Harvard Business Review Online | Whining Away the Hours

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Whining Away the Hours

Employees’ complaints are often good for morale, particularly when nothing’s

done about them.

by John Weeks

John Weeks (

[e-mail]

) is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Insead in Fontainebleau, France. He is the author

of Unpopular Culture: The Ritual of Complaint in a British Bank (University of Chicago Press, 2003).

When Mark Twain said, “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” he exposed a compunction

that’s crucial to the smooth functioning of organizations: the urge to whine when it’s clear nothing will change.

People complain about their companies for the same reasons they complain about the weather—not because they hope to

change anything but because these small rituals of negativity draw people together by affirming their shared experiences

and their shared suffering. The recitation of innocuous complaints becomes part of a comfortable routine that puts people at

ease with one another. These complaints can help strengthen social bonds and build a sense of community.

I saw this dynamic in play during the year I spent studying a large British retail bank. People repeatedly intoned the same

well-worn derogations with no expectation that anything would change. Everyone, from the CEO to the most junior clerk,

joined in a chorus of complaints: The bank was too bureaucratic, too rules driven, not focused enough on customers, not

entrepreneurial enough, too rigid, too prone to navel-gazing, too centralized—and too negative. When change did come—

which surprised many—people proved remarkably adaptable. They quickly found new things to moan about.

Complaints can sometimes be more powerful than the traditional tools companies use to boost alignment and loyalty, such

as corporate visioning and mission statements. At one point, the bank I was studying undertook a large-scale rollout of its

new corporate vision to become “the first choice for customers, investors, and staff.” Periodically, headquarters sent

motivational videos to every branch and department to remind employees of the vision and to update them on its

implementation. Highly polished and starring senior executives alongside a well-known BBC newsreader, the videos were

routinely derided by management and staff alike. Mannerisms were mocked, clothing critiqued, errors highlighted, and

executive waffling snorted at. Managers would preface viewings with apologies for the material and would typically join in

the good-natured fun that followed. The videos did promote bonding, though admittedly not in the way the CEO had

intended.

In any organization, as people internalize the culture, they learn not just how things are done around there but also how

things are complained about. Employees learn what is safe to complain about (nothing too sensitive), to whom it is safe to

complain (no one too senior), when it is safe to complain (not too publicly), and what is taboo. Most times, when people

follow these cultural rules, the result is innocuous social complaints that are useful for everything except actually creating

change. Other times, employees mean for their complaints to create change. Being able to distinguish recreational negativity

from constructive dissent is an important skill for managers in a culture of complaint. Managers need to know well the

unwritten rules that govern how, to whom, and about what people ritualistically whine. In this way, they can determine

where not to put their problem-solving energies. There is nothing people enjoy complaining about more than a meddling

manager who runs around trying to fix things that no one, really, wants or expects to be fixed.

Reprint Number F0405C

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