PUTTIN' COLOGNE ON THE RICKSHAW

The term “Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” has always been one of my favorites in describing what most organizations are doing in their efforts to “find an organizational structure that works for them.” The phrase means making well-meaning but negligible adjustments to an endeavor that is doomed to fail or to do something pointless or insignificant that will soon be overtaken by events, or that contributes nothing to the solution of a current problem. The expression goes back at least three decades (the earliest example is from 1975), but its use has picked up sharply during the last few decades as it’s been discovered just how accurate it really is. Remember clichés become clichés because they work.

In 1957 author Charlton Ogburn Jr, (1911 – 1998) wrote the war chronicle, “Merrill’s Marauders: The Truth about an Incredible Adventure.” It appeared in the January 1957 issue of “Harper’s Magazine” and in it he describes his experiences in the Burma Campaign in World War II. In the article he describes a phenomenon that bears a striking resemblance to what’s seen often in business. Ogburn wrote: “We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up in teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. During our reorganizations, several commanding officers were tried out on us, which added to the discontinuity.”

The Burma Campaign in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was fought primarily between the British and Japan however, the British had support from China and the United States. On the Allied side, the operations in Burma during 1942 and early 1943 were a study of military frustration. However, from December 1943 to November 1944, the strategic balance of the Burma campaign shifted decisively in the Allied favor. Improvements in Allied leadership, training and logistics, together with greater firepower and growing Allied air superiority, gave Allied forces the advantage and ultimate victory.

These “reorganizations” that Ogburn wrote of were undoubtedly carried out by the military command to counter the early frustration through an attempt to make “improvements in Allied leadership.” However, my guess is that training and logistics, together with greater firepower and growing Allied air superiority, actually are what gave Allied forces the advantage and ultimate victory. While the Allied effort in Burma was ultimately successful, the same can’t be said for many reorganizations carried out in your typical business organization.

While organizations can rearrange the deck chairs when doing just about anything, this week I want to talk about how this cliché applies to reorganization–a sometimes frequent occurrence in dysfunctional organizations. Everywhere I’ve ever worked, bar none, I have witnessed this same attempt to solve problems through reorganization. I’ve experienced every conceivable type organizational structure, from deeply hierarchal, to flat and from traditional departmental to matrix–and many hybrids in between. One thing all reorganizations have in common is that, when over, the same sociopath is at the top and the same junior sociopaths can be found in the sycophantic first layer of management. Add to that the fact that the reorganization, in and of itself, does nothing to increase teamwork, dedication, loyalty and the skills of the employees–the business equivalent of training and logistics, greater firepower and air superiority.

One thing to remember is that you can find an example of every conceivable type organizational structure that works well and examples of that same structure not working. The ones that work have one thing in common–a minimally dysfunctional workplace culture as a basis. Failure comes from the fact that most management teams don’t fully understand that the organizational structure doesn’t make the organization successful–the people do, i.e., the culture. If the culture is dysfunctional in a traditional hierarchal structure it will also be dysfunctional when reorganized into a matrix structure, or a flat structure, or whatever structure you choose. The problem is that organizational structure is given too much power in the expectation of success. Behind every successful organization stands a team of employees that work well together and dysfunctional behavior is at a minimum. These then are the organizations that can efficiently turn a vision into a growing business.

In this discussion about organizational structure I’m making the assumption that there’s a management team that actually has a winning vision for growing their business. Without that it completely doesn’t matter what the organization structure looks like. Also when I say that dysfunctional behavior is at a minimum, make no mistake dysfunction effects every organization to varying degrees. This is an unfortunate consequence of normal human behavior.

By “reorganizing,” most organizations are reacting to the truism that management consultant Tom Northup is credited with saying: “All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are now getting. If we want different results, they must change the way they do things.” The problem is that “reorganization” is not necessarily “doing things differently,” yet may well be the approach many organizations take in their efforts to “turn things around.” Unfortunately it doesn’t provide the results expected because it completely ignores the basic mechanisms at play in the day-to-day operations of a business. Also don’t forget the organizational structure is really just the mechanism through which power is administered. Add to that the fact that in many cases all the structure represents is a vehicle to identify who will do the performance review of each employee.

To that end, in his article, “9 Ways Great Companies Organize Their Teams for Success,” Kevin O’Connor, cofounder of DoubleClick and CEO of FindTheBest, tells us that: “What it really takes is teams of talented people, organized in ways that truly let them shine.” Unfortunately most management teams attack the task of reorganizing without giving thought to “ways that truly let them (the employees) shine.”

Without getting mired down in a discussion of its failings–I’ve preached many times in this blog of the idiocy of the performance review process–let me note that the mainstay performance review process used in most companies today does little to help identify the ways each employee “can shine.” Thus management really has no road map available to “let each employee shine.” This is because the process is so focused on identifying employee shortfalls that it becomes useless for anything other than contributing to organizational dysfunction–the antithesis of a successful organization.

As I mentioned above, aligning employees around customer needs is one of the keys O’Connor notes when he says that the “Market Trumps Functional Trumps Matrix.” He tells us that organizational structures have to align around markets. In his words, “Aligning employees around markets with a flattened organizational structure increases efficiency, removes gridlock, eliminates conflicting priorities and speeds up the decision-making process in any industry where you’re constantly racing against the clock.” These are all things that most management teams will espouse as their goals yet fail to effectively achieve.

Reorganizing isn’t about organization charts it’s about empowering people to make decisions and actively embracing the self-interest that each employee brings to the table. O’Connor makes a key point in that management “needs to practice strategic planning that focuses on solutions–strategically thinking about what problems to solve, not about revenue projections, profits or other forecasts. If you build a great product that solves a big problem, the numbers will follow.”

Another of O’Connor’s points is that in most organizations “the most obvious solution is often overlooked.” That’s a profound statement in that in last week’s post I talked about that exact problem. It’s called an “anti-pattern.” Recall for an anti-pattern to exist there must first be a commonly used process, structure or pattern of action that despite initially appearing to be an appropriate an effective response to a problem typically has more bad consequences than beneficial results. And second, a good alternative solution (what O’Connor calls “the most obvious solution”) exists that is documented, repeatable and proven to be effective. Many organizations think that they are approaching their problems correctly only to find that their solution (reorganization) has more negative effects than they anticipated.

O’Connor also talks about something I’ve preached before: “forget about skills when hiring.” You can always teach skills, but you can’t teach smart. Don’t hire employees based on their current skills; hire people who have raw intelligence who will learn quickly on the job.

So if you’re going to reorganize–do it for the right reasons–to flatten the organizational structure, increase efficiency, remove gridlock, eliminate conflicting priorities and speed up the decision-making process. Anything else is just like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

“Putting the cart before the horse” is an idiom expression that’s been around seemingly forever–couldn’t find its original source on the internet. By definition it means to do things, or tasks, in the wrong order, or with the wrong priority. It also means that one has confused cause and effect. It can also mean to slow down and take things as they come, not to try to rush to finish something. Obviously, the meaning of the phrase is based on an assumption that it is usually easier to pull than to push–not just when using a horse. From a workplace perspective it is also better to pull than to push work through a system. Exactly what that means is the subject of another post, so I won’t get into that here, but suffice to say that “pull” systems are the cornerstone of efficient manufacturing.

