PUTTIN' COLOGNE ON THE RICKSHAW

The following post is an independent review of my book done by Jon Rutter, staff writer for the Lancaster PA Sunday News Aug 04, 2012. To see the actual review link here.

There’s a reason the corporate world described in William Bouffard’s book is larded with sociopaths, sycophants, blabbermouths and the just plain idiotic.

Corporations mirror society.

“We are by nature evil beings” motivated mostly by ego, writes Bouffard in “Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw: A Guide to Dysfunctional Management and the Evil Workplace Environments They Create.”

It’s a funny but savage indictment of humanity and its vaunted money-making organizations.

Funny because of Bouffard’s blunt, strip-the-clothes-off-the-king delivery.

Savage because the author has a relentlessly dark take after 40 years of toiling for companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500s.

As Bouffard related by phone from his home in San Diego, Calif., he began his career as a machinist and industrial engineer and gradually ascended to “dog-eat-dog” operations management in the defense industry.

“As I grew more cynical,” he says, he started sharing top-brass anecdotes with his employees. “I had a number of people say, ‘Jeez, Bill, you should write a book about this.’ ”

Now, as a 65-year-old retiree, he has. He’s also published it himself; the 394-page paperback is available for $29.95 at Amazon.com.

The evocative title is borrowed from a witticism from a colleague and refers to any insincere attempt to make grunt work sound sweet.

Bouffard proposes no panacea in these pages, though he does call for companies to forgive mistakes more readily and encourages employees to at least “pick up on these [corporate] behaviors and find humor in them and move on.”

Nor is the book a tell-all.

Bouffard, an independent consultant –– and self-confessed former “job hopper” with 23 companies in his rearview mirror –– doesn’t name names or describe specific real-world scenarios.

“I was trying not to crucify every company,” says Bouffard, who acknowledges that some enterprises are relatively free of dysfunction, especially ones that haven’t been around long enough to institutionalize and petrify.

He dives instead into corporate psychology, citing copious sources from Plato to cartoonist Scott Adams of “Dilbert” comic strip fame.

“I reflect back on what drove my behavior every day,” Bouffard says, namely not getting blamed for somebody else’s screw-ups.

Face saving and “constant fretting” about short-term profits to the detriment of long-term survival is in a nutshell the executive mindset, he contends. Bobbing to the top are the typically extroverted, risk-taking “pyros” and “sociopaths,” perceived to be uber-achievers often as not because of the noise they generate rather than any innate talent.

(Interestingly, Bouffard brands workaholics as sociopaths because they often bully more centered workers into matching their needlessly grueling work “ethic.”)

Much of the potential of average employees, meanwhile, gets trampled by rigid corporate hierarchy.

All eyes are diverted from the real prize, effectiveness, to a bogus one, efficiency, Bouffard says. That oft-praised ideal, “teamwork is doomed because bringing together intelligent people into a group takes real work to effect.”

Bloating the vacuum are pie charts and parsings of every sort, including the much-reviled performance review.

Bouffard positively loathes performance reviews, writing that their sole purpose is to build a case against workers a company might have to ax.

But he’s not excusing all underlings and shy guys. (He considers himself an introvert who tried to empower his team but nevertheless sometimes fell into the very behaviors he criticizes.)

The typical unsung worker can accomplish much with scant oversight, he says.

Others are indeed lazy and conniving and must be managed in “command and control” mode.

But that’s human nature.

“Do people and their lunatic behaviors forge the workplace environment,” Bouffard asks in his book, “or does organizational life beget the lunatics? … The answer, of course, is both.”

I read a lot. Mostly business books, but I’m also interested in books that delve into the workings of human behavior and how it affects the workplace. In my book, I go into great detail about the fact that perception is truly more important than fact when in the workplace. So I was very interested when I came across a book about just that subject. In the book, The Believing Brain: from Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths, © 2011, Michael Shermer provides a very telling analysis supporting that old saying, “perception becomes more important than fact.” It’s an interesting read…you don’t have to have a degree in psychology to understand and be entertained.

Shermer’s basic explanation for this truism is that, “first come our beliefs and second we construct the facts to support those beliefs.” He details how people will search out the facts that will support their beliefs and reject any fact that runs counter to what they believe. According to Shermer we all do this and it’s subconscious.

This phenomenon happens at the organizational level also as the collective consciousness of the organization actually develops fundamental delusions about itself and how it fits into the larger scheme of the business world. This organization-wide delusion becomes part of the culture, the glue that binds the inhabitants together as they haphazardly work toward the organization’s goals.

