(Originally posted on LinkedIn September 8th 2021)

Do you know any IT rockstars, security gurus, productivity superheroes (or other similarly amazing individuals in your own field) that you can always count on to get the job done?

I do – starting, in fact, with my colleagues. Exceptional individuals exist and we’re all the happier for it. They’re in every organization, making things work and doing fantastic stuff, every day. You might very well be one of them.

Building networks at the workplace and identifying capable, valuable individuals within those networks comes naturally to us. We lean on these contacts when things get difficult – to cut through red tape, to get insight on a difficult issue, to provide input for a big decision. In many cases, people emerge that are able to facilitate these challenging situations and demands repeatedly and are known to many for their ability to smooth things over.

I absolutely hope these modern-day heroes get all the recognition they deserve. On the other hand, I hope we can also try to understand why we needed them to step up in the first place. Relying on rockstars saving the day time and time again can mask a lot of systemic problems, under-resourced roles and organizational weak points. I’m not going to pretend this is a new insight either.

As far back as in 1999, Harvard Business Review talked about a very similar phenomenon: people (often working in managerial positions) that end up acting as sense-making intermediaries between an incompetent or hostile administration and the rest of the organization, calling them toxic handlers. These people translate unclear business directives into effective communication and shield employees from undue psychological burdens so they can do their work effectively and sustainably. Such individuals tend to do all of this on top their regular work – and not surprisingly, it often comes at great personal cost. The authors relay a grim picture:

(…) although toxic handlers save organizations from self-destructing, they often pay a steep price—professionally, psychologically, and sometimes physically. Some toxic handlers experience burnout; others suffer from far worse, such as ulcers and heart attacks.

While these examples are extreme, they are by no means unrealistic. Despite my relatively fresh professional career I’ve already known several amazing professionals who were too valuable, too eager to overcome every challenge and too “in-demand” for their own good – and veered close to burnout because of it. Even then, the people performing exceptional technical feats and putting out the biggest metaphorical fires often get the most praise and attention, further reinforcing their contribution as the ideal for others to strive towards.

This all feels quite logical and fundamentally stems from human psychology – we’re all about solving problems when they have already happened and are far less inclined to think about how to act to prevent the problem in the first place, even when the impending issue is well-known. For a practical and very relevant example, see climate change.

Rockstar saves the day – but who will save the rockstar?

In many cases, repeated insufficient planning, inadequate foresight and lack of proper processes can be masked by skilled and experienced employees. Everything looks like it is running just fine until one day the key component in the equation – the rockstar – is no longer there facilitating things, making all the underlying problems and deficiencies apparent all at once.

Still, it probably isn’t a good move to try to prevent exceptional people from taking on a bit more responsibility and growing into great professionals in the process. So, what to do?

A way forward might be to completely reframe the discussion. Back in 2012, TechWell proposed talking about crisis culture instead:

 Instead of stopping people from being heroes, we need to obviate the need for heroes. The way to do this is to fix the culture that gives rise to a steady stream of impending disasters.

CIO.com reinforces the notion by pointing out that when the existing framework and processes of work are incomplete, we do what we do best and pitch in to help each other get our work done. This natural flexibility can end up creating all kinds of unwanted outcomes: duplicated work, unclear responsibilities, wasted time, lowered productivity, higher costs – and often enough, plenty of IT superheroes that learn to shoulder a patchwork of wide-ranging responsibilities.

Let’s be honest though – being a highly-skilled, highly-valued “key individual” isn’t necessarily something people always want to think about giving up on easily. I get that, and can empathize. Few things provide a sense of job security like knowing you’re the one that makes things click. It can be addictive. In some cases, the pursuit of being untouchable might even incentivize people to steer away from established process discipline and accumulate more responsibilities – and subsequently, soft power – for themselves.

Enforcing process discipline and proactively distributing these responsibilities can trigger a sense of being threatened, of losing status, personal control and value – a perception that something is being taken away. That something, of course, is the comforting status quo. This can lead to a fear response, manifesting as a lowered willingness to share knowledge with others and aversion to letting others have a slice of success.

Instead of coherent teams, we can end up with dysfunctional groups of individuals, each hoarding the thing that they associate with a sense of job security – their know-how and ideas. Uncertainty regarding the future is strong at this point, powering the dynamics. Not the most fertile environment for innovation and cultural evolution.

The potential of this response, then, should be taken into account when trying to shift the workplace culture.

Clearly communicating business goals in advance while giving exceptional individuals and groups the incentives to get onboard and have a personal stake with change can help. Relinquishing some existing responsibilities is made easier to put into perspective when you know it is happening because management wants you to have more time and energy to focus on your key competencies and on your professional growth, while helping relieve the pressure of always feeling like you have to be available to resolve certain kinds of situations.

In short, it is about turning unknown negatives into known positives. Of course, everyone is different and the things driving perceived change resistance are undoubtedly varied.

I think doing what we can to help our outstanding individuals avoid undue psychological burdens should pay off when focusing on improving organizational resilience in the near future.

Looking ahead

In my previous article, I talked about focusing on resilience and the key role it plays in the ongoing global transition to the new paradigm of hybrid work. Skilled people (in IT at least) typically have a very easy time switching employers right now and heroes can be hard to hold on to indefinitely.

The 2020 article the risks of a “hero” culture, the author correctly points out the need for a delicate hand when driving the shift away from a rockstar-reliant workplace, since their enthusiasm and energy can help greatly empower and inspire others when correctly focused. The risks of not addressing the situation, on the other hand, are put bluntly but clearly:

If business processes mostly reside in individuals’ minds, there are no concrete rules to follow and the company will soon fall into utter chaos and decline.

A critical look at a company’s culture from the top-down is a good move going into 2022. Are key business processes personified? Are individuals working within or outside their job description and if so, how prevalent is it?

A good exercise might be to imagine replacing a perceived key employee with a fresh and untested individual. How likely is it that a business process tied to that person’s role would suffer because of this? The answers might provide food for thought.

To finish off with an actual superhero analogy: I think we need to make sure that our own Spider-Man and Wonder Woman equivalents can feel enabled to sometimes opt to be anonymous instead, without being afraid of getting replaced and without the metaphorical city going down in flames, either.