Ilham Aliyev
We believe that trust needs to be earned over years, and it can be lost with one wrong step.
The Neutral Anatomy of the Modern Work Environment
When discussing organizations, terms like structure, function, authority, and control are often used with ease. Yet, in practice, their meaning is frequently nothing more than an illusion. In many institutions, when people refer to a “system,” they usually mean an organizational chart that outlines job positions or a PDF copy of internal disciplinary rules.
In reality, however, a system is the unwritten but lived mechanism of cooperation among people — a set of habits and interactions experienced daily. And this mechanism usually reminds us of its existence only when it stops working properly.
Employee and manager relations lie at the heart of this mechanism. In any organization, these relations are either regulated by institutional norms or governed by personal perceptions, intuition, and “communication skills.” Interestingly, it is often the latter that dominates — leading over time to a deep mismatch between structure and system: everyone knows where they work, but few know how they are truly supposed to work.
In employment relations, job responsibilities are typically defined in writing. However, how they are actually performed depends largely on the individual’s personal attitude, the organizational culture, and the system of expectations.
This creates a gap between duty and function: many employees and managers stop performing their roles and start playing them.
The interesting part of this phenomenon is that no one formally defines these roles. A manager may appear to be a “listener” but in practice makes decisions only within their comfort zone. An employee may seem “busy,” yet most of their effort is spent maintaining appearances — through reports, meetings, and visible activity.
Both sides play their roles skillfully enough to stay satisfied while blaming each other for the system’s inefficiency.
If a manager declares an “open-door policy,” but everyone who enters that door leaves more closed-off than before, there is no dialogue — only a ritual of confirmation. Likewise, if an employee regulates their daily activity by the rule of “I wasn’t told to,” then the culture of initiative is replaced by the culture of obedience.
What appears to be a system failure is, in fact, a form of functional chaos caused by the uncoordinated behavior of people. Everyone strives to look efficient — not to be efficient. As a result, real achievements are either attributed to someone else or remain unmeasured altogether.
In some organizations, employees’ “well-intentioned initiatives” may initially have a constructive impact, but without systematic support and procedural integration, such efforts often lead to institutional disharmony.
Good intentions turn into unplanned actions that become either unsustainable or isolated from the rest of the system.
When an employee goes beyond their official duties but the system does not recognize this effort, colleagues may respond with silent resistance or resentment. The same happens at the management level: when leaders change daily tasks arbitrarily “to achieve better results,” they unintentionally create uncertainty and the belief that “today’s rule may change tomorrow.”
This keeps organizational learning at the adaptation level, preventing sustainable improvement.
Systemless goodwill — while noble in intent — is destructive in outcome. The issue lies not in personalities, but in behaviors that are not anchored in an institutional framework.
Classical and modern management theories define leadership either as the exercise of formal authority or as the manifestation of leadership behavior. In practice, however, it is common to see people who hold leadership positions but do not lead — they merely appear to be leaders.
In such cases, leadership functions more as a symbolic role than a functional one.
Inside organizations, “looking like a leader” is often accompanied by passive strategies such as seeking opinions before making decisions, distributing responsibility, or letting time decide outcomes. While these strategies may initially create a sense of inclusivity, over time they weaken managerial control and lead to the paradox of “many suggestions, but no decisions.”
For employees, this vacuum creates dual effects: not knowing who is responsible discourages initiative, while the manager’s indecisiveness fosters passivity and dependence on the principle of “the decision is above me.”
When performance indicators are vague or overly general, employees begin to distinguish between actual work and visible work — a phenomenon known in organizational literature as performance simulation.
This typically manifests in three forms:
Turning busyness into a goal: The focus shifts from results to the mere display of activity. Being “very busy” becomes a performance indicator, while real outcomes fade into the background.
Conditional priorities as main criteria: Tasks that are occasionally emphasized but have little real impact (e.g., formatting reports or over-focusing on minor technicalities) take precedence over substantive work.
Inflating secondary functions: Employees with close ties to management exaggerate their contributions, gaining symbolic importance and distorting functional balance within the team.
As a result, evaluation systems become based not on performance but on relationships and visibility, creating organizations that value conformity over initiative.
One of the most overlooked yet long-term destructive forces in organizations is internal emotional exhaustion.
This fatigue is not just physical overload but a psychological state born from repetitive routines, unrealized change, and decisions with no visible results. Often, it manifests quietly: employees stop objecting but also stop engaging. This marks the silent erosion of trust within the organization.
At the management level, fatigue often turns into a strategy of “appearing in control rather than restarting the system.”
Instead of addressing systemic issues directly, new charts, new reports, and new plans are produced — but the structure itself remains unchanged. Form evolves; content stays the same.
At this stage, criticism fades and emotional detachment sets in. Employees treat work merely as an obligation, while managers treat management as a procedural routine. The organization still “functions” — but no longer develops.
A common misconception in organizational analysis is to identify problems with individuals rather than systems. Both managers and employees act within the constraints and opportunities provided by the system. Therefore, criticism must be institutional, not personal.
If employees work only by instruction, managers evaluate only by results, and the system exists only as a set of formal rules — then employment relations become conditional and mechanical, not collaborative.
In such an environment, neither initiative is encouraged nor accountability embraced.
The real need of modern organizations is genuine performance, clear roles, and stable systems.
Achieving this requires one simple but essential first step:
Not to blame someone, but to understand the system.
.png)
