The Snake Pit Doesn’t Need Snakes
Yesterday I went to the cinema to see The Odyssey. In the encounter with Circe, there is a moment that can rather easily be reduced to the modern sentiment that “all men are pigs.”
It made me think of something slightly different.
Perhaps some men do turn into “pigs” precisely when they are particularly concerned with being men among men. Not because men simply are that way, but because there is an idea of how men are supposed to behave around other men. You want to belong, not appear sensitive, get the joke, play along. And sometimes it may be enough simply to assume that the others expect you to behave that way.
I no longer remember exactly how I got from there to the image of a “snake pit.” Probably because that expression has kept coming to mind lately when thinking about organizations.
We all know descriptions like these. On this board, you have to be careful. At that company, you can’t trust everyone. In this political party, people scheme against each other. In that association, you need to know who is currently on speaking terms with whom. “It’s a snake pit.”
Usually, we understand this as a statement about the people who are there. Apparently, this organization happens to contain an unusual number of unpleasant, scheming or power-conscious individuals.
But perhaps that is too simple.
What happens to someone who enters an organization they believe to be a snake pit?
They will be cautious. Someone may even help them by explaining whom they had better not tell everything. They will notice that certain things are discussed on the phone that nobody wants to put in an email. They will learn who has fallen out with whom and who is on whose side. And eventually they will start distinguishing between what they tell one person and what they tell another.
At first, there is nothing particularly reprehensible about this. It may simply be sensible.
If I believe that information could be used against me, I think carefully about whom I give it to. If decisions are not made where they are formally supposed to be made, I try to find out where they are actually made. If I get the impression that others are protecting themselves, I protect myself too.
Except, of course, the others are watching my behavior as well.
They notice that I didn’t tell them something. Perhaps they hear from a third person what I said about them. They discover that a conversation took place without their knowledge.
And suddenly they have another piece of evidence that it is better to be careful around here.
Perhaps the image of the snake pit is wrong. Or at least incomplete.
Perhaps a snake pit doesn’t need any snakes at all.
You Can Always Leave
This becomes particularly visible in places where people don’t have to stay.
Volunteer organizations, for example.
Someone who gives their time, experience and, often enough, their nerves without being paid can eventually reach a fairly obvious conclusion: I don’t need this.
Nothing spectacular even has to happen. A few meetings may be enough. A few conversations about what somebody supposedly said. One conflict in which it gradually becomes unclear what the conflict was originally about. The realization that formal responsibilities and actual power are not necessarily the same thing.
Some people leave.
Others stay. Because the cause matters to them, because they have accepted responsibility, because they don’t want to let people down, or simply because they have a higher tolerance for these conditions.
And, of course, they learn too.
Anyone who spends enough time in an organization learns its real rules. Usually, that is a good thing. It becomes problematic when those rules include the idea that openness is dangerous, mistrust is sensible and tactical behavior is necessary.
Then something happens that organizations can easily overlook: they don’t simply lose volunteers. They begin to select among them.
People who don’t want to play by these rules are more likely to leave. People who have learned how to navigate them are more likely to stay.
That doesn’t mean that only “the bad ones” remain. It is precisely not that simple. Some stay out of an impressive sense of responsibility. Others have learned to endure conflict. Others may simply have been around for so long that things which would unsettle a newcomer have become completely normal to them.
But the composition changes.
And with it, what the organization considers normal changes too.
We Can’t Afford to Lose This Person Too
Eventually, there aren’t enough people.
A board position remains vacant. Nobody wants to take over a particular responsibility. The same few people take on one role after another. And that creates another problem.
The organization can increasingly no longer afford conflict.
If someone is difficult to work with but has performed an important role for years, you think very carefully about whether you really want to confront the issue. If a chairperson is already overloaded, there are good reasons not to put yet another problem on their desk. If someone is struggling with their health, nobody wants to be the person who puts them under additional pressure.
All of this is humanly understandable.
And yet it can produce something profoundly unhealthy.
Precisely because fewer and fewer people are willing to take responsibility, the behavior of those who still do becomes increasingly difficult to challenge. After all, the organization needs them.
So some things are allowed to pass. A problem is not addressed. People try to find some pragmatic workaround. Perhaps they simply wait and hope it will resolve itself.
In the short term, the organization becomes more stable. Nobody resigns today.
But somebody else watches very carefully how conflict is handled there and decides tomorrow not to get involved in the first place.
In this way, a shortage of volunteers can stabilize a culture that produces an even greater shortage of volunteers.
Nobody needs to plan this, and nobody needs to want it to happen.
When Everything Is True
Perhaps this is the part that concerns me most.
Organizations like these don’t even need to lie very much.
Someone stepped down for health reasons. Someone else withdrew because of a difficult family situation. Unfortunately, a board cannot fill all of its positions. Elsewhere, there are different views about responsibilities. Perhaps a communication problem, perhaps a data protection issue.
Every single sentence may be true.
And still, something essential may be missing.
Because every event gets its own explanation. What easily disappears is the question of whether these events might be connected.
Why can we no longer find anyone willing to take on this responsibility?
Why do people who once started with great enthusiasm withdraw?
Why do so many people privately talk about whom they no longer trust?
Why does it repeatedly seem sensible not to address a conflict openly right now?
Perhaps there is a good individual answer every time.
But perhaps there is also a pattern.
Institutions can tell the truth in this way and still prevent their reality from becoming visible. Not necessarily intentionally. Sometimes there is simply no place where somebody puts the individual true stories next to one another.
Refusing to Play Along
What would the alternative be?
We could start looking for the snakes.
Who is scheming here? Who is lying? Who is manipulating? Who is responsible for people leaving?
I have come to think that this is unlikely to get us very far.
If only because it takes us very quickly to exactly the place we wanted to avoid: once again, we talk about people rather than with them. We form camps. We collect evidence. And eventually one group explains to another why they, of all people, are the problem.
Perhaps the more interesting possibility is simply to stop playing along at certain points.
If someone tells me something about a third person, I can ask whether we could discuss it with that person too.
If something said verbally matters for what I am expected to do, I can ask for it to be put in writing.
If a decision is said to have been made, I can ask who made it.
If someone claims I said something, I can state what I actually said.
This is not radical transparency. Not every conversation belongs in public, and confidentiality can be important. People need protected spaces.
Perhaps the difference lies somewhere else: confidentiality then protects a person or a legitimate space. It does not serve to maintain different realities for different people.
That may sound like a small distinction. In a snake pit, it could be a rather significant one.
Because perhaps its most important resource is not malice. It is uncertainty about what actually applies, who knows what, and whom one can trust.
Anyone who refuses to increase that uncertainty has already changed something.
Not necessarily the others.
But at least their own behavior within the system.
Perhaps It Was Never About the Snakes
I’m not sure how such a downward spiral can be reversed.
Probably not through yet another appeal to decency. Most people consider themselves decent anyway, including while doing things that others experience as intrigue.
And it probably doesn’t help much to identify the people who supposedly don’t belong in the organization. The next group can develop exactly the same behaviors if the conditions remain unchanged.
Perhaps change begins in a much less spectacular way.
A few people stop behaving the way they believe one has to behave there.
That doesn’t make them naive. They don’t have to trust everyone. They are allowed to have interests, to be cautious and to engage in conflict.
But they don’t have to become snakes simply because they believe they are sitting in a snake pit.
Perhaps the image of the snake pit is wrong after all.
Or at least incomplete.
Perhaps the pit was never full of snakes.
Perhaps it was mostly full of people who had learned that, in there, it was better to be one.
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