I guess we all intuitively know that people can be delusional, but how do organizations practice delusion? One of the most common ways for an organization to delude itself is though the phenomenon of “The Halo Effect,” a term coined by Philip M. Rosenzweig in his 2007 book by the same name.

“The Halo Effect” refers to the cognitive bias, of the members of an organization, through which their overall perception of their company is framed by a single good quality. For example, people will make a positive judgment of an organization’s overall well-being, e.g., their level of customer service, or the quality of their products−even their quality of leadership−solely because of good financial performance (share price, revenue, or profitability). The Halo Effect is definitely alive and well and is exactly the mechanism in play in the workplace. In my book I talk about the fact that many organizations live in a fantasy world ignoring their real problems. As Shermer’s book and “The Halo Effect” would predict, most organizations will seek out any fact that supports their belief that they are successful, and are well run.

In my book, Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw, I use Edwin Abbott’s 1884 book Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions, as an analogy to drive home the problem with the deeply vertical organizational structure that is the mainstay of modern business. I make the case for flatter organizational structures as a way to reduce conflict and eliminate the games played by individuals as they jockey for position in the hierarchy. As a follow-up to that concept, I offer new evidence of the fact that flat organizational structures lead to more harmonious workplaces.

In his book, Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships, Dario Maestripieri details the different dominance hierarchies that exist in the primate world. His book reveals how we can learn much about the workings of human society by observing how primates interact especially in regard to how they exert dominance over each other. Most primate societies are what are called linear dominance hierarchies in which there is a single individual at the top who’s dominant over all, and all others serve as subordinate. In this structure, like the workplace, the individuals are ranked from top to bottom by their dominance standing.

As a side note; in action the primate organizational structure mirrors modern business structure exactly. The head of the pack; primate A is dominate over all other primates in the pack despite a clear pecking order in the group. And just like in the modern workplace, these top primates can and will exert their dominance over any other primate regardless of how low they are in the pecking order. That means they have no qualms about going over the head of the primate in second, or third, etc. place in the pecking order to regularly show dominance over lower members of the pack.

These type organizational structures are called “despotic” hierarchies. Maestripieri explains, “In a highly despotic system, the ladder is set straight up and there are large gaps between the steps. This means that there are significant differences in power between top-ranking and bottom-ranking individuals, individuals don’t treat those lower than themselves very nicely, and climbing the ladder is difficult.” Primate packs can be ranked by the severity of their despotic tendencies. He further explains; “In a low-despotic system, by contrast, the ladder is set on a gentle slope and the steps are close to each other, or maybe the ladder is even flat on the ground. When there is no dominance ladder, it means that the social system is egalitarian: either all individuals have equal chances of winning fights or they don’t fight much to begin with.”

The “high-despotic” primate hierarchy mirrors the typical organization structure in business. Most are highly stratified, with rank being the prime motivator in everyday interaction of the inhabitants. However, Maestripieri points out that when this type hierarchy is relaxed to a “low-despotic’ hierarchy the result is a structure with less inherent conflict, or fighting for position. The take away here is that even in the primate world there’s proof that a flat organizational hierarchy leads to a more equitable and smoother running organization. Maybe business can learn a few lessons about organizational structure from our primate cousins.

Does your boss stop by your office, or cube, just about the time you’re ready to head out for the day? Does he theatrically look at his watch as he sees you getting ready to leave? Does he then pose a question that, by the fact that he’s the one asking, implies that it must be answered immediately? The trick is to try to get you to stick around for 12+ hours a day, like he does.

More broadly, does your boss practice a bastardized version of “management by walking around,” looking for anybody doing something wrong, or for any fledgling problem that hasn’t yet bubbled up the management chain?  This kind of boss will then use these tidbits of information to test someone’s knowledge of what’s going on and to test whether that person is really in control? The trick is to get them to say; “I didn’t know that,” thus admitting that they’re not in control.

If you’re the target of the above behavior then you’re reluctantly a participant in the game of “Stump the Dummy.” Stump the Dummy is one of the management games of choice prevalent in command and control organizations and the problem with this behavior is that it’s so destructive to the organization.¹ Unfortunately, it’s one of the most used management “tools” that contribute to the making of dysfunctional workplaces.

In my book, Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw, I delve deeper into the game of “Stump the Dummy,” a close cousin to “Divide and Conquer,” which is another frequently played game in the modern dysfunctional workplace.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to fight this behavior because once you’ve fallen prey you’ll have a target on your back forever. Really your only course of action starts at the door…when you walk through it for the last time.