The basis for the phrase comes from the Greek term, “Hysteron Proteron” which means: “latter before.” A hysteron proteron occurs when the first key word of an idea, or phrase, refers to something that happens temporally later than the second key word. One would purposely do this if the goal is to call attention to the more important idea by placing it first. An example of hysteron proteron encountered in everyday life is the common reference to putting on one’s “shoes and socks,” rather than “socks and shoes.”

Thus the phrase, “putting the cart before the horse,” probably came from someone wanting to make a point using the hysteron proteron concept. There’s no record of exactly who that someone was, or is, however I’ll bet it was born in the world of business. From a workplace perspective it means that you should not execute a step of an operational plan before the preceding steps are completed. In other words, keep the steps in order (unless they can truly be done concurrently or at any time in the overall sequence of steps) and don’t jump ahead. Of course that implies that, in fact, you actually have a plan, which is part of the problem many organizations face–they fail to plan accurately or appropriately.

Many organizations actually suffer what’s called the “Cart before the Horse Syndrome.” How does this syndrome manifest itself? The Cart before the Horse Syndrome most often means that someone is focusing too many resources on a stage of a project out of its sequence. The sad thing is that many bosses, high and low, are so busy giving direction and orders that they fail to realize whether they are putting the cart before the horse. Many times they will pressure for a task to be done before needed in the belief that that means making progress, not realizing that there may, in fact, be a negative cause-effect relationship between the task and other tasks. Once they get to the other tasks the dependency becomes obvious and the first task needs to be redone or modified.

Add to this the learned helplessness talked about in last week’s post where the employees decide to leave their brainpower at the door as they enter the workplace and you have the recipe for an organization that is “running around in circles’ (another common idiom probably born in the workplace).

Many management teams fall prey to the “putting the cart before the horse syndrome” because they have a record of practicing what’s called “anti-patterns” in how they react to everything from normal everyday operation , to solving problems, meeting tight schedules, or reacting to anything that threatens their grip on power. An anti-pattern is a common response to a situation that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. The term, coined in 1995 by Andrew Koenig, was inspired by a book, Design Patterns, in which the authors highlighted a number of design patterns in software development that they considered to be highly reliable and effective. According to the authors of Design Patterns, there must be at least two key elements present to formally distinguish an actual anti-pattern from a simple bad habit, bad practice, or bad idea.

According to Koenig, for an anti-pattern to exist you first must have a commonly used process, structure or pattern of action that despite initially appearing to be an appropriate and effective response to a problem typically has more bad consequences than beneficial results. And second, a good alternative solution exists that is documented, repeatable and proven to be effective. This makes sense from my experience. Many organizations think that they are approaching a problem correctly only to find that their solution has more negative effects than they anticipated.

The second reason is an interesting one as it implies that this “documented, repeatable and proven” method is known to management at the time they decide to follow the pattern of action that has bad consequences. This explains why many organizations “do the same things over and over somehow expecting a different result.” Doing the same things over and over somehow expecting a different result is also called the “Golden Hammer Solution.” Every organization has their “golden hammer” which is a favorite solution that they feel is universally applicable to all problems. An example may be organizational reorganization as a repeated solution to bad management–but that’s the subject of another post.

I found an example on the web using software development: “in object-oriented programming, the idea is to separate the software into small pieces called objects. An anti-pattern in object-oriented programming is a large object which performs a lot of functions which would be better separated into different objects.”

Thus “real design patterns” are common approaches to common problems which have been formalized, and are generally considered a good development practice, and “anti-patterns” are the opposite and are undesirable.

Anti-patterns can also be understood through what’s called ‘The Second System Syndrome.” A second-system effect refers to the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems (or projects) to become elephantine, feature-laden monstrosities due to inflated expectations. The Second System Syndrome was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic book The Mythical Man-Month. It refers to a condition where despite the fact that a first system can be successfully implemented which works well enough, designers turn their attention to a more elaborate second system, which is often bloated and grandiose and fails due to its over-ambitious design. This is also an example of the “polish the cannonball syndrome” that I described in an earlier post.

When The Second System Syndrome sets in projects go into what’s called “The Death March.” A project in its death march is one that everyone in the organization knows will be a disaster–except management. Thus the truth is hidden to prevent immediate cancellation of the project. Since the truth remains hidden the project is artificially kept alive until the final reckoning day comes and the stuff hits the fan.

When supporting the status quo (keeping the project alive) is cherished before truth telling (letting the project die it’s deserved ignominious death) we have a perfect example of a hysteron proteron. Status quo should be based on truth, not truth on the status quo.

Have you ever heard anyone in your workplace say something like, “We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work” or “What’s the point, they’ll never let you do that?” If so you are hearing people who have what is known, in psychological terms, as “learned helplessness.” The “learned helplessness” phenomenon can permeate the culture of an organization. Like a spreading infection, management passes on learned helplessness from person to person, group to group and level to level. Eventually the standard response to any initiative is some variation of the above statements.

Learned helplessness occurs when someone is repeatedly subjected to an aversive environment that they feel they cannot escape. Eventually, the person will stop trying to escape and behave as if it is utterly helpless to change the situation. Even when opportunities to escape are presented, learned helplessness will prevent them from taking any action.

While the concept of learned helplessness is derived from animal psychology and behavior, it applies to humans in many workplace situations. When people feel that they have no control over their job situation, they begin to behave in a helpless manner. Does you workplace seem to suffer from a general malaise or apathy? If so than the root cause may just be learned helplessness.

Recalling last week’s post, learned helplessness can help to explain why we are many times incapable of experiencing any workplace fun and happiness. Or, more profoundly, why we don’t get off our duff and look for another job when the one we’re in sucks. It also explains why, when a new job offer does come our way, many times we pass up the opportunity and decide to stay in our current hell hole of a job. We make every excuse we can think of to justify staying, like “I really like my co-workers,” or “things aren’t really that bad–they’ll get better,” or (the best of all) “I’d rather stay with the devil I know than the devil I don’t know.”

In 1967, the concept of learned helplessness was discovered accidentally by psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier at the University of Pennsylvania, as an extension of their research into depression. Seligman and Maier discovered this phenomenon during an experiment with dogs. In the experiment three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Group 1 dogs were simply put in the harnesses for a period of time and later released. Groups 2 and 3 consisted of “yoked pairs.” A dog in Group 2 would be intentionally subjected to pain by being given electric shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. A Group 3 dog was wired in series with a Group 2 dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and duration, but his lever did not stop the electric shocks (remember PETA wasn’t founded until the early 1980’s). To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. For Group 3 dogs, the shock was apparently “inescapable.” Group 1 and Group 2 dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but Group 3 dogs learned to be helpless.

The significance of Seligman and Maier’s experience was that until then B.F. Skinner (1904 – 1990) had been the leading authority on behavior. Core to Skinner’s theory of “behaviorism” is the assumption that human and animal behaviors are determined by learning and reinforcement. We’ve all heard this before. Whatever the conditioning, people acquire new skills based on whether their actions prove to have a positive outcome (e.g., if by pressing a button, a rat receives food), that is the person is more likely to continue to repeat this behavior. We’ve also heard that if the outcome of the person’s conditioning is negative (e.g., if by pressing a button, the rat receives a shock), the person is less likely to repeat the behavior. That’s the popular belief.

However, Seligman’s experiment discovered that in fact a person is “more” likely to repeat the behavior if the conditioning is negative. This flew in the face of Skinner’s predictions.

In many large corporations threats (the equivalent of electric shocks) are made to all employees including “the best of the best” every day. In dysfunctional organizations rarely a day goes by that someone is not threatened with termination if they don’t perform to the arbitrary standards set by management. The whole cottage industry of the performance review process is built around this negative feedback type of behavior modification theory.

