PUTTIN' COLOGNE ON THE RICKSHAW

In my February, 2013 blog post titled, “Beam Me Up Scotty,” I talked about leadership lessons that can be gleaned from the Captain Kirk character in the original Star Trek TV series (1966-1969). By all measures Kirk was a model leader, successfully saving the Enterprise and her crew, week after week, from sure annihilation. However, we didn’t really get an in-depth glance at what made Kirk tick until much after the TV series was cancelled. What I’m talking about is a revealing of a key event in Kirk’s leadership development that happens back when he was still a cadet at Starfleet Academy. The event was revealed in the opening scene of the 1982 film, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” It also appears in the 2009 film that was titled simply: “Star Trek.”

In the 1982 film we learn of a test that’s part of Starfleet Academy’s training for all potential starship commanders. The test is called “Kobayashi Maru.” It’s designed to test the character of cadets in a “no-win situation. What’s interesting about the test is that it’s designed not be “won.” All cadets take the test to reveal how they will react to a “no-win” situation, i.e., failure. There’s some solid psychology behind this as how we react to failure is a good indicator of our underlying character.

Star Trek screenwriter Jack B. Sowards is credited with inventing the test, naming it after a friend whose last name was Kobayashi. Since being revealed in the 1982 movie the “Kobayashi Maru” has achieved much popularity among Star Trek fans, and even in the business community. It’s used to describe any no-win scenario, or a problem whose solution involves actually redefining the problem as the only way to win. Captain Kirk was the one and only cadet that actually passed the Kobayashi Maru test and the way he did it provides yet another leadership lesson–or certainly a lesson in how to rise to the top.

The test, “Kobayashi Maru,” is a computer simulation in which the cadet is in control of an imaginary starship like the Enterprise where he/she is tasked with the rescue of a disabled civilian vessel named Kobayashi Maru, located in the Klingon Neutral Zone. For those un-familiar with the series, and the conflict between the Klingons and the United Federation of Planets, being in the neutral zone is a no-no that can prompt an intergalactic war.

The reason the test is no-win is because it’s programmed that way. For the cadet he/she must decide whether to attempt rescue of the Kobayashi Maru crew–thus endangering their own ship and lives–or leave the Kobayashi Maru to certain destruction. In the scenario, the cadet receives a distress signal stating that the Kobayashi Maru has struck a gravitic mine and is rapidly losing power, hull integrity and life support. There are no other vessels nearby. The cadet is faced with a decision:

• Attempt to rescue the Kobayashi Maru ’s crew and passengers, which involves violating the Neutral Zone and potentially provoking the Klingons into hostile action or an all-out war; or
• Abandon the Kobayashi Maru, potentially preventing war but leaving its crew and passengers to die

If the cadet chooses to attempt rescue, the simulation is designed to guarantee that the cadet’s ship is destroyed with the loss of all crew members.

Kirk beats the test by sneaking into the test chambers the night before he’s to take the test and re-programs the test such that he can save the Kobayashi Maru’s crew whilst still escaping destruction of his own starship by the Klingons. In other words Kirk cheated. After the test Kirk is credited with saying, “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” This was his justification for cheating. What’s interesting about the revealing of what most would think is an apparent “flaw” in Kirk’s character, is that Star Fleet actually praises him for his effort because none of the cadets before him had thought of this method of cheating to pass the test.

Cheating is an integral part of all our lives, our culture and is an integral part of the modern business landscape. Of course it takes a different form than the cheating Kirk did, or that we may have done back in school where we might take the liberty of sneaking a peek at the test paper of the student next to us to get the answers. In the business world it’s not that simple. In the business world cheating includes playing office politics, torpedoing peers, lying, bullshitting, taking credit for other’s work, etc. Even using our connections and their influence to help us in our career is technically cheating. And, as I’ve written about many times, the above behaviors are prevalent in today’s workplace more than ever.

So the question becomes: Why Do We Cheat? According to Ben Michaelis of The Huffington Post, we cheat because of society’s fixation on winners. “In America ’tis better to cheat and win than be honest and lose,” Michaelis said in his blog, “Why Do We Cheat.” In other words we are “required” to cheat if we want to be successful. If we all had to rely only on our day-to-day job performance, few of us would rise very far. Thus we learn to cheat at a very early age. Just watch two 5 or 6 year olds attempt to play a board game–they make up the rules as they go along.

Learning to cheat begins in elementary school when we learn to break or bend the rules to win competitive games against classmates or simply to get better grades. By the third grade the “high pressure” starts as more students begin taking standardized tests and most schools also begin giving grades. Children start down the cheating path to keep up or to please their parents or teachers. And the need and propensity to cheat only gets worse as we progress through our academic career. You might even make the case that learning to cheat is a hidden part of the curriculum.

There are many studies on the issue of academic cheating and they confirm that cheating only gets worse as we get older. Statistics show that elementary school students admitted to cheating 24% of the time, middle school students 66% of the time, high school students 75% of the time and college students 82% of the time. As our school career progresses we hone our skills at cheating. Cheating becomes engrained in our character and we take these skills with us into the workplace. In fact we use our cheating skills before we even get that first job. Virtually every one of us has lied a little, or a lot, on our resumes. While this is a serious issue for employers, sometimes it’s the only way of leveling the playing field with the other candidates. In other words, we want so much to win–and get the job–that we’ll take credit for almost anything to get a leg up on the competition. Our LinkedIn profiles are proof of this.

As Michaelis noted, “tis better to cheat and win than be honest and lose.” Thus we learn/need to cheat because of that pressure to succeed, that first started in the 3rd grade. Or is it actually more the fear of failure? Whichever, cheating is reinforced by the fact that as we progress through our career we quickly realize that those who get ahead often times are those known for their unscrupulous behavior. As we climb the corporate ladder both the pressure and need to cheat gets more intense. Given that the top layers of most management teams are filled by the sociopathic element of our society–who will cheat without remorse–it becomes almost “mandatory” that we cheat if we want to rise to the top. In fact I’ll bet that statistic of 82% of college students who cheat quickly reaches 100% of business people who cheat. This completely explains why dysfunction is the norm in most organizations–and explains why it starts at the top.

So really the question becomes “why not cheat?” Everyone else is doing it. When everyone else is doing it it’s no longer an anomaly but it becomes part of the norm of our culture. Thus cheating is accepted and those that cheat the best become celebrated and rewarded for it.

We can justify cheating as just another way to “think outside the box.” We’ve all heard that somewhat useless cliché. We’re told to “think outside the box” all the time, but how exactly does one actually do that? I’ve never come across any useful step-by-step guidance into how to actually think so much differently–until? Maybe the answer is really very simple–that cheating is really only thinking outside the box. So that’s why Kirk was celebrated–he was just “thinking outside the box?” Even in the make-believe of the 2280s people get rewarded and promoted for cheating.

