Here’s a situation I’ve seen many times. Generally in large rather than small organisations, but I don’t think a company has to be huge to suffer from some variant of this. Someone (let’s call them “Worker”) needs access to a resource to get their job done. They have to apply to a second person (”Gatekeeper”) to get this done. For some reason, there’s an organisational policy in place that determines that Worker is not allowed access to the resource. Somewhere in the organisation there’s a third person (who we’ll call “Deus ex Machina”, or “Deus” for short) who has the authority to override or change the policy.

Examples of a resource might be (say) a particular server, system or VPN, and the policy may hold that workers of a particular sort (say, contractors rather than permanent staff) are not permitted access to that resource for security reasons. It’s important to realise that the request is not an arbitrary one - our Worker really does need access to the resource to work effectively. Other than this, the details aren’t important - I’m sure you’ve seen this situation, and can fill in your own examples.

Now this is the point at which it gets interesting: it’s all to easy to blame the Gatekeeper, yet they are only doing their job (and indeed may well be monitored or rewarded for their adherence to policy) and in fact are doing it well (as it is defined). It’s easy to blame Deus too, or the organisation as a whole, but this doesn’t help. In many cases Deus simply doesn’t know that the situation has arisen, or indeed could arise - after all, organisations are large and complex, Deus is likely to have a whole different set of concerns to deal with, and it may be that Deus is a long way away from the day to day concerns of an individual trying to get their job done.

The system of the organisation itself is not a suitable target for recriminations - by feeling frustrated with “the organisation” our Worker is - on the surface - asserting their independence from the system (I am not a number, I am a free man!), but is fundamentally defining part of their identity in contrast to that organisation, an identity that will, therefore, be challenged if the organisation were to change. And I’m sure you’ve seen the result of this too - individuals whose cynicism is institutionalised.

Before jumping in, identifying responsibilities and rushing to fix the situation, I’d like you to spend a few minutes holding this triangle in your mind: look at it from the point of view of each of the vertices and edges in turn, zoom out, zoom in…

My first reaction to this sort of situation is that doing nothing is not an option. The negativity and general stuck-ness of many organisations is often a result of months or years of inaction, or ineffective action, around issues like this.

We’re often tempted to apply a quick fix or workaround: that too is avoiding the issue, but to allow work to continue it’s often necessary. The danger is that these fixes accrete and add to the complexity of the organisation as a whole, impose their own restrictions on how teams and individuals can work, and end up being less efficient than addressing the root cause.

If the problem is that Deus is not aware of the problem, then as Worker your simple solution is to tell them. It might mean an email to your CEO, but if that’s where the buck stops… Most management teams nowadays preach openness and communication, this is your chance to see if they walk the walk.

If you are Deus, then as soon as you hear about a situation like this you must do something. In the example above there’s a conflict between hiring policy (we will use contractors) and security policy (we won’t give them access to what they need to do their job). If it isn’t fixed, you’ll end up with organisational behaviour that matches the psychological dysfunction that arises when individuals try to operate under conflicting goals - schizophrenia, depression, psychosis. One or other - or both - of the policies needs fixing (and it needn’t be the obvious one - if security is so important and you’re that worried about the loyalty of your external contractors, then you’d better not hire any). An even better solution is to devolve responsibility by reducing the distance between Deus, Worker and Gatekeeper. This is a great opportunity to demonstrate congruent behaviour: if having people work effectively is of value to your organisation, customers, stakeholders, shareholders, then you should be doing all you can to maximise it.Getting rid of bad and outdated policy is a visible sign of change.

If you are Gatekeeper you’re probably in the most difficult position. If this circumstance arises frequently, then you might be able to identify and escalate it (though in a service group in a large organisation, chances are your manager is also a Gatekeeper). It’s harder for a part of an organisation that’s set up as a service provider to rethink itself into a problem solving mode, but if you can start acting actively in this way the benefits - both to the group, individuals working in it, and the organisation as a whole - will be considerable.

Just remember - doing nothing is not a healthy option.