“What does it mean when theft occurs within the organisation?”

Systemic leader Barbara Hoogenboom:

“If, within an organisation, someone steals – time, products, office equipment, money – or in other ways appropriates something that does not belong within the normal exchange of work and pay and compensation, as a leader you actually have two ways to respond to this.

One of those ways concerns itself with the law. So, someone can or should be punished or perhaps dismissed with immediate effect or reprimanded: depending on the seriousness of the offence and what the agreements are concerning this or our norms and values within society.

In addition, you might ask yourself what it is that this theft endeavours to clarify to you or your organisation on another layer? Theft has to do with exchange, where someone takes more than what was agreed. If you look systemically, you might wonder if that is actually really an attempt to get something straight again. So, with that in mind comes the question: where before did a misalignment or imbalance in exchange arise in the past?

What ‘deficit’ or imbalance does that person (subconsciously) put right? This does not necessarily need to be an imbalance in the organisation, it could of course also be that the person themselves feels they have been short-changed or disadvantaged, perhaps even in the personal life of the thief, in another system.

But it can also, and more often than you might think, be related to the organisational system itself. It therefore also pays to look beyond the person who committed the theft. And to look: where is there an outstanding account from within the organisation? And with whom is that? So, if the thief allegedly stole not on behalf of themselves but on behalf of something or someone else, on whose behalf or what is that? Which group of people might have been wronged earlier in history? This could be internal groups of people, but also groups of clients or groups of people don’t even work for the organisation anymore.

When an exchange has gone awry, a theft can be a reprimand on behaviour in the system. You may still have something to do in this as a leader, to acknowledge or rectify in the exchange.”

This question originates from the Systemic Leadership fan-deck . The fan-deck contains 224 questions regarding 45 themes. Each question has the potential to help you take the next step.