Francis Bacon was a late 16th and early 17th century English statesman, essayist and philosopher. One his most famous and influential books was titled Novum Organum that he published in 1620. The title translates as “The New Instrument” and its purpose was to lay out a whole new way of coming to know about the world–a method that would be based on direct observation, empirical data, and testing, etc., rather than just on our perceptions of the world. Through this work and others, Bacon is generally considered to be one of the early originators of what we now refer to as “the scientific method.”

In Novum Organum he presents what he called the idols, or false images, of the mind. He described these as the human mindsets which obstruct the path of correct scientific reasoning. He did not mean these idols in the sense that they are symbols to be worshipped, but rather that they describe the “fixations” we all have in our minds that we have about things (our reality), and our ways of doing things. To Bacon his four “Idols of the Mind” represent the mindsets that keep us from accurately grasping the obvious. Bacon’s Idols of the Mind are described as:

• Idols of the Tribe: This is the human tendency to perceive more order and regularity in systems than truly exists, and is due to our tendency to follow our preconceived ideas about things. Some of Bacon’s examples are our tendency to trust our senses, which he claimed are inherently dull and easily deceivable. Another Idol of the Tribe is our tendency to discern (or even impose) more order in phenomena than is actually there. This equates to the normalcy bias I talked about in my post “Firm Grasp of the Obvious.”

• Idols of the Cave: This is due to our personal weaknesses in reasoning due to our particular personalities, likes and dislikes. These are our cognitive biases that vary from individual to individual. They reflect the peculiar distortions, prejudices, and beliefs that we are subject to which result from our different backgrounds, childhood experiences, education, training, gender, religion, social class, and workplace experiences. In other words, The Idols of the Cave are the result our lifelong environment has had on us.

• Idols of the Marketplace: This is due to our use of language and in taking some words to have a different meaning than their common usage. The problem has less to do with common speech and more to do with the special vocabularies, and jargons we use in our day-to-day interaction with others. Remind you of something? This explains the buzzword mentality that’s pervasive throughout the business world. In the end this really represents our inability to effectively communicate with each other. It’s why effective communication is one of the hardest habits to establish in most workplaces.

• Idols of the Theatre: This is our propensity to follow certain dogmas and not ask questions about the world. The Idols of the Theatre explain the fact that all organizations develop mesmerizing structures of rules and regulations–I touched on this last week in my post, “TEGWAR.”

Bacon asserts that all these “idols” together form our world view and become the lens through which we perceive and interpret everything in our world. Bacon claims that we all do this–we all interpret the world through the lens of our own narrow world view. And to reinforce this we all tend to believe other people are doing this more than we’re doing it ourselves. Bacon’s point in all this is that we should become aware of how these world views shape and distort our perceptions of the world so that we might be able to correct for them. The Idols are the reason Bacon prescribed a method of analyzing realty based on direct experience, empirical data, and testing, i.e., The Scientific Method.

In this post I’d like to focus on Bacon’s “Idols of the Theatre” as it falls in line with last week’s post (TEGWAR) which touched on the effect that the organization has on our individual behaviors. Why did Bacon refer to organizations as “theatre?” Bacon would defend his use of the term “theatre” by defining typical organizations as “false superstructures raised on false foundations, and in the end systems barren of merit parading their grandeur on the stage of the world.” That sounds like many a workplace I’ve been involved with–how about you?

Eric Kessler, in his 2001 article, “The Idols of Organizational Theory: From Francis Bacon to the Dilbert Principle,” which is published in the Journal of Management Inquiry, makes the case that Bacon’s “Idols of the Theatre,” actually represent sources of idiocy that exist in modern organizations. They are the dysfunctional consequences of the bureaucratic theatre that is organizational life. Examples might be, excess reliance on an oppressive system of rules and procedures, allowing sub-goal performance, getting mired down with conflicting interests (e.g., truly understanding core-competency), and of course self-centered behaviors which lead to organizational tension, i.e. the free for all political atmosphere present in all modern-day organizations.

According to Kessler, it’s the formal structures of organizations that reflect the “myths of their institutional environment rather than the demands of their technologies and core activities.” In other words organizations structure themselves not in a manner that supports their products and customers but which supports their egos and self-centered needs for power. Sound familiar?

Kessler also includes misguided reward systems, i.e., the perverseness of many performance appraisal systems that actually “lead people to poor performance,” as a contributor to the “theatre atmosphere” prevalent in most organizations. He also touched on what he called “the larger theatre,” or the inter-organizational institution environment. His claim is that the theatre atmosphere is because of extreme isomorphism–a process that “forces one unit to resemble others through coercive, mimetic, or normative pressures.”

At the micro-level this explains the Fiefdom Syndrome in which all departments in an organization will mimic each other and behave in a manner that forces everyone in the organization to behave in kind. At the macro-level it explains why the latest management leadership fads gain a foothold and spread from one organization to the other. It also explains why the same basic elements of dysfunction can be found from one organization to another–i.e., they all mimic each other.

Kessler makes the case that much of the dysfunctional idiocy represented in Scott Adams’s Dilbert comic strip is real–something anyone who works in a dysfunctional workplace knows. Kessler’s point is that this dysfunctionality arises from the idiocy that’s the result of our dependence on Bacon’s Idols of the Mind.

The takeaway from Kessler’s article and Bacon’s Novum Organum is that the typical logic, or modus operandi, that permeates all organizations is, as I’ve explained in many past posts, the selfish seeking of what’s best for each individual, versus what is best for the company as a whole. To break free of dysfunction an organization needs to embrace The Idols of the Mind as real and manage accordingly. Breaking free of the Idols will stymy the Dilbertesque idiocy that begets dysfunction.

If your workplace is caught up in dysfunctional idiocy, there’s some consolation in knowing that Bacon has verified that organizations in the 1600s apparently weren’t much different than today’s organizations. And therein lies the real problem–we have never learned from the past and are thus always doomed to repeat it. As Kessler would tell us it’s the isomorphism of organizations–the macro environment–that reinforces the Idols. And that sadly will never change unless we each take action. For each of us maybe it’s time we start thinking about the micro environment and fixing what’s inside the box, i.e., eliminating our own personal Idols of the Mind.

In the 1970s movie, Bang the Drum Slowly, two of the main characters–a star pitcher and a team coach–engage in a small-scale swindle in the lobbies of the hotels the baseball team stays in during road trips. The pitcher and coach sit in a conspicuous spot in the lobby and begin a heated card game. Pretty soon a few observers gather to watch the game. Eventually, a curious observer, thoroughly confused by watching a game that he has never seen played before, asks the pitcher and coach what they are playing. “TEGWAR,” they respond. After a few more minutes, the onlooker asks if he can play and is invited to sit in. The newcomer wins a few hands, but still has no clue what he is doing. The hands get faster and faster, the cards fly, and eventually the newcomer gets on a losing streak—still completely befuddled by the game and what exactly is happening. When another teammate asks about the game and asks what TEGWAR stands for, he is told it means, “That Exciting Game without Any Rules.”

