Passive-Aggressive Customers

Booze Allen Hamilton is promoting a September HBR article about "The Passive-Aggressive Organization" overviewed in its latest Strategy+Business online magazne. The article, written by Gary Neilson, Bruce Pasternack, and Karen Van Nuys, discusses the reasons employees seem to go along with management directives but in reality undermine those directives they appear to enthusiastically support. They do this by delay or by coming up with perfectly reasonable excuses why something couldn't happen. Rather than acknowledge what's going, on upper management itself is often culpable, passively buying into whatever nonsense they're being handed. The reasons why employees do this bad behavior is because they've learned that's how they stay out of trouble, or because it's just easier, or because they have a private agenda that's more important. The article lists other reasons as well, and why senior managers share responsbility -- as well as what can be done to correct the situation.

I'd like to see an article on how to recognize and deal effectively with passive-aggressive behavior in other organizations.

In all my years as a freelance technology marketing writer, I would say that passive-aggressive behavior is probably the single biggest obstacle to getting work done for organizations. Projects that are enthusiastically supported in the kickoff meeting go nowhere. White papers and articles don't get reviewed. Interviews don't get set up. When you call the contact person, promises are made to "be more responsive next time" which never seems to happen. You get the picture.

The Booze Allen article addresses organizations from an internal perspective, but passive-aggressive behavior also has bad impacts on external players as well -- whether that's business partners, channel partners, suppliers, customers, consultants, contractors, or whomever. It takes time for the outsiders to figure out that the people inside either aren't in control, don't care, or are simply deceptive. That's time you're spending trying to figure out what's really going on and what you can do about it.

I'd like to see an article on how to recognize and deal effectively with passive-aggressive behavior in other organizations. As a start, the Booze Allen piece certainly provides some good insight into the problem.