¹ Constructive “management by walking around” focuses on finding someone doing something “right” so as to praise them on the spot for a job well done.

We’ve all seen them, the infamous job description. Job descriptions are the most useless things in modern business. Why, because they don’t define the actual job duties that the employee will be expected to perform (or the abuse they’ll have to endure).

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if, just once, an organization laid their cards on the table and wrote a job description that told the truth?

So let’s look at the job description that we’d all really like to see. An honest one; one that tells it like it really is. It’s for an all too real typical management position.

Job Purpose:

Meet organization wide and department objectives with little support from upper management in the way of resources, budget and manpower.

Job Skills and Abilities:

Perform as if one of the A-players (the best-of-the-best) all the while accepting mediocre pay and benefits.

Be adept at convincing yourself and other people that your sociopathic behavior is, in fact, good leadership practice.

Recruit staff by being able to determine if a job candidate is the ‘best-of-the-best’ based on a five minute resume review and a half hour interview yet not be able to recognize the best-of-the-best qualities in people who have worked for you for years.

Be effectively able to suck-up to management by exhibiting well developed sycophantic skills and behaviors.

Accomplish results through command and control management techniques, dictating unrealistic job expectations and by pedantically micromanaging the every move of your subordinates.

Have the ability to subjectively appraise employees, with no remorse, against nebulous skills factors through an archaic performance review process.

Coach, mentor, and coddle a few employees that are self-styled heroes who will serve as your trusted sycophants.

Be adept at practicing plausible deniability. Effectively practice only half the accountability equation by always focusing blame on subordinates. Be able to hold everyone accountable except yourself.

Enforce archaically oppressive systems, policies, procedures, and productivity standards, disciplining any employee who violates them.

Be a workaholic willing to forfeit all work-life balance and have no qualms about requiring the same level of effort from subordinates.

Exhibit no remorse when conducting a lay-off, or RIF.

Able to soothsay the future to avoid any and all surprises.

Be able to multi-task as many useless things at once as management can identify. Do this despite the known fact that to be successful the optimum number of simultaneous projects is three.

Always complete your action items on time regardless of whether the action is important to the organization’s business success.

Be able to establish pedantic tactical departmental goals derived from a vague and outdated organizational vision/mission statement.

Be able to spout platitudes about management’s core values all the while violating every one of them in the course of your daily activities.

Be able to put out fires on a daily basis, even those only perceived as real by upper management. Be adept at quickly and urgently solving problems by focusing only on the problem’s symptoms, or on one side of the story.

Be able to collect and manage using meaningless metrics; identifying and evaluating imaginary trends striving to increase efficiency at the expense of effectiveness.

Be adept at mixing all the latest management buzz-words (see my book for a run-down of these) into every conversation.

Be able to ignore past lessons learned. Be dedicated to “doing the same thing over, and over, while expecting different results.” Be proficient at selective perception and selective amnesia.

And last, the line that we’ve all seen in a job description…“Be able to perform any other task required by the Department Head.” This is where 90 percent of the work typically comes from and what it really means is that the candidate will spend most of his/her time partaking in useless meetings and management-driven witch hunts. Add to that the fact that, once hired, the candidate will need to spend most of his/her time playing personal and organizational games to better their career, like stump-the-dummy and divide and conquer and throwing colleagues under the bus. The above job description gives you have a glimpse into a normal day in management in the modern workplace.

Isn’t it somewhat disheartening that business hasn’t essentially changed the way it’s been run in a century? Modern business is (and probably always will be) hierarchical, vertically organized, autocratic, political, fiefdom rich and meeting centric. Add to that the fact that most businesses suffer a lack of substantive communication flowing from the top to the bottom of the organization. Ironically, many companies actually realize that they are mired down in the ways of the past. This is evident by the endless preaching of the tired old buzz-phrase; “think outside the box.” Companies tell their employees they must do this as a way to somehow miraculously break free of the old ways of the past and invent something new. However, this is little better than wishful thinking. If an organization truly wants to transform itself into something fresh and new−and remarkable, it should be encouraging its employees to “think inside the box” instead.

In his book The Gifted Boss: How to Find, Create and Keep Great Employees, Dale Dauten reminds us that, “to get to better, you must go through different.” And to be different companies must first come to grips with their current situation and limitations−their skeletons in the closet. Before you can plan on how to get to where you want to be, you must first know where you are. Thus, to truly change−to go through different−companies must soul-search to find ways to reinvent the way they’re currently doing day-to-day business. Otherwise they remain stuck in the status-quo−doing things the way they always have. Thus, the real issue isn’t whether people are thinking outside the box but whether they should be thinking inside the box. Thinking inside the box is about going back to the basics and rethinking the way you do business on a daily basis.