TEGWAR is a lot like the average workplace. Why? Because despite the fact that most all organizations have numerous rules there still can remain a game-like atmosphere surrounding how employees interact with each other. And when it comes to employee interaction there are really few, if any, rules. Many workplaces can be “dog-eat-dog.” That’s not to say that employers don’t try to establish rules governing employee interaction. Most often employers set rules to try to maintain a supposed professional atmosphere. They usually do this through their “values” statement which typically has the following goals:

• To set expectations for behavior and conduct
• To promote consistent and equitable treatment of employees
• To commit to the safety, health and well-being of workers
• To proclaim that they respect human rights
• To promote harmony and reduce conflict

Usually all the above are captured in a list of the latest buzzword statements like “we support work-life balance” and “we have respect for each other,” etc. But, as I’ve written many times before, these words are usually just wishful thinking on the part of management.

Most employers also implement a wide range of rules and procedures that they feel are necessary to maintain the good order and operations of the workplace. The rules required can vary greatly from one organization to the next based upon the unique challenges and circumstances of each. Certainly eliminating harassment and promoting ethical business practices rise to the top of the necessary rules list. However, despite that the rules seldom limit the most common kind of harassment and unethical behavior–a micromanaging, workaholic boss. When you consider these kinds of rules it becomes clear why organizations have them–to protect themselves from liability when one of their employees sexually harasses someone or when an employee is caught in unethical doings. After all, employers are more and more being held legally responsible for the conduct of employees in their workplace.

Thus rules are necessary to ensure order right? However, the fact is having rules, no matter how in-depth and detailed, do not guarantee that they’ll be followed or that even management follows them. The reality is that, despite all the rules, the way employees interact with each other can be little better than a free for all. From my own experience I’ve witnessed workplaces where all the typical rules were in place yet the true atmosphere of the organization–the culture–was one of “every man for himself.” So you have to ask yourself what’s the value in having rules when they are so often ignored–or certainly not enforced? Sadly the answer to that is the fact that even the highest on the corporate ladder partake in the games. If management ignores the rules so does everyone else in the organization.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say. I wholeheartedly believe in the necessity of having a structure of rules in the workplace governing employee behavior. Even in the most dysfunctional organization there usually is a certain level of adherence to the rules. That said this post isn’t about the kind of rules we’ve talked about above. This post is about the games that people play that have no rules and that no rules can control. They can’t be controlled because even management or human resources won’t typically admit that these games actually happen in “their workplace.” Heck, management and HR most likely play the games themselves. What I’m talking about are the typical “mind games” that permeate every organization.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of mind games, and we’ve all experienced people who like to “test” us, put us through a psychological ringer, and throw us under the bus in a heartbeat. These people are our colleagues and peers, and yes, even our bosses. These are the exact group of people who should be treating each other with respect. If everyone in the workplace respected each other the need for more teamwork wouldn’t have to be constantly preached by management and it wouldn’t have to be reiterated in the values statement.

There are various reasons why our colleagues and peers will engage in mind games with us. Most often it’s to jockey for position on the corporate ladder–to gain a higher level on the ever-narrowing pyramid. Since there are fewer and fewer positions as you rise up the ladder the competition for those positions can become intense. And sadly, as most of us can attest, just doing a good job doesn’t guarantee success. You need either connections or you need some leg-up on the competition. In fact most often your success is directly related to your relationship with your boss and management as a whole. This is why sycophancy–brownnosing–is such a popular workplace sport. Of course even that can’t guarantee success. As I’ve explained many times before even the most loyal sycophant will ultimately fall from grace in the eyes of the sociopath he or she has latched onto.

Thus the real games people play are geared more toward the torpedoing of fellow employees–throwing them under the bus so to speak. There’s an old saying: if you want to biggest house in the neighborhood you can get it in one of two ways. You can work hard to build it or you can tear everyone else’s house down. Thus most games in the workplace are geared toward tearing other people’s houses down. All the games that people play against each other can be summed up in one term that everyone has heard of before: office politics. For most people in the workplace office politics is in fact “that exciting game without any rules.”

In his article “Definition of Politics: The Ugly Game of Power,” G. B Singh brilliantly noted that office politics really means nothing more than “the game of power that the mighty play to hold their domination over the weak.” It includes the pursuit of individual agendas and self-interest without regard to their effect on the organization’s ability to achieve its goals or maintain even its fundamental well-being. That is why University of Pennsylvania Organizational Dynamics Professor John Eldred’s definition is spot on; “[office] politics is simply how power gets worked out on a practical, day-to-day basis.”

The sad fact that you should never forget is that no workplace is immune to struggles for power. Office politics is at the core of all organizations. Office politics is synonymous with hypocrisy, secrecy, deal making, rumors, power brokers, self-interest, image building, self-promotion and cliques. Office politics are how things get done at the expense of others which explain why most organizations operate under a Machiavellian work ethic. Since office politics is by definition a negative activity, it offers little positive good toward the success of an organization.

The reasons for engaging in office politics are as varied as the people perpetrating the individual acts. However, they can be classified under one of several prevalent, negative variables: (a) limited resources and opportunity for advancement, (b) employees’ emotional insecurity, (c) over competitiveness, (d) a win-loss organizational attitude, (f) the need for personal acceptance, and (g) the most common motivator–self interest

So if your workplace is rife with office politics there’s really only one response–you need to join in and fight fire with fire. For as Plato is credited with saying: “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” Of course he was talking about politics in the elected-office sense however; his wisdom also applies to the workplace.

Jeff Bezos once gave the advice, “Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.” He may have offered this quip jokingly or in all seriousness–I don’t know the exact context of the remark–however we all know that in joking there’s usually a lot of truth. The fact is this is probably the most truthful advice one can get. It means being observant to what’s going on around you, but the fact is I’m not sure that most people actually do have a firm grasp of the obvious. For most of us, the more subtle nuances (the details) of our observations (our reality) are far beyond our capabilities to completely capture, let alone remember.

Bezos is not the only person use this phrase–I’ve heard it used throughout my career. I’ve used it before to humorously point out to someone that whatever they’ve observed really is only just the obvious. This is the most common way you’ll hear the phrase, i.e., sarcastically. I’ve also used it in a self-deprecative manner–especially when I’ve missed something right in front of my face. Fact is we all do that–miss things right in front of our face. It explains why “eye-witness” testimony can’t always be trusted.

You’d think that grasping the obvious would be intuitive, almost instinctual, but I’d venture to guess that since having a firm grasp of the obvious is not very prevalent in our personal everyday lives then it’s certainly not prevalent in the business environment. I know we all think that when at work we’re different animals–somehow more observant and in control but the fact is we’re not very observant at all.

Truly having a firm grasp of the obvious at all times would be a very important trait to have if we want to be a success in our career. To be able to recognize what others miss would be a great leg-up. We think we do but we really don’t. That’s unfortunate because most business problems find their solutions in the obvious not some off the wall, “outside the box” (one of my favorite worthless buzz-phrases) solution. I’ve made the case many times before that “thinking inside the box” i.e., paying attention to what’s right in front of you and obvious is a better day-to-day strategy than the pie-in-the-sky, meaningless, advice “think outside the box.”

