Obstacles

The fraud triangle shows how inflicting emotional or financial pressure on employees can cause them to break the rules.

What makes any level of pressure worse is the failure of management to remove obstacles preventing employees to do their work.

Employees who can’t meet their goals because management is not willing to remove obstacles will choose one of the following paths:

• They will tell management that they cannot meet the goals until the obstacles are removed. This can be career-limiting.
• They will shift their focus from meeting the goals to removing the obstacles – the right way. This is rarely successful because these employees do not have the requisite authority or influence. If they succeed, there is little time left to work on the original goals.
• The will break the rules to go around the obstacles. If they get caught, they will be blamed. If they get away with it, they will be emboldened. If they are not emboldened but rather disgusted with how they had to reach their goals, they will leave the organization and go work where management cares.

A good question for team leaders to ask is: “What obstacles can I remove for you today?”