Where the typical performance review process goes bad (sort of ironically) is that many times what an employee is told during his/her performance does come as a “shock.” Thus the reason many employees experience “learned helplessness” is because management has shocked them whether they perform as directed or not. There is no escaping the shocks. Shocks are random and without relationship to behavior.

Based on Skinner and Seligman’s research, here’s the take away for those administering the performance review process: people acquire new skills based on whether their actions prove to have a positive outcome and they are more likely to repeat the (bad) behavior if the conditioning is negative. In today’s typical workplace the performance review process works under the wrong assumption–it works on the expectation that the employee will “change” if they are given negative conditioning, i.e., pointing out the employee’s shortfalls. Seligman would tell us differently. Ironically, the performance review process used universally in today’s business environment is exactly why performance doesn’t increase.

I’ve been saying this for years–the performance review must be one that is based on reinforcing the employee’s strengths and not merely highlighting his or her shortfalls. People acquire new skills based on whether their actions prove to have a positive outcome, thus the performance review must highlight the behavior that management wants to perpetuate and “ignore” the behavior they don’t want.

Organizations continue to administer the same performance review system year after year despite proof that these systems do little to increase performance. In fact as we’ve just learned a review system that attempts to shock an employee into changing their behavior actually produces the exact opposite of the intended result. Employees realize quickly that they can’t stop the shocks no matter what lever they pull, or hoop they jump through.

Dr. Viktor Frankl M.D., Ph.D. (1905 – 1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Regarding his concentration camp captivity he wrote: “And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.”

Of course he was writing about his captivity, but it has amazing similarities to the workplace.

Have you ever asked yourself this question: Is happiness at work the responsibility of the employer or you; the employee? After all, the workplace is a social place, and social interaction should lead to happiness–right? However the fact is the majority of workplaces are not, by their very nature, conducive to employee happiness. Most are sequenced, controlled, compartmentalized and standardized, which by definition, doesn’t promote happiness. Also compound that with a healthy dose of dysfunction and it’s easy to see how it’s tough to be happy at work. So at a personal level ask yourself the real question: are YOU happy at work? If you asked Victor Frankl I’m pretty sure he’d tell you it’s all up to you. Are you driving your own happy time tour bus or are you a passenger waiting for the driver (management) to take you where they want you to go.

The fact is most employees are, by and large, unhappy with their job, working environment and, of course, their boss. I’ve quoted the sad statistics many times in past posts–no need to repeat them here. By definition being in any way unhappy isn’t a fun way to spend your working day let alone your career. I can attest to that from my own career–there’s only a handful of jobs in which I truly had fun and was “happy.”

In their article, “Workplace Fun and its Correlates: A Conceptual Inquiry,” Mildred Golden Pryor, et al. sum up the modern workplace environment and the effect it has on the employees. “A structure which can be the most stifling is a deep vertical hierarchy. In this type of workplace, employees have limited, or no, power, and the organization will typically bestow demerits for bad behavior, and few or no rewards for good behavior. Such an environment has a high potential of minimizing opportunities for fun and creativity. In addition, it may be a source of stress for employees.

“All this breeds negativism and distrust. A toxic triangle exists that is comprised of destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. Yet managers of dysfunctional work environments often contribute to the negativism as they micromanage, abuse power, lack anger management skills, threaten and demean others, and/or engage in other illegal, unethical, or de-motivating behavior. In many organizations a culture of distrust exists among the various constituencies, management and non-management people, team members, horizontally among peers, vertically along the chain of command, and even among organizational members and their customers and suppliers.”

Based on that, it’s obvious that unhappy employees are a necessary bi-product of the way business is structured. There’s no getting around it. So back to that question: Is happiness at work the responsibility of the employer or you; the employee? Based on the reality it obviously falls on the shoulders of the individual employee to make his/her own happiness and fun.

That said, many companies however, do take the need for the employees to have fun at work seriously. Their answer is by providing what’s called “mandatory fun.” This takes the form of parties, dressing up for Halloween, Christmas parties, Birthday cakes, having celebrations when some big milestone has been met, etc. However, mandatory fun is not necessarily fun. It’s just another less un-pleasant form of work. It certainly doesn’t bring employees together as a team. Events that promote team building must come from the team. In fact more team building occurs when a group of employees meet after work at a bar, get mildly inebriated, and then commiserate about their lot in life–now that’s fun. Management needs to stay out of the merry making business.

In the end, if there’s any fun to be had at work it’s up to the individual to create it on their own. So how can we make ourselves happy and thus have fun at work? My advice is really very simple. Happiness, and thus fun, at work is all about being self-confident. Yes–self-confidence is the key. That means feeling confident that you are great at what you do, despite all “evidence” to the contrary that’s provided to you annually in your performance review. Self-confidence is the ultimate self-deception. And self-deception is essential, in fact, to your well-being and your sanity. It allows you to see yourself and your surroundings as they truly are–in other words as a realist. I’ve written about this before–you really have three choices. Be a pessimist, an optimist or a realist. Pessimists are always unhappy, optimists are off the charts dopy-happy, and realists have just the right mix of optimism and pessimism.

So deluding yourself is not such a bad idea–its fundamental for a happy work life. To believe we are having fun at work we need our little everyday delusion, because without it the reality of the workplace would be a harsh, brutal place that most people just wouldn’t be able to bear. In my book Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw I make the case that the best defense is to be able to see the humor in the dysfunction around you. In other words, in the end, sometimes your only choice is to try to love the hell you’re in. It’s just a matter of choice. You can choose lies and bliss, or you can choose truth, and misery. “Driving” the happy time tour bus is much better than simply being a passenger.

Remember what Viktor Frankl said: “Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance.”

From a workplace perspective, Frankl’s “opportunity” means that we have the choice to delude ourselves that we’re happy and things aren’t as bad as they really are. As tough as it may be, self-deluding yourself that you’re happy in the midst of the suckiness is the best way to stay afloat until it’s time to hand in your resignation and move on to the job where you can truly be happy.

Dilbert is on a walk with his mother. Along the way his mother asks him quite innocently, “How was work Dilbert?” At that Dilbert goes on a mini-rant about his job saying;

“I’m like a fly stuck in a thick tar of despair.
Incompetence hangs in the air like the cold stench of death.
I’m drowning and monkeys dressed as lifeguards are throwing me anvils.
My job has convinced me life is a stale joke with no punch line.
I long for the comfort of the grave.”

His mother responds with. “Next time just say ‘Its fine.’”

One of my favorite management gurus is Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005). You don’t hear him quoted much anymore, like back in the 1980’s and 90’s when his management theories were really popular, but his wisdom is none the less spot on in describing the modern workplace. Drucker once said, “Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”

I’ve written about this problem, i.e., bosses making it difficult for people to get their work done, in my book Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw as I believe it’s a real issue for employees everywhere. I’ve also blogged about this subject before–the most recent dealt with “ostracism” as a method that the boss can undermine a direct report. However, this post is about how people can be set up for failure based on the assignments they receive. In other words does your boss throw you an anvil or a life preserver? That no-win project that the boss just assigned to you is like the proverbial anvil being thrown to you as you are drowning.

Congo is a 1980s science fiction novel by Michael Crichton. The novel centers on an expedition searching for diamonds and investigating the mysterious deaths of a previous expedition in the dense rain forest of Congo. A line from the book goes like this, “His management philosophy, tempered in his rain-dancing days, was always to give the project to whoever had the most to gain from success–or the most to lose from failure.”