We’ve all seen those tests where people are shown something (a picture for example) and then later asked to describe what they saw. Of course most people will offer a description different from what’s in the picture. This is called The Rashomon Effect.

Rashomon is a 1950 Japanese crime mystery film that exemplifies the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection. It’s a treatise on having a firm grasp of the obvious. The movie unfolds in flashback shortly after a crime is committed on a couple in which the husband, a Japanese nobleman, is murdered and his wife is raped. There are four individuals−the perpetrator, the wife, the murdered husband, and a nameless observer−that witness the horrific crime. Each then recounts the crime with absolute honesty; however, in mutually contradictory ways. The viewer is left wondering which of the four witnesses is telling the truth.

If we really acknowledge how important it is to have a firm grasp of the obvious companies would be testing candidate employees on their ability to notice the obvious. Thus having a firm grasp of the obvious should be a job requirement and thus part of the interview and vetting process for new employees. Unfortunately it’s not. Instead most companies are worried whether a candidate is “creative” or “proactive” or that they’re “a team player.” I’d be willing to bet that if you saw the requirement, “Must have a firm grasp of the obvious” in a job description you’d probably think that whoever wrote it was being a smart-ass.

Since I mentioned it, “proactive” is my all-time favorite of all the buzzwords that are flung around the workplace these days. It implies that to be a proactive person is to be some superhero that can see problems, and thus be able to solve them, before they actually become problems. Fact is I don’t know how you can be proactive if you can’t see the obvious right in front of you. Having a firm grasp of the obvious is partly about being able to recognize things that “have changed” and being proactive is about identifying things that “need to be changed.” So if you’re not very good at recognizing what’s already changed it seems tough to me that you can “proactively” identify what needs to be changed.

Of all the talents and skills that are needed to be a success in our careers what most, if not all, of us need the most is, “a firm grasp of the obvious.”

So what exactly makes us many times miss what’s obvious in front of us yet, much to our embarrassment, is clearly seen by others? The answer is that we all primarily live in our preconceived notion of reality and go through our day oblivious to what’s really going on around us–certainly the “details” of what’s going on around us. We have certain expectations of how things should be and when they’re not we sometimes miss identifying them completely.

Part of the reason for this can be found in what’s called the “normalcy bias.” This bias refers to the mental state people enter when facing any disruption in their notion of reality–or how they think things should be. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of deviations occurring and certainly their possible effects. The result is that people fail to adequately prepare for the possibility of any disruptions in their daily routine. This explains why your boss is probably afraid of surprises.

This bias also helps explain why sociopathic bosses tend to be micromanagers–they are so terrified that something bad will happen (that’ll upset their apple cart) that even when you are assigned a task, and are fully capable to perform it successfully on your own, the boss will feel the need to oversee and critique everything you do and thus make your life miserable.

Of course, the opposite of the normalcy bias would be overreaction, or “worst-case thinking bias,” in which small deviations from normality are dealt with as signaling an impending catastrophe. This explains why your boss may be a pyromaniac–running around lighting fires thus keeping everyone in a constant state of crisis. Pyromaniacs see everything as a problem needing to be somehow solved.

Our inability to see the obvious is also caused in part by the way our brains process new observations. Research suggests that even when the brain is calm it takes 8–10 seconds to process new information. With the fast pace of the modern workplace no wonder we miss things–by the time our brain can process and acknowledge the obvious we’ve already had to move on to something else–some problem or task we need to perform. This is why multitasking is truly a myth. When our brain cannot find an acceptable response to a situation, it fixates on a default solution–what we expect reality to be–which may or may not be correct.

Research also suggests that stress slows the brain process even further. Show me any modern workplace where stress isn’t a part of everyone’s daily routine. The more dysfunctional an organization, the more stress its inhabitants have to cope with, thus slowing their brains down even more. No wonder we all struggle to have a firm grasp of the obvious.

Assuming we admit to it, overcoming our normalcy bias is something most of us would have to work hard to eliminate. That’s because it takes time and practice to train ourselves to be more observant. My advice: Just realize that to be better in your job you really need to concentrate more on your immediate reality, i.e., the obvious. Being highly observant takes practice yet it’s something few of us consciously try to proactively practice on a daily basis.

They’ve been called boot lickers, ass kissers, brown nosers, apple polishers, and suck ups. All these terms are synonymous with one another. Whatever you call them, they’re probably some of the most irritating and potentially destructive people in your organization. Is your workplace overrun with them? They do have an uncanny habit of showing up anywhere and at all levels of an organization. Ever wonder what makes them tick?

We’ve all had exposure to this type behavior starting at an early point in our lives. We’ve all heard the term “teacher’s pet” probably as far back as grade school. No wonder ass kissing is common in today’s work environment–our earliest school environment has taught us right from the start that there’s a potential benefit from brownnosing.

The definition of brownnose is “to try to get the approval of an important or powerful person by praise or flattery.” The term is derived “from the implication that servility is tantamount to having one’s nose in the anus of the person from whom advancement is sought.” Thus, the brownnoser is the person who says flattering things about another, with the intent of receiving something favorable in return. In technical terms people who behave this way are called “sycophants.”

Just like all the slang terms, a sycophant is defined as a person who acts obsequiously toward someone important in order to gain advantage, or a servile self-seeking flatterer. The term sycophant has its roots in the legal system of ancient Greece. Way back 2,500 years ago the term originated to describe people who abuse the legal system with frivolous claims. Such a litigant was called a “sycophant.” The word retains the meaning of “an informer” in Modern Greek; but in modern English, the meaning of the word has shifted to that of an “insincere flatterer.”

There’s a popular misconception that ass kisses are doing it to hide their laziness. Yes, lazy coworkers are annoying, but generally they are harmless. They’re harmless from the perspective that they won’t usually do things to torpedo your career, as will many of the myriad sociopathic personalities you’ll run across in the average workplace. I would make the case that fact ass kissing is a tough job and takes a lot of energy and concentration, least it be done at an inopportune time and do more damage than good. Ass kissing is a very strategic undertaking that requires tactical planning as well as a little luck in that the target of the ass kissing (the actual ass–pun intended) is receptive. Sociopaths are the perfect personality on which to target an aggressive ass kissing regimen. Their narcissistic tendencies make them receptive to all praise regardless of how blatant or foolish it might appear to a casual observer.

Most of us look down upon ass kissers or brownnosers, but we need to remember there are actually two kinds of ass kisser. Those who do it to survive and those who do it aggressively expecting some benefit in return, be it promotion or a pay raise. For those who have been reduced to having to do it to survive, they’re undoubtedly working for a sociopath. They brownnose their narcissistic boss with the sole intent of attempting to divert the bosses focus to others in the organization. When you work for a sociopath your odds of falling from grace is very high–it’s not a matter of if, but of when–so you naturally begin to believe you can stay the executioner by sucking up. These are the folks that should be pitied, not scorned, because they are living a miserable existence. To have to ass kiss to stay employed is not a fun place to be from a career development perspective–let alone a happiness perspective. I’ve been there, I know.

