IF you love your company, your business, your enterprise, you are doing everything you can to make it survive hurdles—all kinds of hurdles.

Well I have a dream. In this dream I see your enterprise doing so much better   as we continue to share ideas; serious ideas, light hearted ideas, all kinds of ideas.  Sex and informal power came to mind for this piece today and I thought I should share the idea with you.

Please allow me to quote from a book I read many years back on Entrepreneurship, written by Kenneth R. Van Voorhis, the portion where he discusses power in an organization. And as you know,  it is power that makes or breaks an  enterprise. I will now quote:

“Tex Hamilton had worked in the small auto[mobile] accessories  plant  longer than anyone could remember—longer than all the managers and supervisors, even longer than the  three secretaries who seemed to have been  there almost since the doors  opened.

“As a result, Tex 'knew all the ropes.'  ...When one of the managers said something  and Tex disagreed, it usually turned out that Tex was  right.

“As a result, people at all levels  and areas in the plant came to Tex for opinion on the tough questions....  Tex repeatedly refused  to accept a promotion  to a formal managerial  position because he said he just preferred being  'one of the guys.'

“Top management  in general valued  Tex's knowledge and influence, but occasionally some really sticky  situations  developed when Tex and  a supervisor were  at odds on  an issue because Tex virtually always won out in terms of what  the employees ultimately  did regardless of management's formal orders.”

Tex has informal power in this organization which, fortunately contributted possitively to this organization. Experts in management  concede  most organizations, large and small will almost always have somebody in there with a lot of informal power.

It is unfortunate, though, that in some cases, you may be running an enterprise where  there is a person in there with lots of  informal power, but which is impacting the organization negatively. From what I have heard, sex is usually a culprit in occasioning destructive informal power.

Taken this: you are running a bar. You have five workers—a male manager and four young ladies. The manager sleeps with one of the girls.  What is likely to happen is that this girl will  end up being the manager of this bar, informally,  and consequences will be painful.  

She won't report on time for her duties, she won't take orders from anybody, and the other girls will  start to  feel they are being overworked. Productivity will definitely drop. Clients will  wait for ages before they can be served.

Informal power does exist in organizations, but it can work against you, especially when it is linked to sex.  It matters not how big or small an  organization is. The moment management starts to indulge in sex with female workers, discipline will definitely suffer. For businesses' well being, therefore, it is advisable that in-house sexual activity be avoided to foster productivity.

There are cases where a qualified person may not be given an appropriate  position in any particular place just because an unqualified female sleeps with a decision maker, and this partner has refused to allow the qualified person to take up the appropriate position for some reason.

If a business manager or business owner is the “too horny” type, how about increasing activity at home after office hours or trying company from other firms. You might be saying sex has nothing to do with business. And I will bet you my very bottom dollar it does.  

Zero grazing in the office is one sure way of circulating the HIV/AIDS virus  in  the office, and that is terrible news for business. Some of the best brains for companies have died in many places as a result of  this “zero grazing”.  

I wont mention names but I do know of certain parastatal organizations which lost many, many good workers because they went to work with two agenda in mind—paper work and sex.