From my own experience there’s a lot of truth to that statement when describing the workplace and the management style of many bosses. The problem I’m going to talk about is more applicable to the project management types than to those who have a single specific job function to perform. Project management, I believe, is one of the toughest jobs in the modern workplace. Project managers are often in no-win situations as they are expected to work miracles despite having no direct staff or subordinates to execute the project for them. To be a success they must be true leaders. In my experience some of the best leaders in business today are project managers.

That said one reason project management can be so challenging is that many bosses will show favoritism when it comes to making project management assignments. They favor a select few of their reports (their loyal sycophants) by giving them the easy projects, while dooming their least favorite employees by throwing them the proverbial anvil in the form of a project that has little chance of being a success.

Why do bosses do this? The fact is that every project needs to have someone at the helm, thus someone needs to be the stuckee for the no-win projects. That’s fine if the pain of taking on these type projects is shared equally. Also it helps if the organizational culture isn’t one of blame. Face it, every organization has a crappy project once in a while that needs to be managed. Taking it on shouldn’t be your exit ticket.

The key to my argument, i.e., that a bad project can be used vindictively by a boss to torpedo an employee, starts with the realization that every boss knows, to a certain extent, beforehand whether a particular project has the potential for success or failure. I’ll explain why later. The problem is that many times those loser assignments are funneled to the employee(s) least favored by the boss. Or, as Crichton would say: to whoever has “the most to lose from failure.”

The reason for this is simple: giving an employee a “no-win” assignment is the sure-fire way to thin the herd. In my career I’ve seen many projects that were nothing but revolving doors for the boss to use as a way to set up an employee for failure thus providing the necessary ammunition to get rid of him or her. What exacerbates the imminent failure of the employee on a particular project is the fact that giving the employee a no-win project isn’t where it stops. There are other methods that the boss uses to torpedo the employee that will be used at the same time. Earlier I talked about “ostracism” as one of those “tools” used by bosses to undermine an employee. Note: there are many “tools” (methods) that a boss can use to undermine an employee. They are well known in the management arena and used many times intentionally by the boss.

It’s not bad enough that the bad project is like an anchor tied around the person’s neck but when the boss then uses the other “tools” against him/her it’s not unlike throwing a drowning person an anvil. Here’s a short list of few of those “tools.”

• Leaving the person out of things (memos, meetings) that the person’s job requires them to be involved with
• Withholding valuable information instrumental to the person’s success
• Giving the person the cold shoulder for no apparent reason
• Talking about the person behind their back undermining their ability to solicit support from others
• Denying the necessary resources for the person to achieve success
• Micromanage the person

And when the person ultimately fails on the no-win project they will receive a crappy performance review (remember the performance review process is “no good deed goes unpunished” in action), coupled with no raise, and a personalized “performance improvement plan” that’s really just a ticket to the unemployment line. In business there is no “take one for team” and then move on to the next challenge–the next challenge will be finding a new job.

From the boss perspective, part of the mechanism at play here is something I’ve written about before: plausible deniability. By essentially cutting off the employee assigned the crappy project, the boss can plausibly deny he/she had any culpability in the project failure and can thus offer up (to upper management) the poor employee as the scapegoat. This is one of the reasons ostracism is so prevalent.

Of course the real question to be asked here is not why some employees get assigned the loser projects, but more profoundly why there even exists “loser projects” at all. These are the projects doomed to fail from their onset. With all the management and leadership literature, training, and rhetoric that’s available you’d think that no project, undertaken by a modern business organization, needs be a loser. The reason is simple and its part of the normal business environment.

The answer is that companies sign on to do questionable projects because they are desperate to show growth and book business at any costs. Thus they sign on to do things they know can’t be a success. Probably the most prevalent is underbidding a project so as to beat the competition. But they’ll sign on and then kick the can down the road. Selective amnesia allows them to ignore their own track record of failed projects and thus they have no clue how to effectively perform what they signed up to do. They will then tell themselves that somehow, someway this time will be different. With no clear plan on how to execute the project they then assign it to some poor soul, ostracize him or her, deny the resources needed, and ultimately, when the project fails, and then blame the individual.

The bottom line is that management and even leadership are oftentimes not the well thought-out science as the guru’s would like you to think. As Leon Courville Ph.D. Chief Operating Officer of National Bank of Canada observed when asked if management is a science: “Of course not, it’s just a waste-paper basket full of recipes which provided the dish of the day during a few years of plenty and economic growth. Now the recipes are inappropriate and the companies which persist in following them will disappear.”

These then are the companies that seem to have one loser project after another. Sound familiar? Do you work in an organization where there’s always at least one project (usually more) that’s behind schedule, over cost and technically defective, and has had a revolving door of poor souls at the helm who end up disappearing in the night. Be wary as you may the next person tagged to manage that project.

The reality is that all who work in big modern organizations are really just treading water. At any time you can be pulled under and seldom do you ever really get out of the (sometimes hot) water. Unfortunately, it just may be your boss, who should be your lifeguard, who’s throwing you an anvil instead of a life preserver.

“The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect” is the name given by Michael Crichton for a phenomenon that afflicts mass media–its unlimited, unearned credibility. According to Crichton, media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. He called it by this name because he once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. His reasoning was that by using a famous name it would imply greater importance to the effect, than it would otherwise have.

According to Crichton, the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows: “You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

“In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

This then is The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. When it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is worth our time to read the newspaper or listen to a broadcast. Fact is they tell us what they want us to hear which, by the way, is totally independent of the biased reporting problem which is another story altogether. Crichton believes the only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia. One area where I think Crichton got it wrong is that he believes it does not apply to other arenas in life. His point being that in ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. I would tend to disagree with Crichton on this one. I believe that The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect is alive and well in everyday life and especially in the workplace.

From the workplace perspective, my reasoning is that for many organizations, the published values statement has much the same “effect” on employees–especially when those espoused values are not practiced. Employees read the statement, knowing that they are not followed, yet continue to delude themselves into believing that the organization’s management has the best of intentions. Why do people feel this way? First, the values statement in most organizations has morphed into something that management tries to use as a motivational tool instead of a roadmap for behavior. The big problem is that for most organizations the values statement changes nothing in how they conduct their business. The exercise of crafting them is a complete waste of time and talent if values statements are used for anything other than an exercise at a management off-site meeting.

But preach the values they do. Just as Crichton’s reasoning was to use a famous name to imply greater importance to The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, companies that don’t follow their values are the ones that preach them the loudest–trying desperately to attribute more importance to them.

To fully understand The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect it is first relevant to understand the definition of amnesia. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary amnesia is; 1) the loss of memory due usually to brain injury, shock, fatigue, repression, or illness; 2) a gap in one’s memory, or; 3) the selective overlooking or ignoring of events or acts that are not favorable, or useful, to one’s purpose or position.” The third definition is the one that best describes the effect in the workplace when it comes to whether the cherished values are followed.

“The selective overlooking, or ignoring, of events or acts that are not favorable or useful to one’s purpose or position” is the essence of the effect in action in the workplace. It applies and is relevant because everyone in an organization wants to believe that the values preached are in fact practiced, yet they ignore the fact that no one is really “living the values.” when they know in their heart they are not being followed. Question: Does your workplace preach work-life balance yet expect 10+ hour days? Case closed.