Many may think that ass kissers do it because they lack social skills. In fact the opposite is really the case–they are quite adept socially. They are also shrewd in that they are smart enough to see the hand writing on the wall and realize that hard work alone is not going to elevate their careers like well-placed ass kissing will do. In other words they possess an amazing grasp for the obvious.

From a psychological stand point, Daniel D. Martin and Janelle L. Wilson tell us in their 2012 article, “Apple-Polishers, Ass-Kissers and Suck-Ups: Towards a Sociology of Ingratiation” that ass kissing is a form of “ingratiation.” They define this as “a set of assertive tactics which have the purpose of gaining the approbation of the audience that controls significant rewards for the actor” It’s interesting that they use the term “tactics” to help describe this behavior. As I mentioned above ass kissing requires a tactical plan if the ass kisser wishes to achieve his/her objective. Ingratiation is a psychological technique in which an individual attempts to become more attractive or likeable to their target. This term was coined by social psychologist Edward E. Jones.

In their 1984 article, “Impression Management and Influence in the Organization,” researchers J. T. Tedeschi and V. Melburg identified four basic ingratiation strategies. They include: (a) the use of statements in front of the boss that are self-enhancing; (b) complimenting or flattering one’s supervisor; (c) making statements indicating similarity in belief or attitude with one’s manager; and (d) doing favors for the boss.

Notice they all are based on the perspective of someone kissing up to someone higher up the organization. While some forms of ingratiation such as joking or bullshitting can be done across status lines (laterally across the organization chart) true ass kissing only flows “up” the organizational structure–never down.

Further, Tedeschi and Melburg tell us, “As an organizational resource, ingratiation is used as a strategy by lower-organizational participants to either enlist the support of those in power or to appease them [i.e., do it to survive]. Research on organizational culture has observed the ways in which this culture exists as an elaborate system of control, rife with micro-politics, claims for allegiance, and moral mazes. More than an individual worker’s idiosyncrasy, this suggests that patterns of ingratiation found in the workplace reflect its structural arrangements.” In other words the practice becomes deeply entrenched in the organization’s culture and becomes a common behavior. In this way ass kissing becomes yet another component of organizational dysfunction.

In his 2012 book, The Self Illusion, Bruce Hood calls the proliferation of ingratiating, sycophantic, ass kissing behavior the “chameleon effect.” He looks at the sycophant phenomenon from the perspective that people undertake ass kissing because they “change their behavior to match others around them.” That’s where the term “monkey see, monkey do” came from. Hood notes that we only mimic those we like and in turn they mimic us in what he called a “synchronized sycophantic symphony of mutual appreciation.” The chameleon effect explains mob mentality, where the power of the group or peer pressure shapes our behavior, and our desire to be accepted.

The chameleon effect is intriguing because if a person does good deeds then they inspire others to do good deeds but, if an organization is founded on patronizing sycophancy then dysfunction will rule. In other words functional (based on do-gooders), or dysfunctional (based on having to kiss ass), organizational behavior can and will spread geometrically due to the chameleon effect.

Do you find yourself caught up in that synchronized sycophantic symphony of mutual appreciation? It may do you well to do some soul searching before you frown on those around you that are ass kissing. The fact is you’re probably doing it yourself all the while thinking that it’s somehow different when you do it and thus acceptable–you’re probably thinking that you’re actually better at it than your peers. If you must be a chameleon take the high road and mimic those that refrain from kissing ass. If you’re in the type of organization where you need to do it to survive then you’re really in the wrong organization. Find a new job if for no other reason than your self-esteem.

We’ve all heard this metaphor before–most likely at work. I remember at one time actually having a sign on my office wall that had a target and the inscription “bang head here.” You feel that you’re banging your head against a wall when things are driving you so insane that you just feel like, well, literally banging your head against the wall. That’s because in some perverse way that seems to makes more sense than dealing with whatever is driving you nuts. I know I’ve felt that way on occasion–more times than I care to remember. We all joke about it but in joking about something there’s always a sliver of the truth. We use this phrase to somehow metaphorically communicate our true feelings that we’re frustrated with something or, someone and we really would like to strangle them. Unfortunately we can’t go around the workplace saying we want to strangle someone regardless of how much they may deserve it–human resources doesn’t particularly like that. So we use the colloquialism “banging our head against a wall” instead.

So what happens in our daily work life that causes our frustration level to rise to the point of wanting to do bodily harm to ourselves? I can think of a few right off the top of my head as they are the kinds of challenges that always drove me nuts. They are:

• Poor communication throughout the organization (up, down or sideways)
• Fiefdom syndrome firmly entrenched in the organization
• Sociopathic, narcissistic management
• Ass-hole, bully bosses
• Poor strategy or poor tactical planning by management (the organization really doesn’t know where it’s going)
• Non-stop work conflicts
• Constant change

The first five are indicative of a poorly managed (I’m hesitant to use the word “lead” here) organization. They are all the earmarks of a dysfunctional organization and the simple solution to this is to find another job, however painful that prospect may be. Ironically job hunting is another process that leads one to want to bang their head against the wall.

Unlike the first five, the next item: “conflict,” on the other hand, is the real culprit in making us feel like banging our heads against the wall. That’s because dealing with conflict (the stress that results from it) can actually give us a headache–just as you’d get from literally banging your head against the wall. Workplace conflict is probably the biggest factor in our unhappiness at work and can be debilitating especially when it’s non-stop.

There are two basic types of workplace conflict–task or work-based conflict and relationship or emotional–based conflict. Both exist in the workplace and we’ve all faced both kinds of conflict. I’m going to make a bold statement here in that, for the most part, task–based conflict isn’t the kind of conflict that has a lasting impression on our ability to cope with our job. Occasionally we may get frustrated over a task–especially if you have a boss that’s given the same task to two people in his perverse interest to create competition. Note that in that case it actually becomes the second type conflict that I’ll talk about in minute. My point is that task–based conflicts can usually be solved without too much emotional frustration–the kind that makes you want to bang your head against the wall, or more appropriately bang someone else’s head against a wall.

Examples of task–based conflict might be where employees disagree about work-related task issues; including goals, key decision areas, procedures, and the appropriate choices of action they should be taking. While these may include conflicts between people they fall short of actually becoming the second type conflict; “emotional–based conflict.” Emotional–based conflict is conflict that results from how people relate to each other–how they get along with others–their behavior. Emotional–based conflict is much more complex because you’ve now entered into the realm of the psychology of how people behave. It becomes much more frustrating because there’s never a clear answer when two people can’t get along.