Unfortunately I fear nothing will change in the next century, because most organizations, by their very nature, are change-averse. It’s tough to get significant, game winning, changes through most organizations.

In their book Rework, Jason Fried & David Hansson address this issue and make the point that most organizations can’t really change because it’s too expensive. By this they mean that as a company grows it increases its mass. You’ve heard the term ‘critical mass.’ Organizations achieve their version of critical mass and the bigger the mass the harder and more expensive it is to change. According to Hansson and Fried, the typical things that contribute to increasing mass are (to name a few);

• Excess staff
• Crippling Meetings
• Thick, deep processes and procedures
• Inventory
• Long and complex roadmaps (vision) to the future
• Office politics

In their words; “the bigger you are the harder to pivot.”

When you add to the above the typical short-term obsession management has over revenue and profit you’re left with an atmosphere that’s highly change averse. Of course, the worst of all the above maladies just might be office politics. In my book, Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw, I dedicate an entire chapter to how office politics can cripple an organization, so of all the organizational liabilities above politics might be the single most powerful inhibitor to change in the workplace.

“Thinking inside the box” is all about understanding and changing/removing the above laundry list of inhibitors to change. Until an organization can shed some mass and cut the politics there’s not much chance that “thinking outside the box” will change anything, so start your own revolution by “thinking inside the box.”

The term “proactive” seems to be the most over used buzzword in business today, so let’s take a close look at its usage and meaning.

Dictionary.com defines proactive as; serving to prepare for, intervene in, or control an expected occurrence or situation, especially a negative or difficult one. The freedictionary.com provides another definition; acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty, and; tending to initiate change rather than reacting to events.

There’s an interesting word in the above two dictionary definitions: “expected.” This means that, to be proactive, one must actively engage in change as a result of some “expected” event. However, in the context that it’s used in the workplace, it usually signifies an expectation by management that if people would only be more proactive, they’d be able to foresee “unexpected” problems before they happen and solve them before they become crises versus reacting in fire-fight mode.

The key point here is that to be proactive, most management expects people to possess the ability to “foresee” potential problems before they happen, i.e. to predict the future.

Problems we don’t know about until they happen are called “surprises.” Google defines a surprise as; an unexpected or astonishing event. The freedictionary.com defines it as; to encounter unexpectedly, or take, or catch unawares. The operative word in these definitions is “unexpected.” Thus, unexpected is the essence of a surprise.

The question then becomes how someone can be logically expected to be proactive and foresee something that is unexpected. Nowhere in any of the definitions of proactive does it say one must be able to foretell the unexpected.

So if management really wants the workforce to foretell the unexpected, then what they’re really looking for is an army of soothsayers; people able to foresee the future. However, I’ve never seen that skill listed in a job description or on a performance appraisal form.

If people and organizations were truly proactive in their thinking and attitudes, then the fact that the inevitable glitch will happen will be expected, and they would know how to react with calm and poise. What’s expected is that there will be things happening unexpectedly.

As Rahm Emanuel noted, we should use a crisis as an opportunity for real change. Recall the third definition: tending to initiate change rather than reacting to events. This then is the true meaning of “proactive.” This change component should be the essence of the proactive definition. However, the organizations that preach proactiveness the most are typically the least adaptive, or receptive, to change.

If the whole gist of being proactive is the ability to forecast problems that are yet unknown and take action to circumvent them from happening, then management wouldn’t need any other fancy tools to run the business. As a matter of fact, if the employees were so good at foretelling the future, they’d all win the lottery, and quit.

Isn’t it a bit naïve to think that you can catch all the potential problems beforehand? Go on using the word “proactive” all you want, but the only way to survive in today’s workplace is to understand:

• You must be prepared for the unexpected
• The unexpected will unexpectedly happen

Our decisions and best-laid plans rarely work out the way we expect. However, what often seems to be a surprise catastrophe, if treated correctly, can possibly be an opportunity for change. We’ve all heard of the immutable Murphy’s Law. There’s no truer law in the world of business. It’s immutable because no matter what proactive rhetoric an organization throws around, Murphy’s Law−and O’Toole’s Corollary of Finagle’s Law, which says that the perversity of a universe tends toward the maximum−will always prevail.

The real challenge for management is not being able to forecast problems; it’s learning how to react to them without panic.

