.
He strode to the window and gazed down at the glass-roofed meeting space in the old turbine hall below. The Collective was a business hub for start-ups and small companies, based in a converted power station in the old industrial quarter. Its red-brick chimneys had long since stopped smoking, but it still generated a sort of energy, fuelled by the dreams of its ambitious occupants and fed back into the economic grid of a city that had grown up around it.
The Young Manager had loved coming here in the months since his company moved in. He loved the entrepreneurial drive that the Collective’s tenants shared, the determination and creativity of the people who walked the halls. But today, he’d had enough.
The long nights, the years of diligence, and the many hits of coffee it had taken to get him where he was…none of it mattered. This time, he was ready to walk.
Oh, he’d faced his fair share of challenges over the years. But he’d always dealt with problems head on, confident that a solution could be found, and his confidence had always been rewarded. But not this time. This one had beaten him.
It came down to a clash of personalities. Two teams of people as difficult and stubborn as they were passionate and professional. Meetings had morphed from a place where ideas were incubated into a confrontational battle of wills. Morale was so low that you had to crane your neck to see rock bottom.
And where, the Young Manager wondered, must the blame be laid? Where else but at the Captain’s feet. He had failed. Should he go down with the sinking ship? Or take to the lifeboats and hope for the best?
All manner of advice had been offered as the problem worsened. Friends and colleagues had suggested coaching and mentoring, workshops, incentives, performance management, and top-down restructuring. The Young Manager had listened carefully and considered his options thoroughly. He had pursued his chosen strategies with his habitual confidence and enthusiasm. But despite his best efforts, nothing he tried had any long-term impact on the war of attrition waged by a tribal and uncooperative staff.
As his optimism waned, the Young Manager came to believe that he was overlooking some fundamental aspect to the problem that he faced. He was deadlocked, and it wasn’t just him having this problem. Across the business, from department to department, he found himself increasingly mired in long conversations about organisational problems. Cultural change was proving hard to effect, while a drop in staff engagement played heavily on team leaders throughout the company. These were complex situations, and emotions often ran high as an atmosphere of blame and denial began to take hold.
For all his expertise—for all the qualifications he had earned and the advice he had been given—the Young Manager felt like he was no closer to a solution than he had ever been. People grew accustomed to the way things were done in any organisation and came to accept them, even when company practices were deeply flawed. That’s why smooth and successful change was so hard to achieve. Maybe you just can’t teach an old dog new tricks, he thought to himself as he stared down from his window.
He sighed deeply as his eyes settled on the shingled roof of the tiny coffee shack based at the far end of the turbine hall. The smallest business at the Collective might also have been the busiest, serving freshly ground coffee to the building’s caffeine-fuelled workers from dawn to well beyond dusk, but right now it was quiet.
“Dog tricks can wait,” said the Young Manager out loud as he turned towards his office door. “I need a coffee.”