Emotional–based conflict is evidenced when employees have interpersonal clashes characterized by anger, frustration and other negative feelings (like wanting to strangle each other). It’s most often spawned by all the games people in the workplace play against each other to gain personal advantages. In the end however, each type of conflict affects our job performance and our feeling that we’re only banging our head against a wall.

The last factor on the above list: change can also be another cause of workplace frustration, especially if we don’t like the change or it’s a change taking the organization in the wrong direction. Statistically about a third of us are innately adverse to change, or changing, in any form–we tend to love the status quo. Of course the frustration level that comes from an organization undergoing change depends on whether it’s elected or forced.

Just like with conflict there are two basic types of workplace change: routine versus non-routine. Routine change can happen because of any number of events that frequently happen in an organization. For example change can be forced due to structural change of the organization (the need to “reorganize” that I talked about a few weeks ago), cost cutting efforts (which in most organizations is an on-going perpetual process), and business process changes (which are usually closely associated with cost cutting changes). An example of non-routine change might be an organization undergoing cultural change. We all know that changing an organization’s culture is an extremely difficult and frustrating thing to accomplish. That’s because everyone in the organization is affected. Also attempting a culture change exacerbates all the bad behaviors present in any organization and brings conflict right to the forefront.

Unfortunately, in most organizations (every one I’ve ever been in) conflict and change are on-going and daily events. The key to keeping our sanity and not literally banging our heads against a wall is to pause and understand exactly what’s causing our frustration–conflict or change. Change is something that will always be there and embracing it is the only way to effectively cope. Conflict however, is something that you can elect not to participate in–i.e., you do have control over whether you engage or not.

The bottom line is that during your career you will have to deal with both conflict and change constantly. Some of it will be minor but a good majority will be the kind that makes you want to bang your head against a wall.

A Woozle is an imaginary character in the 1926 A. A. Milne book, Winnie-the-Pooh. In chapter three, “In Which Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a Woozle,”
Piglet spots Pooh walking around in a circle in the woods. Piglet asks Pooh what he is doing, and Pooh says that he is hunting and tracking something, although he doesn’t know quite what he is hunting and tracking. He says he’ll have to wait until he finds the something to find out what it is.

Piglet joins him and becomes excited because he thinks that it could be tracks from a Woozle. Woozles are deceitful, weasel-like animals that live in the Hundred Acre Wood. Pooh says that it might be a Woozle, or it might not, and Piglet joins in with the tracking to see if they can find out for sure. And after a little while Pooh stops walking, and says that it’s very funny, but there are now two sets of paw-prints, which mean there might be two Woozles.

They meet up with Christopher Robin who asks Pooh what he was doing, as has watched Pooh walk round the trees first by himself, and then with Piglet. Christopher Robin then points out to them that they have been following their own tracks in circles around a tree. Pooh sits down and thinks about this for a little while, and then he tries putting his paw into one of the tracks which makes him realize that he and Piglet have been following their own tracks around the tree, and there were never any Woozles.

In this story Piglet and Pooh are the victims of what’s called “The Woozle Effect.”

The Woozle Effect, also known as “evidence by citation”, is a term coined in 1979 by criminologist Beverley Houghton to describe the process whereby urban legends become established fact. According to Houghton, evidence by citation occurs when frequent citation of beliefs that lack evidence misleads individuals, groups and the public into thinking or believing there is, in fact, evidence. This is just like how Pooh and Piglet believed there was a real animal called a Woozle.

In 1998, Richard J. Gelles and Murray A. Straus introduced the term into the social science arena to describe a pattern of bias which is identified as leading to multiple errors in perception. In social science vernacular, The Woozle Effect is a type of cognitive bias. A cognitive bias is the scientific term defining human behavior in relation to habitual ways of thinking. Very broadly speaking, when you have an opinion, you tend to only notice information that confirms that opinion, and ignore information that contradicts it. Completely explains why Democrats and Republicans can’t seem to agree on anything. There are many different types of cognitive biases which affect the way we make decisions and behave, affect our habits and thought patterns, and thus affect our social behavior. The Woozle Effect explains why organizations can suffer groupthink and succumb to management fads. I’ve talked about the proliferation and blind allegiance to management fads in previous posts.

The Woozle Effect also accounts for how many organizations problem solve (or more appropriately place blame). To management woozles are the cause of every problem. When chasing down their imaginary woozles, most management teams will keep looking in the same place, over and over, and keep seeing the same foot prints they’ve seen in the past. They then rationalize that these are the footprints of the woozle (people, or a person), who caused the problem and thus blame them. Fact is most often management doesn’t recognize the footprints as being their own–just as Pooh and Piglet didn’t recognize their own footprints. And the footprints being their own reflects the fact that most often its management, themselves, that cause the problems. You see it’s not often that management will put their own paw into one of the tracks they’ve created and realize that they have been following their own tracks around the tree, and there were never really any Woozles. The Woozle Effect is why many workplace problems keep reoccurring and never ever really get solved.

So how do you know if your organization falls prey to The Woozle Effect? Do you ever hear management, or anyone in the organization, make comments like, “Everyone knows that,” or “It is clear that,” or “It is obvious that.” These kind of unchallenged statements encourage the woozle effect; if we hear something enough times we assume that it is true. This is when alarm bells should sound because what follows is probably a Woozle.

When do you know that a Woozle has happened? A Woozle has occurred when suddenly language turns from qualified (“it may,” “it might,” or “it could”) to a statement of fact like “it is.” Think about the day-to-day conversations you hear in your own workplace and see if you can identify The Woozle Effect in action. I’ll bet its happening more often than you ever thought possible.

The saying “One for all and all for one” is associated with the heroes of the novel, The Three Musketeers, written by Alexandre Dumas in 1844. In the novel, it was the motto of a group of French musketeers named Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d’Artagnan who stayed loyal to each other through thick and thin. The philosophy is that each individual should act for the benefit of the group, and the group should act for the benefit of each individual.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about the frequent business practice of reorganizing to get out of trouble. As I noted in the post if you look at “all” the different organizational methods out there in the business world you can find examples of each that both work and don’t work. While organizational structures can be unique to different companies, there are several distinct and commonly used types of organizational structures.

The most common is the “functional” organizational structure. It provides segmentation of departments according to their specific function, or purpose, within the organization. In bigger corporations it can also mean decentralized divisions, each of which would have their own structure. One downside to this structure in large corporations is the fact that the divisions may have functions that are redundant to other divisions. An example might be Human Resources, or IT or Purchasing. That’s why many large corporations create these type functions at the corporate level which then provides their services to the individual divisions. Although all organizational structures can suffer this, the functional organization can easily fall prey to the fiefdom syndrome. This is a major downside as this syndrome, more than any other, contributes to dysfunction.

On the other side of the coin we have what’s called a “matrix” structure. It’s supposed to create the best of all possible worlds, so to speak, and take the functional structure one step further. In a nutshell, the matrix structure creates teams for organizational projects that need to be completed and, in creating teams, draws together the most qualified employees for the project from various areas of the organization. In contrast to the functional structure, the matrix structure focuses more on projects and as such utilizes “program, or project, managers” who oversee a diverse group of individuals from different parts of a company.