“Performing animals do tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish for doing so. You should aspire to do better. You will be a friend, a parent, a coach, an employee−and so on. But only in your job will you be explicitly evaluated and [hopefully] rewarded for your performance. Don’t let your life decisions be distorted by the fact that your boss is the only one tossing you peanuts.”

Above is quoted from the April, 28-29, 2011 Wall Street Journal article “10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You,” by Charles Wheelan.

Most organizations suffer from what’s called the “Goldilocks Syndrome.” We investigated a form of this disease in an earlier post about the need for many organizations to be constantly searching to hire the best-of-the-best employees. Simply stated, the “Goldilocks Syndrome” maintains that; for most of us to accept something it must fall within certain margins, as opposed to reaching extremes. Said another way, it’s the need to maintain the status quo.

The Goldilocks Syndrome explains why change is so hard to implement in most organizations. Most organizations fear change and thus the process of change is extremely difficult, and painful, even if the change itself is minimal, or even mundane. Why? There are a number of factors that come in to play.

Sociopathically run organizations will amplify the fear of change by the very nature of the sociopathic mentality. When the boss is change averse it bleeds down though the organization.

Also, most organizations, as they get bigger, have inundated, or hamstrung, themselves with oppressive process and procedure.

The bigger the ship the more difficult it is to turn.

Additionally, change is not free and for most companies clinging to profitability they just plain can’t afford to change anything. This is exacerbated by the short term (quarterly) focus on finances. Companies are reluctant to spend now for the benefit of the future.

This is an offshoot of what I call in my book “The Harpagon Syndrome,” in which management becomes so obsessed with the quarterly revenue and profit that they start to make decisions that ultimately are not in their own long term best interest.

Harpagon’s Syndrome is derived from the Molière’s play L’Avare, in which the main character, Harpagon, becomes so obsessed with money that it becomes all-consuming and he shuns even family in his need to protect his fortune.

What’s interesting about organizations that suffer from The Goldilocks Syndrome is that these same organizations probably constantly preach that employees must be more “proactive.” In my next post I’m going to expose the term “proactive’ for what it really is.

In my book I talk about the obsession that many management teams have with chasing the all elusive ‘best-of-the-best’ employee. Many organizations are on a constant quest to “upgrade” their organization in this manner. They think that if they only had the crème de la crème all their visions and values and financial goals would miraculously become reality.

They also believe that this illusive team of A-players would be more proactive, efficient and effective. See my book Puttin’ Cologne on the Rickshaw for my take on the “proactive” epidemic.

In his April 17th 2012 Financial Times article, “Only a Privileged Few Work with Top Talent,” Philip Delves Broughton points out; “Everyone loves to recite the mantras of excellence, like the one about A-players hiring A-players and B-players hiring C-players. The reality is that A-players are a limited resource, while Bs and Cs are what are usually available and affordable.” They key here is “affordability,” and in my book I talk about the fact that most organizations are not prepared to pay for the best-of-the-best anyway.

What’s interesting is that these very management teams are themselves only average yet they prop themselves up by brainwashing themselves with this nonsense. Pontificating the need to only hire the “best-of-the-best” helps convince themselves that they too are A-players hiring A-players.

When you think about it, this is very telling of the way an organization is managed and by how the employees are treated. Most organizations don’t know how to treat their average employees let alone the best-of-the-best. They fact is that most organizations are loaded with average workers and that’s what management has to work with.

As Broughton points out; “…managers spend more time managing mediocrity than they do searching for excellence. Their day-to-day work is more like shoving a lumpy mattress up a narrow staircase.”

It’s ironic in a way. Most organizations become so fixated on the belief that the best-of-the-best employees all must work somewhere else and as such they must constantly be searching to hire these “rock stars” into their organization. The pity is they never realize that the employees they already have can be the best-of-the-best if only management were to motivate them through trust and shared accountability versus the typical command and control mentality.

If you do hire the best-of-the-best your business or organization better be the best-of-the-best cultural environment or all you’re doing is hiring another employee who’ll become disillusioned and disgruntled in a week, a month or a year, and you’ll be then giving him a bad performance review, all the while saying that you want to hire the best-of-the-best.

In the book Rework, Jason Fried and David Hansson drive home this point, “Instead of thinking about how you can land a room full of rock-stars, think about the room instead. We’re all capable of bad, average and great work. The environment has a lot more to do with great work than most people realize…there’s a ton of untapped potential trapped under lame policies, poor direction, and stifling bureaucracies. Cut the crap and you’ll find that people are waiting to do great work.”