The primary reason the values statement of most organizations fail to drive more ethical behavior is management’s naiveté. Management easily forgets that compliance isn’t achieved by edict−that simply stating and publishing the values statements doesn’t guarantee they will be practiced. A more profound reason why they don’t work is simply that management flat out doesn’t practice them, or just as bad, practices them in a cyclical manner, e.g., management begins every quarter preaching teamwork, good communication, growing the business, building strong relationships among employees, work-life balance, etc. but by the end of the quarter, when their financial targets are missed, they’re back to the “command and control,” micromanaging, workaholic rhetoric.

This is why the values statement can actually be a “motivational delusion,” or, in this case, “motivational amnesia.” The amnesia being that despite management writing and publishing a good values statement, everyone will selectively ignore the fact that the values preached are not followed. And (the worst part) is that the employees know this yet continue to believe what management says–they drink the collective Kool-Aid.

The values statement is supposed to be the moral, ethical and behavioral qualities that the organization considers worthwhile−their highest behavioral priorities and deeply held principles. Values statements should be affirmations of how the people in the organization already value customers, suppliers, and most importantly how they already interact with each other. Thus the values that an organization demonstrates are most important then all the other buzzwords (trust, accountability, teamwork etc.) combined and are what drive an organization to be either functional or dysfunctional and why, when they are not practiced, they are so damaging motivationally.

However, if an organization’s values are realistic and practiced by all, especially at the very top, they provide a sense of organizational identity and unity. In fact if they’re practiced they don’t really need to be written down. An organization such as that will have trust, teamwork and a sense of common purpose, thus molding a fundamentally ethical culture within the organization.

This then becomes the essence of determining an organization’s functionality versus dysfunctionality. That’s a tall order for a simple wish list, and for most organizations, that’s all these statements ever really are. Unfortunately due to The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect people end up drinking the Kool-Aid and believing something that is patently false.

One of my all-time favorite comedians, George Carlin, once said, “Just because you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.” There’s a bit of truth to that statement if you think of it in terms of changing jobs–which was the focus of last week’s post. In this context Carlin’s quote reflects the fact that in quitting one company that’s little better than a circus, odds are that you’re taking a big chance that the next company will also resemble a circus.

Everybody’s been to a three-ring big top circus at least once in their life–right? You probably think it’s not been since you were a kid, but did you realize you might be going to one every day at work?

A three-ring circus is one in which there are three adjacent rings in which performances take place simultaneously. For instance in one there will be acrobats defying gravity and balancing between life and death; in another there will be equestrian shows with people balancing on the backs of horses as they speed around the ring, and in another, you have wild animals and their human trainers. And of course mixed throughout there are clowns–lots of clowns.

The circus concept originated in England in 1768 as the brain-child of Philip Astley. Not so ironically this is about the same time period that modern corporate structure was spawned. The circus concept came to America in 1793 when Bill Ricketts opened a one-ring circus in Philadelphia. This was the mainstay of the circus for another 80, or so years. Then in 1871 Phineas Taylor Barnum and William Cameron Coup débuted P.T. Barnum’s Museum, Menagerie & Circus which added to the typical circus menagerie by adding exotic animals, sideshow oddities and performances of strength and agility. They added a second ring in 1872 and a third ring in 1881.

Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, Barnum teamed with James Anthony Bailey to create an even bigger circus. When Barnum died in 1891, Bailey continued on with the circus. After Bailey’s death in 1906, the Ringling Brothers bought the Barnum & Bailey Circus and merged it with their own popular circus–the same one we see today.

Why the analogy that a workplace can be a circus? I’m sure everyone has heard that comparison at one time or the other. First and foremost is the fact that in any dysfunctional organization, at any given time, just like in the circus, you can become the main attraction. Metaphorically the lights will go out in two of the rings and the spotlight will be squarely on you as you are singled-out by your sociopathic bully boss or by a colleague who is intent on torpedoing you to further promote him or herself. Face it, most modern workplaces are little better than a three ring circus of simultaneous events that most often defy logic, are (career) death defying in nature, and make you shake your head in amazement, amusement or disgust.

The evolution of the modern circus isn’t much different than the growth of a typical modern company as evidenced by the chronology detailed above. The circus started small (one ring) and evolved into the three-ring extravaganza it is today. Thus just like any modern-day business organization, the circus needed twenty elephants instead of two to fill the three rings at once. They needed 10 clowns instead of one; lion and tiger tamers and acrobats. Every act grew bigger and more flamboyant. And, just like the evolution of the circus from one ring to three business organizations are constantly adding more metaphorical elephants, lion tamers and of course clowns.

And by the same token organizational structures evolve into a sophisticated circus-like environment where the rings–usually way more than three–are all the various departments which attempt to maintain their segregation from each other like the fiefdoms of medieval times. Of course in the modern business organization the three rings can also be defined by the behaviors of the inhabitants. At any one time you have hatred, anger, and chaos; disagreements, confrontation and back-stabbing; and of course, sprinkled amongst the three rings we find the people who perform the function of the organizational clowns.

In fact your typical workplace is so much like the true three ring circus that you can make a direct comparison of the performers in the circus to the people you’ll meet every day in the workplace. Let’s dissect you’re average circus and look at the similarities to the modern workplace. Here are a few different circus performers and how they mirror the personalities found in the typical modern workplace.

Of course first we have to talk about management–the ringmasters. The ringmaster isn’t much different from the management of your typical organization. The ringmaster orchestrates the actions in the three rings as does the typical management in the workplace. However, a big difference is that the circus ringmaster trusts the performers to perform their jobs accurately, whereas the typical management types in any organization use command and control and micromanaging to ensure the work is being carried out by their staff performers. Why is it that way? Because trust between management and the workers is a scarce commodity in most workplaces.

Next is the Lion Tamer–really the ringmaster of one of the rings. Lion Tamers are like department heads. They are in a life or death situation (can be replaced at any time by the ringmaster or be eaten alive by the very animals he/she is trying to tame (manage). They need to do anything, and everything, to keep their act running smoothly. Both the lion-tamer and the department head are cast from the same command and control mold. Like the lion-tamer, bosses believe they have everything under control and only they can tame the wild beast. Like the ringmaster, department heads use tools like micromanagement to keep control. Your might say the lion-tamer reports to the ringmaster in the same way that a department head reports to the head sociopath and are just as sycophantic in nature.

Next are the sideshow performers like Fire Eater, Knife Thrower, or Sword Swallower. These are people that bring unique talents and complementary skills that are needed by the organization to actually perform the work and insure the success of the organization. They are talented in their role and work hard however, each only concentrates on one responsibility or a small piece of a work needed to run the organization. These are the organizational individual contributors.

The Trapeze Artist blends the daredevil skills of the lion-tamer with the focus of a sideshow performer. They are the ones that have realized the need for others and rely on others to help them perform. You can’t have a successful trapeze act without trust amongst the performers. Thus the trapeze artists are those that work well as team members. They react quickly to situations and can work on the fly or change directions easily. These are the type personality that are necessary to keep the organization tied together.

The acrobats are slightly different from sideshow performers–who only master one skill–as they are versatile multi-taskers who can juggle, and perform gymnastics and ride a horse, sometimes all at the same time! They are a virtual one-person show. They are adaptable, flexible and have multiple skills, which mean they can work independently, as well as part of a team.