Whether functional or matrix, flat or deep, all have the same goal–making the particular project, or overall organization successful. While functional or matrix are the most commonly seen organizational structures, there’s another hybrid that’s starting to get traction in the business world. It’s called a “Holarchy.”

The term “Holarchy” was coined by Arthur Koestler in his 1967 book, The Ghost in the Machine. It is derived from the Greek “holos,” meaning whole and “on” meaning entity. Koestler referred to a special type of hierarchical organization made of individual “holons.” Holons are parts of a bigger system and individual “wholes” at the same time–sort of like the Three Musketeers–one for all and all for one. Observed from “lower” levels a Holon will look like a whole, while observed from “higher” levels it will look like a part.

Most functional or matrix organizations are organized by management for the benefit of management. However, unlike the standard functional or matrix hierarchy, holarchies are created through a “bottoms-up” process. Here, interactions between holons at a “low” level define the next “higher” level. This proceeds all the way up to the top of the organization. An example would be how atoms develop chemical bonds with one another to create molecules. Koestler also says holons are autonomous, self-reliant units that possess a degree of independence and handle day-to-day functions, as well as challenges, without having to ask higher authorities for instructions. That said they are still subject to control from one or more of these higher authorities.

As you can probably surmise, developing a holarchial organization would take a new breed of management. Instead of imposing roles and rules from above, the Holarctic organization suggests that organizations be allowed to “build” themselves from the bottom upwards. In this way a Holarchy is self-organizing. To do this management must empower the employees and give them increased responsibility and authority to allow them to define the ongoing formation of the organization through their constant feedback interactions with one another.

How does a holarchy work? Each circle (Holon) connects to each of its sub-circles via a double-link where a member of each circle is appointed to be part of the other circle. This creates a bidirectional flow of information and rapid feedback loops. Each circle is a self-organizing team governing itself by establishing the roles needed to reach the aim of the circle. More importantly, each circle has the authority to define and assign its own internal roles and accountabilities. Each circle has a functional scope it focuses on–some circles are focused on implementing specific projects, others on managing a department, and others on overall business operations. Whatever the circle’s level of scale, the same basic rules apply. Each circle is a Holon–a whole self-organizing entity in its own right, and a part of a larger circle; for example, a whole project team circle may also be a part of a department circle.

According to Koestler, a Holarchial structure is one where there is a connection between Holons–where a Holon is both a part and a whole, i.e., “one for all, all for one.” In strict functional, or even matrix structures, we have more of what could be termed “one for one,” or every man for himself.

For most people, and especially for management types, the scary part is that a Holarchy is a radical “self-governing” operating system where there are no job titles and no managers. Instead of a top-down hierarchy, there’s a flatter “holarchy” that distributes power more evenly. An organization is made up of different circles and employees can have any number of roles within those circles. This way, there’s no hiding behind job titles–no more “that’s not my job.” In many ways this is exactly how newly-formed start-up companies operate.

One of the core principles of a holarchy is that people take personal accountability for their work. Contrary to what you may think, it’s not leaderless–there are people who hold a bigger scope of purpose for the organization. What it does do however, is distribute leadership into each individual role. Everybody is expected to lead and be an entrepreneur in their own roles, and holacracy empowers them to do so.

A down side of a holacracy is that as individual position titles disappear, human dynamics don’t, i.e., there’s just as much potential for individual agendas to emerge and derail the best laid plans for a holocratic organization. In this way, holarchies can be just as dysfunctional as any other organizational structure–especially if an organization that’s already dysfunctional is trying to convert to a holarchy as part of their grand “reorganization” plan.

The Holarchial approach to organization is obviously not for the faint of heart. As I mentioned it takes a different breed of management types–those that can actually relinquish some control and empower everyone in the organization to step up and take control of their own job function. In that way every organization could in essence become a holarchy–wouldn’t that be a great place to work?

Here’s a headline I’ll bet we’d all like to see: “Last week, the board of Acme Corporation fired the company’s founder and CEO Wile E. Coyote for being an overall asshole.” While we’ve never seen a press release like that–and probably never will–it’s nice to fanaticize. That’s because we’ve all worked somewhere where the head guy, or our immediate boss, was nothing less than an asshole. Assholery is an affliction that knows no boundary in management.

Since we’ve all worked at one time or the other in our careers for someone who displays all the traits of a bad leader, and a marginal manager, we’ve all probably had that popular phrase, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” not far from our lips. These are the bosses that generally act like jerks, are condescending, micromanagers and workaholics that have mastered the game of divide and conquer and many of the other games people play that I detail in my book, Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw. These are the narcissistic bosses that treat their subordinates with distrust and have zero empathy for anyone else and are only focused on their own advancement. They reward sycophantic behavior and are incapable of accepting any contrary opinions to what they believe.

We keep asking ourselves over and over: “how did these people get to the position they’re in?” and “how do these people stay in power?” Occasionally we see press releases from a company that they’ve let their CEO go but the reasons are most often couched in the context of failing financial performance–the same reason that many lower level management-types get the axe. Sometimes it’s reported that the CEO/boss has resigned to pursue other opportunities, or to spend time with family, or they supposedly are retiring, but by and large the financial performance excuse is the number one reason we see CEOs being let go. Despite what’s publically said, I’d like to think many times the CEO/boss is actually being pushed out because he/she is an outright asshole.

So the question in my mind is how many of the firings, that are reported as being for bad financial performance, are really for bad financial performance? Wouldn’t it be nice for once that a company make a press release in which they tell it like it is? I know what you’re going to say–they couldn’t even if they wanted to, certainly not in today’s litigious society.

The irony is that because they are never called out for being an asshole, these CEOs/bosses always seem to land at some other company and are thus indirectly rewarded for their behavior. This happens because of the exact problem I’ve talked about many times before in this blog–companies tolerate and in many cases reward assholery because of the results these people achieve. Good financial results will trump bad behavior ALL the time.

We’ve all read of, and maybe even worked at, a company that is failing financially, so it then comes as no surprise when heads roll. After all the buck stops at the top and the neck of every bottle is at the top. So it makes sense that the head guy becomes the fall guy–the scapegoat. But how about the top guys who seem to hang on to their jobs despite bad financial performance?

The fact of the matter is that as long as an organization meets its financial goals an asshole boss will be tolerated. This is partially because a company’s boards of directors never really pays attention to how the employees in the trenches are treated let alone what they think or their opinions of the company’s so-called leaders. The board of directors is only focused on financial performance. This completely explains why Steve Jobs was tolerated all the while his jerkiness was common knowledge.

I wonder what’s really going on in these situations where there’s an asshole in charge yet nothing ever happens to him or her. Does the asshole have some juicy tidbit of negative information on someone higher in the organization that they’ll let become public if their job is threatened? This then is the biggest mystery in the business world–how do assholes manage to stay employed. If that question could be answered then the world would be rid of dysfunctional workplaces.

