Companies are akin to complex languages, each with its own unique dialect and cultural nuances.
And I think this explains why it’s so hard for executives — especially executives — to come in from outside an organization and find their way.
At lower levels within an organization, you don’t need to be as proficient a speaker of “the language” to get by. Just as if you were a tourist with just enough basic local language skills to order lunch on vacation. If that’s all you have to do, you can get by, and the locals appreciate that you’re trying your best to be as clear and accurate as possible. The bar is lower, and the assistance and understanding from others is higher.
But at the executive level, the linguistic demands intensify. You’re quickly expected to be a proficient speaker. To know the rules, grammar (and the esoteric exceptions), phonetics, intonation, semantics, and even the non-verbal cues that influence how someone else understands what you’re trying to communicate. It’s a tall order to learn a company — a language — quickly.
As an executive, you aren’t a tourist. You’re a shopkeeper. A local. Someone who other people look to to find their own way. To get things from. To help them get unstuck. And these other employees — these these native speakers — consider you a local by way of power and position fairly quickly.
A casual browse through LinkedIn at C-level folks will unearth many short tenures. 2 years. 3 and a half. Sometimes just 1. It’s incredibly hard to become a high-expectation native speaker in such short order. This leads to what I call “churnover” — a high turnover rate driven by the churn of executives struggling to fully integrate into their new corporate language.
I don’t think there’s a fix for it either. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Companies try, executives try. Sometimes someone feathers in, loses their accent, and becomes a native speaker quickly. “Wow, I would have thought you grew up here”. It happens in society, it happens at work. But it’s not common. Typically, people struggle to learn a new language. They hit plateaus. Remnants of where they came from stay on the surface. Hints of their native tongue still chirp from time to time.
Ultimately, some people are better at picking up new languages than others. We know it’s true for actual languages, so we should assume it’s true at the company level, too.
-Jason