Lastly if you ever watch the circus, you have probably seen the clowns running around. They’re entertaining and add to the overall experience of going to the circus. However, you might also notice that clowns are always performing simultaneously with the acts in the three rings. They never have center stage. They are what give the circus the overall feeling of chaos. Workplaces have the same kind of clowns interspersed throughout the organization. These are the people that make most workplaces a hard place in which to work and give the workplace that overall feeling of chaos.

So which type personality do you best represent? Are you a lion-tamer, a trapeze artist, an acrobat, or are you one of the clowns? While it may be true that you can only run away and join the circus if the circus wants you, if you’re one of those personalities and you’re looking for another job I’m sure you can find a circus somewhere that needs you. That’s because every workplace organization is like a three-ring circus with the same ringmaster, lion-tamers, fire eaters, acrobats and clowns. However, be especially cautious of the knife thrower.

It all starts when we’re in our twenties. We’re just starting out in our careers and our motivation in life revolves around the next raise or promotion milestone on our envisioned meteoric rise to the top. Last week’s post talked about just this–our need to rise to the next ledge, or step, in the corporate pyramid. We tell ourselves that once that raise or promotion comes we can really begin to enjoy ourselves–we’ll be happy. Of course that doesn’t last long and we then begin to think we don’t make enough money (certainly not what we think we’re worth), or we don’t have the prestige that we’re due, so we fall into a mindset that won’t allow us to enjoy the position we’re in. So we strive for the next raise or promotion that we think will make us happy–just one more will do the trick. And so on, and so on. The fact of the matter is that regardless of the number of raises or promotions we get we will always be focus on the wait for the next one.

Once we’re married and have kids the need for promotion at work is further compounded by more stress because our happiness and satisfaction is deferred until the car is paid off or we buy that larger house. Until then we’ll just plod along never really happy or fulfilled. Of course, once these things take place new goals emerge, e.g., the kids need to go to college, and other new reasons to deflect the pleasures of the moment into some suspended state of waiting for the next “big event” to present itself.

When we get older our goals become the elimination of the mortgage, perhaps, or the move out of the house of the last of the children, or the stress of not having enough saved for retirement. The common denominator throughout our lives is that unfulfilled striving in our career to move steadily up the corporate ladder. That’s because moving up the corporate ladder and subsequently making more money is the key to achieving all those other goals. Thus we put added pressure on our work-life, which is probably stressful enough.

I think you can see the pattern here–we’re always waiting for the next big event in our career that will make all the difference and be our key to happiness and success. That feeling we have through most of our adult life is akin to how we felt as a kid waiting the weeks leading up to Christmas in eager anticipation of the toys we’ll receive that will make us happy. We spend those weeks “Waiting for Santa Claus.” And just like kids we spend our adult life “Waiting for Santa Claus” too.

The analogy is that Santa Claus is some future event that will make us happy and thus solve our nagging problems. Waiting for Santa Claus creates the ability to cope with our unfulfilling everyday life and it unfortunately takes the place of the happiness we seek. Of course just as there isn’t a Santa Claus, we don’t always achieve the level of satisfaction we were expecting by the attainment of the particular goal. We then become resigned and maybe even experience a sense of futility. We tell ourselves that there’s a reason for our unhappiness–Santa Claus hasn’t delivered the situation that will allow us to succeed. So we just will wait until he comes again.

Eric Berne (1910 – 1970), was a Canadian-born psychiatrist best known as the creator of Transactional Analysis (TA) and the author of the book Games People Play. Games People Play was a groundbreaking book in which he introduces transactional analysis as the basis for what he describes in his book as the games people play out every waking minute of their lives. According to Dr. Berne, games are ritualistic behavior patterns between individuals that can mask hidden feelings or emotions but are all played to gain advantage over others. In my book, Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw, I use Berne’s TA model and many of his “games” to describe the behavior prevalent in the modern workplace.

In his research Berne found there were many repetitive behavior patterns that people share in common. These then are the standard ego states (parent, adult or child) that he describes in his book. These ego states are the triggers for the “games people play.” “Waiting for Santa Claus,” as described above, is one of them. Note: Berne later changed the name of this game to “Waiting for Rigor Mortis” after hearing a comment from one of his patients that made him realize that for a lot of people, the real goal of life is death and an end to the frantic race they are running with themselves.

The game “Waiting for Santa Claus” that Berne described in his book can be seen being played out every day in every workplace across the nation. Think about it–we all have worked in organizations where the employees go about their daily works in a state of suspended animation, waiting for some change or other in their life–or waiting for the next performance review for that next raise or promotion.

The problem is that once these events happen they rarely satisfy us for long. In their 2012 treatise “Extra Status and Extra Stress: Are Promotions Good for Us?” David Johnston and Wang-Sheng Lee present data from a study that found “no evidence that promotions impact general health or life satisfaction.” In fact it’s just the opposite. Researchers noted that “two or more years after a promotion worker mental health is significantly lower, driven predominantly by increased anxiety.”

The question they set out answer was: Are promotions good for us? To answer this question, Johnston and Lee first examined changes in workers’ perceptions of their job in the lead-up to receiving their promotion and in the several years afterwards. They found that in the first year or two after a promotion, workers feel their jobs are more secure, and enjoy some level of satisfaction. They feel they have more control (decision-making freedom), that they’re trusted and respected more, and that they are fairly paid. However, they feel more stressed and will work longer hours because they feel they have to so as to meet the demands and expectations of the new position. The stress negates the satisfying effects of the raise or promotion.

After the positive, short-run promotion effects, the attributes of perceived job security, pay fairness and job satisfaction trend downwards towards their pre-promotion baseline levels. For each of these attributes the estimated promotion effects after two years are pretty much insignificant, and over the three year post-promotion period, job security effects decrease 66% and job satisfaction effects decrease to the point of being non-existent. When it comes to pay fairness our satisfaction increases over the first two years after the promotion but then decreases thereafter and is not statistically different from zero after that. By the three-year mark the positive feelings are largely absent. Workers no longer feel more secure or well paid (despite having higher incomes and greater job control), and their overall job satisfaction has returned to pre-promotion levels, while in contrast, stress and work hours remain high.

In 2012 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.6. This seems to justify the above study results regarding job satisfaction. If your current employer can’t provide satisfaction you will seek out one that will–or more accurately that you hope will. The fact that it’s higher than the 2-3 years noted in the study is largely due to the 2008 recession which put the fear of God into anyone who managed to remain employed while everyone else was losing theirs.

It used to be that changing jobs that often would label one as untrustworthy, unfaithful and uncommitted, etc., but not any longer. In fact, back when I used to review resumes of job candidates and I came across someone who had been in their current position for longer than 4-5 years, I would always wonder why. Were they not motivated to better themselves? Were they not risk takers? Were they caught in the waiting for Santa Claus syndrome? The sad fact is that most often the only way to receive a significant raise, or get a promotion, is to change jobs.

Here’s another argument for changing jobs frequently. If you stay with a company the average raise you can expect in 2014 is 3%. Even the most underperforming employee can expect a 1-2% raise. The best performers can hope for a 4-5% raise. But, the inflation rate is currently 2.1% calculated based on the Consumer Price Index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This means that your raise is actually less than 1%.

On the other hand if you change jobs you’ll likely see an increase in salary much higher than 4-5%…10% is not unheard of. Plus many times you can move into a higher position thus getting that promotion you’ve waited for that never materialized at your current company.

