When good results make bad habits look normal, it can be hard to name what’s wrong. Organisational Addiction gives you a way to see it.
The test is the diagnosis. The book is the whole story: how an organisation stops focusing on what made it successful and instead gets hooked on the rewards success brings, at the cost of the service and the customer. How the addiction hides inside organisations, and what it takes to break the habit.
Nine warning signs. Six states. One uncomfortable question: would anyone notice if the winner was the addict?
Good numbers.
Uncomfortable compromises.
More control.
Less ability to act.
Bad news.
Nowhere safe to take it.
Organisational Addiction is how an organisation stops focusing on what made it successful and instead gets hooked on the rewards that success brings, at the cost of the service and the customer.
It starts with a shock. The organisation is hit by an event, good or bad, and wins a large reward for rising above it.
That reward comes in three currencies: money, power and autonomy.
Then the turning point. As it tries to return to business as usual, new behaviours appear and take hold.
From there the addiction deepens through three stages, each one worse than the last.
The reward becomes the purpose rather than delivering a good product or service. Habits form to protect it.
Autonomy is stripped, power drifts to the centre, and a class of watchers grows up to guard the new order.
The organisation steals from its future to pay for today, then begins to feed on itself.
Tap any marker to see how it scores.
Free Action Pack with every result: worksheets and an action plan to run with your team.
If the result hits close to home, we help leaders and teams see the habit clearly and start to break it.
