Fantasia-astic!

Water carriers in tribal cultures fulfill an important role, they carry water from the river to a storage pool so that everyone can drink.

But…

Water carriers don’t make a decision about where the water comes from.

Water carriers don’t care how much water they carry.

Water carriers don’t care who gets to drink.

Water carriers don’t care about water quality.

Water carriers don’t care if the company is proceeding forward fast enough.

Water carriers don’t care if the company is heading in the right direction.

Water carriers just carry water.

You tell a water carrier, “Carry water from here to there.”

And they continue to carry water until you tell them to stop.

Water carriers carry water at the speed they carry water.

Not enough water? Hire more water carriers.

Too much water and the holding tank is overflowing? Keep carrying water until told to stop.

The water well ran dry? Stand around until told where to get a new supply of water from.

Don’t make a decision and you won’t make the wrong decision and someone else won’t have to correct it for you.

It is all too easy for your company culture to devolve in to hiring water carriers.

The reason that water carrier culture enters an organization is that someone, from some level in the company, middle-management and up, at some point, decided to try and make all the decisions.

It didn’t matter if other people below them were making proper and correct decisions, at some point, someone decided they should be making the decisions.

Whatever decisions below the manager are being made, are wrong, even if the decisions happen to the be the same decisions made by the manager.

It’s not the decisions that are being made that are wrong. People making decisions below the manager is what is wrong.

If all decisions are made by a single person, they become a choke point.

It doesn’t scale.

And water carriers will stand around idly until they are told what to do next.

Good employees capable of autonomy will leave, and the ones that remain will stop making decisions.

Once a company culture has moved to a majority of water carriers, that culture will seep (like water) in to all the other areas of an organization.

Until the water carriers, if they are involved in the interview process, are hiring more water carriers.