In my research for this post I came across an interesting four-year study by LeadershipIQ.com. In the study the researchers interviewed 1,087 board members from 286 public, private, business and healthcare organizations that fired, or otherwise forced out, their chief executive. In the words of Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, “We get fixated on current financial performance,” he explains. “But if that was really the whole story, every CEO who ever missed a quarterly target or lost money would be immediately dismissed. And we know that plenty of world-class CEOs have seen their stock price dip, missed earnings forecasts, or even lost money for periods of time.”

The result of this study is one of the most comprehensive “behind closed doors” view on CEO terminations ever conducted. The following are the top five responses with the percentage of time this was the “real” reason for the CEOs termination:

MISMANAGING CHANGE (31%): Most pointed to a failure on the CEO’s part to properly motivate employees and managers, and more specifically, to adequately sell the need to change course.

IGNORING CUSTOMERS (28%): If a CEO ignores or alienates customers, it not only undermines the business and revenue, but it significantly undermines board support. Board members said their test for whether the CEO was sufficiently engaged in the business was the extent to which they evidenced intimate knowledge of customers, customer needs and developing trends. And from my own experience I can tell you that a CEO, who doesn’t understand his customers, doesn’t understand his employees either.

TOLERATING LOW PERFORMERS (27%): When CEOs allowed an obvious low performer to linger it destroyed the CEO’s credibility and made it politically difficult for them to hold others accountable. Board members reported that, in numerous cases, CEOs covered for poor performers out of fear that they might divulge embarrassing or indicting information. Remember what I noted above: ‘does the asshole have some juicy tidbit of negative information on someone higher in the organization?’ I guess this might also include the harboring or a loyal band of sycophants who are usually worthless in the long run.

DENYING REALITY (23%): What board members said they couldn’t handle was a CEO who was in denial and wouldn’t recognize the bad news and was far too insulated from frontline realities. This is a universal problem that I talk about in detail in my book, Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw. These are the bosses who cannot tolerate surprises that may upset their precarious status quo.

TOO MUCH TALK, NOT ENOUGH ACTION (22%): The study reported of CEOs who “talked the talk,” but were unable to “walk the walk.” These are the CEOs/bosses who talk endlessly about grand visions and new strategies, but never have a solid tactical plan for its implementation.

All these reasons are very interesting and all are indicative of people who probably have other behavioral problems, i.e., the typical behavior patterns of workplace assholes. All of the above behaviors can lead to bad financial performance, thus why it’s usually used as the excuse for the person’s departure.

So if you have a boss who exhibits any of the above traits (or worse behavioral traits) accept that unless he/she shows bad financial performance they have a 30% or less chance of facing the axe for those behaviors. Which is exactly my point–these people have an amazing staying power when they get into management and never have to pay the piper unless the numbers go sour.

Throughout our careers we’ve all thought of our desperate climb to the top in the traditional metaphorical way, i.e., that of climbing a ladder. However, Sheryl Sandberg, in her book, Lean In: Women, Work, And the Will to Lead, provides us a different perspective when she tells us that, “Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder.”

From my own career experience I think Sandberg hit the nail on the head by describing the climb as being on a jungle gym v. climbing a ladder. That’s simply because the climb to the top isn’t always a straight line like climbing a ladder. Despite that, the term “corporate ladder” is many times used to describe the hierarchy of a company’s organizational structure. The ladder analogy reflects the levels that must be climbed to get to the top of the hierarchy. The problem with the term is that the climb to the top can be anything but a ladder. A ladder affords no opportunity to move side to side without falling off and having to start over at the bottom, whereas the jungle gym description perfectly reflects how one can move laterally from side to side and up and down if need be in the path to the top.

I personally have knowingly made a few lateral career moves along the way all with the long-term goal of rising to the next level just via a different path. It should be noted that a few of my supposedly upward moves ended up being unknowingly lateral moves–but that’s a story for another post. I’ve also taken the bite by knowingly moving back down the ladder, from a pay perspective, (it was also a career change from factory work to engineering) so as to have better long-term chances of advancing. That’s kind of the way we climbed on a jungle gym as a child. We may be climbing and reach a point where there’s something blocking our way (like another child belligerently stuck in position) so we must navigate around them. That requires movement sideways or back down and around.

When you think about it the typical organization chart–the graphical depiction of the so-called ladder–does look more like a jungle gym than a pyramid–especially if you take into account the lateral interactions that actually happen between equal-level positions on the chart. In fact most interactions, required for someone to do their daily job, may well require interaction with people at their same level, a lower level and even a higher level on the chart.

From a career planning perspective we all keep a focus on the organization chart. In fact I could make the case that it’s the number one document in any organization that everyone knows like the back of their hand. And we probably don’t realize how focused we are, or even obsessed, we are with organization charts. That’s the beauty of a start-up organization–they typically don’t have formalized organization charts–thus people can’t get fixated on where they fall on the chart. Most organizational dysfunction begins when the first organization chart is published. I believe they are the bane of organizational existence.

So who do we have to thank for the organization chart. Well, the Scottish-American engineer Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) is credited for creating the first organizational charts of American business around 1854. The term “organization chart” came into use in the early twentieth century when, in 1914 Willard Cope Brinton, an influential man in business broached the subject in his popular book, Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts. In the book he makes the observation that; “organization charts are not nearly as widely used as they should be.” This, of course, set off the rush for every organization to develop an organizational chart. Now they are a standard for every business to develop. And their very existence sets off the human need to want to climb that chart because it represents the challenge to success.

Companies utilize organization structure to document their business hierarchies and that hierarchy then becomes everyone’s roadmap to stardom. In addition to delineating management levels, organizational structures assign clear roles to departments and individuals to provide them with a sense of purpose and responsibility. Organizational charts also are graphic methods for presenting the power structure within the organization. The one thing they typically do not show however, is the horizontal relationships–and roadblocks–which are most often the real key to an organization actually being able to accomplish day-to-day activities.

All organizational structures are shaped like a pyramid–with steps just like a ladder–narrowing as they approach the top. This view helps explain why the old saying “climbing the ladder” came to describe how one would climb to the top.

Of course the downside to all organizational structures is that they only show “formal relationships” and tell nothing of the pattern of human social relationships which develop. That is the culture that develops and every organization has its own unique culture–some highly functional and some highly dysfunctional. And worst of all, they provide little information about the leadership style of the management team, e.g., whether they manage autocratically, or democratically.

In the end it’s exactly these “patterns of human social relationships” and whether the management team is “autocratic” or “democratic” that make the path to the top a climb on a jungle gym v. a climb on a ladder. Not only do you have to negotiate around people stuck in position (victims of the Peter Principal) but you must be able to survive the jungle gym of individual personal agendas that many times are focused on knocking you off the jungle gym completely–or at least stepping on your fingers–as they climb out in front of you on the way up. After all is said and done, sometimes it’s best to just jump down off the jungle gym and go try the climb from a different starting point.