There’s a reason that staying at one company too long will never get you what you want. It’s the old axiom “familiarity breeds contempt.” The longer you stay at the company the more you’re looked upon as just a tool for the higher-ups to achieve their own goals. We’ve all heard the old truism: management will ignore what the employees tell them yet hire consultants to tell them all the same things.

Of course I must note at this point that even changing jobs and receiving a larger raise or a promotion won’t save you from suffering from the Waiting for Santa Claus Syndrome–you’ll still be back to being unhappy in a couple years.

The bottom line is that to get ahead (higher pay or promotion) you must have a career plan. And not just a plan that means sticking it out at your current employer waiting for Santa Claus but, one that includes strategic changes of jobs to achieve what you want in your path to the top. In other words you need to “own your career.” Remember what Mike Tyson once said: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Don’t wait until you’ve been with a company 10 years waiting for that promotion and then you get punched in the mouth and laid-off.

If you’ve been with a company for 10 years and you’ve been repeatedly passed over for a promotion, you’re salary is probably at the highest it’s ever going to be and you are undoubtedly on the lay-off list that all organizations keep should some unplanned organizational crisis come along that requires cost cutting. So beat them to the punch (pun intended) and don’t feel bad because you have that urge to quit and find another job after a couple years…it’s in your DNA.

In a 1906 letter to H. G. Wells, the philosopher William James (1842–1910), wrote that: “The exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success is our national disease.” Aldous Huxley helped focus this a bit more in saying: “The point of William James’s statement is that reaching Success demands strange sacrifices from those who worship her.”

William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. He also wrote many influential books on the science of psychology, the psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. He certainly was being pragmatic in his above noted quote.

Of course success is defined differently for each of us. Some may find success is raising their children. For others it might come from living in a particular neighborhood. But for those of us (the majority I’m sure) whose self-worth was/is defined by our careers then success simply means climbing as high as we can on the corporate ladder. What goes without saying is that to move up the corporate ladder one must learn to be a leader not a manager.

In the forward to his 1962 book The Pyramid Climbers, Vance Packard tells us the focus of his book and talks about the type person who strives to be a leader and reach the top of the ladder–the management pyramid–the ultimate success in business.

“We are about to enter a veiled and curious world. The object of this exploration is to bring back relevant information about the breed of people who climb modern pyramids. Members of this breed are the hustling, well-packaged executives who pitch their camps on ever higher ledges of the pyramids of business power. They devote their adult lives to assaulting the slippery, crevice-ridden slopes of the pyramids in the hope of arriving at a peak, or at least a ledge near a peak. They learn the secret lore of negotiating difficult passages. They sharpen some very special traits, such as maze-brightness, which help them survive and advance. Their desire is to be touched by Success, the goddess who stands guard on the mist-covered peaks. Success permits only a few select climbers to enter her cloud clubs. She has been known to be both featherheaded and ruthless in her choices. She keeps changing the requirements she expects of a climber as he progresses toward her realm.”

One of those special traits be talks about above is “maze brightness.” This is a behavioral sciences concept defined as: “becoming able to find new paths through the maze toward the reward-point through sheer repetition.” Explains why many management teams will do what Einstein defined as insanity, i.e., “doing the same thing over again somehow expecting a different result.” It also explains why many sociopaths get to the top–their bad behavior has worked to their advantage at many points in their past so they keep doing it.

Of course reaching the top on a particular organization’s management pyramid is dependent to a large degree on how many layers or ledges there are to climb and where on the pyramid you start the journey. The number of ledges—or steps—in a company’s hierarchy varies of course with the company’s size and philosophy of organization. Some like tall, slender pyramids, with only a few people under each leader; others prefer short, squat pyramids. But no matter what its manifestations, the hierarchic pyramid structure as diagrammed on paper is the company’s hierarchy of power. And fighting one’s way up the hierarchy of power is what Huxley meant when he said that “reaching Success demands strange sacrifices from those who worship her.” That means that the journey will bring out both the best and the worse of anyone striving to get to the top. Not everyone is cut out for that journey despite almost everyone wanting to take it.

I liken the competition that’s engaged on the climb up the pyramid of business power as intensive as the competition between gladiators in the arenas of ancient Rome–it is a life but not literal death struggle.

So how does one make it to the top of the pyramid? Business magazines would have us believe all you have to do is follow a few simple steps and success is yours. Google “how to be a success in business” and you’ll come up with 100’s of thousands of websites with foolproof recommendation. For example, I just picked one–a Forbes magazine article that advised that the following four actions/behaviors were a perfect strategy to get to the top. They are: be innovative, make recommendations, raise your hand and (the best of all) support and mentor your fellow peers.

Let’s take a look at these recommendations. First, “innovation’ is a tough thing to define. It’s another of those highly subjective “skills” you’ll find on most performance review forms. It’s up there with “be proactive” or “think outside the box” as one of the most useless and annoying business buzzwords that everyone worships yet can’t really measure.

Make recommendations? Of course, whether that gets you anywhere is highly dependent on the receptivity of the management team. At the very least making repetitive suggestions will probably label you a know-it-all. Also, you don’t make any recommendations if your boss is a sociopath. A cardinal sin is committed if you, in any way, allude that you have a better idea than the boss. Secondly, a true sociopath will steal the idea and make it his anyway.

“Raise your hand” is an interesting one. To volunteer–I assume. To volunteer for some task nobody else wants to do? Trust me you’ll get enough “action items” in your career that you don’t need to go asking for more–this is pure suicide. It could also mean asking questions–showing initiative. Yet another of those pesky subjective performance review skills. Remember what I noted above: “A cardinal sin is committed if you in any way allude that you have a better idea than the boss.” Also asking too many questions can set yourself up to be judged as having no clue. Now I’m not saying that asking questions is all that bad because many people go through their entire career not ever really having a clue what’s going on because they are petrified of asking a “stupid question.” These type people really need to ask more questions. However, the real key is that one must think before speaking.

The last one, support and mentor your fellow peers, while a noble thing to try and do, completely depends on how well your peers support and mentor you–doesn’t it? Read my book Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw if you want guidance on why this won’t necessarily work and why it can be a suicidal thing to do. The workplace is full of “games people play” to get to the top–getting too close to people may set yourself up as to be victimized. Remember, it is a dog-eat-dog world out there in the workplace.

Ok, so I’ve picked apart a major business publication’s guidance. What’s my guidance you may be asking? I have my own five point strategy that should help you make it to the top. It’s based on taking the best leadership skills and simply practicing them no matter the position you’re in on the pyramid.

First, it’s important to know is how to tell the difference between repetitive nonsense and meaningful thinking. In other words you must know the difference between being efficient and being effective. Managers are efficient–leaders are effective. Don’t be fooled by all the self-serving “pyromaniacs” out there that thrive on crisis. Learn to discern between the true organization-threatening crisis and those that are “staged” so a sociopath can feed his narcissistic ego.

Second, there’s the old saying: “Show-up, keep-up, shut-up.” That’s what two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange said is the job of a professional golf caddy. And caddying is what you’ll spend a lot of your career doing. It’s sort of self-explanatory. In other words: Come to work every day and “shut up and color.” This is the part of getting to the top that means that whatever your job, do it well, on time and as accurately as possible.

