A Fortune story about the inner workings of social media service Facebook reportedly claims the business is increasingly dominated by friends of the Chief Operating Officer.
On Sheryl Sandberg and the circle of friends she has brought into the company: “There’s a term spoken quietly around Facebook to describe a cadre of elites who have assumed powerful positions under the leadership of Zuckerberg’s chief operating officer: They’re FOSS, or friends of Sheryl Sandberg.
Most tellingly is the quote, “‘You can’t really cross a FOSS,’ says one former senior manager.”
While this may not be true at Facebook – the reporters are quoting anonymous sources so their story can’t be taken as gospel – when a small, interconnected clique runs an organisation things usually don’t turn out well.
It’s bad enough when it’s a government agency like a police force or a not for profit like a charity, but in big and small business things are usually worse.
The main imperative of clique is to protect its members regardless of the damage they do to their organisation or even the global economy, as we saw in the banking crisis of 2008.
Inside the clique, you often have incompetence, corruption and almost always a strong thread of nepotism. None of this makes for an effective organisation or efficient business.
As investors, employees, suppliers, customers and taxpayers we have to be on guard against these cliques as they rarely act in the interests of those outside their circles.
It may not be the allegations at Facebook are true, but this is happening at other organisations right now. It’s probably happening in your government as well.