Next, “hone your problem solving skills.” This isn’t about having all the answers–it is about using the scientific method to solve problems. And solving problems is what you’ll spend a great deal of your career doing. One of the biggest sins in business is the tendency to jump to conclusions. Find the root-cause to a problem and don’t chase symptoms. That’s because a good leader solves problems the first time–so they don’t come back and bite you. It’s the old efficient v. effective thing again. A corollary to this is “don’t be swayed by groupthink.” If there’s ever a time to “make recommendations” it’s to speak up and point out the bullshit that can be the result of a group of people getting together to solve a problem. Remember, managers suffer from situational amnesia–true leaders don’t.

Also, be empathetic of your fellow co-workers. That doesn’t mean kowtow to them but be genuinely concerned for others. That’s as close as you’ll come to “support and mentor your fellow peers.”

Lastly be “authentic and genuine” in all that you do. To be “authentic” means “being of undisputed origin.” Always make sure everyone knows where you’re coming from. Don’t try to delude people–only speak the truth. Practice the “no bullshit” rule. Admit when you don’t know something–don’t pretend. On the other hand being “genuine” means “to truly be what something is said to be.” In other words “say what you’ll do and then do what you say.”

Einstein once said, “If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.” No truer words where ever spoken when talking about the workplace however, you must qualify this statement. The chances of being a success greatly relies on your ability to bring the variable “y” as close to zero as you can. This is good advice if you want to get to the top–there is no work-life balance at the top of the pyramid. This is where the “bitch goddess” traps you.

I just read an interesting article by Charles Handy called “Gods of Management: The Changing Work of Organizations.” While a bit dated, having been published back in 1996, what it has to say is just as applicable today. In the article, Handy uses Greek gods to illustrate what the world of business would be like, and the workplace cultures that would evolve, if the workplace were run by Greek gods.

To start, he poses the following question to the reader: “How would you describe your current workplace?” Is it an environment where employee ideas and opinions are listened to? Is everyone held accountable (especially management) or is it a culture of blame? Do people work well in project groups, or is teamwork an elusive commodity? Is the organization rife with bureaucracy, in-fighting and fiefdoms? Are there interpersonal games being played out between people who seem to have the sole job function of torpedoing their colleagues? Or is your work environment stagnating, mired down in an ever-growing set of Standard Operating Procedures that make doing even the simplest things painful? Are there a group of elites that surround the top tier management to which only the closest loyal sycophants are granted entry?

Understanding your workplace culture is important because it gives you a useful framework to guide your conduct. An organization’s culture defines what’s important, what’s expected, what’s accepted, what’s preferred, what’s rewarded, and what’s frowned upon–these are the things you won’t find out about in the interview. They can only be gleaned after being an inmate in the organization for some length of time. To truly understand and organization’s culture, you need to actively interact with fellow colleagues, upper management and, of course, your boss. If you want to survive and prosper in any organization it is crucial that you understand the nuances of the everyday culture and tailor your behavior accordingly.

In my book, Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw, I tackle the issue of organizational culture from the perspective of it being either an “instrument of domination,” or a “psychic prison,” both terms being pretty much self-explanatory. These are two of the eight metaphors for organizational culture that Gareth Morgan presents in his book Images of Organization. I picked these two to focus on as they are most indicative of the typical dysfunctional organization, but Charles Handy’s article got me thinking–there are other ways to describe (using metaphor) workplace culture. What follows builds on Handy’s article with a bit of extrapolation from my own experience.

First off (in case you’re forgotten from high school), Greek mythology is the body of myths and teachings that belong to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes. Among the principal Greek gods were the Olympians–residing on Mount Olympus led by Zeus. Not all the Gods were Olympians–there were also various other gods that covered just about every aspect of life. There was even the God of the underworld: Hades (an Olympian). This structure was called the Pantheon and the organizational cultures described in this post, are “The Mansions of the Gods.”

When we look at workplace culture from the Greek God perspective there a couple of Gods that provide perfect metaphors for differing types of culture. The first is the Olympian God Apollo, the God of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry, and more. For the Greeks, Apollo was all the Gods in one and through the centuries he acquired different functions which could originate from different gods. One of Apollo’s more important daily tasks is to harness his chariot with four horses and drive the Sun across the sky.

According to Handy, an Apollonian workplace culture is a “role” focused bureaucracy that bases its daily functioning on the definition of the role/job to be done. Employees’ authority and responsibilities are determined by the power hierarchy, and a strong premium is placed on order and efficiency. There is very little initiative among the employees as high efficiency in one’s job usually does not lead to much reward–this is the type organization that worships the performance review process believing it to be the key to success.

Apollonian cultures look to the past in order to predict the future. These type workplace cultures are weak when responding to changes in the business environment or even in how they handle day-to-day challenges. They usually will ignore problems until they become life-threatening and then act in an impetuous way to try to solve them. They will typically attack symptoms vs. seeking out the root cause of problems.

In an Apollonian culture there is only one source of power and influence: the top management team who strive to maintain absolute control over the organization. Thus all decisions are made under the influence of the leaders’ priorities.

Handy provides a perfect analogy for the Apollonian culture. It is like an ancient Greek temple where every pillar is an independent department or project–the Fiefdom Syndrome reigns supreme here. As noted above, these tend to be bureaucratic organizations so cooperation among the fiefdoms is based upon procedures and job descriptions. Power depends on the formal position of the fiefdom’s leader in the organization’s management structure and his/her effectiveness as a loyal sycophant, rather than sheer job performance.

We also have the Athenian “task” culture. Athena was an Olympian, the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. In this culture, emphasis is placed on getting the job, task, or project done. Power stems from knowledge and experience in tackling one’s job tasks. The Athenian culture is marked by teamwork and the achieving of the organization’s common goal. This culture’s chief advantage lies in its flexibility and ability to adjust to changing conditions. Work groups are created to handle specific tasks and are dissolved when the task is over. The same individuals create new teams tailored to the latest needs. As such this culture is capable of rapid actions, i.e. organizational change or in reacting to problems. Effectiveness is ensured by quickly moving around individuals and resources to projects that have a need. This type culture has “leaders” rather than managerial bureaucrats.

Then we have the Dionysian “person” culture. Dionysus was not an Olympian God as he was half mortal. He was the God of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of “ritual madness and ecstasy.” Dionysus had two extreme natures to his personality–he could shift from bringing bliss and relaxation, which then transitioned into bitterness and anger. Dionysus personified the nature of wine–when used reasonably it can be pleasant, however, if misused it can provoke negative effects. He also represents the typical behavior swings one finds in the average organizational sociopath.

In a Dionysian culture, individuals are focused only on achieving their own career goals and that is particularly true for the organization’s management team. These companies exist to satisfy the requirements of the particular individual. This model of behavior starts at the top of the organization with the head sociopath. The “games people play” to torpedo fellow employees runs rampant in this type organization and people are judged, and thus are successful, based on their ability to always come out on top of their colleagues. The Dionysian culture can lead to disruptive wars among its management team thus keeping them from focusing on common organizational goals. From the job duty perspective, employees see themselves as independent contributors who have temporarily lent their skills and services to the organization–this also being a defense mechanism.

The utopian workplace culture does not exist–all workplaces cultures (including hybrids) are modeled after one of the above. Which culture attributes are dominant are like pure dysfunction–it is all relative and a matter of degree. Lastly if you believe that you are saddled with the “Boss from Hell,” which, by the way, you’ll find in any and all of the above cultures, then you’re in a special type culture. In the past few weeks I’ve written much about these “special” cultures from the perspective of them being Hell–where the people that make them so end up once they depart this world. I’ve also detailed how they can make your daily workplace life a living Hell while they’re still on this Earth. This type workplace thus becomes a “Hades Culture.”