The tyranny of the friendless Michael O. Church

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/the-tyranny-of-the-friendless/

... I’ve recently come to the realization that organizational decay is typically dominated by a single factor that is easy to understand, being so core to human sociology. While it’s associated with large companies, it can set in when they’re small. It’s a consequence of in-group exclusivity. Almost all organizations function as oligarchies, some with formal in-crowds (government officials or titled managers) and some without. If this in-crowd develops a conscious desire to exclude others, it will select and promote people who are likely to retain and even guard its boundaries. Only a certain type of person is likely to do this: friendless people. Those who dislike, and are disliked by, the out-crowd are unlikely to let anyone else in. They’re non-sticky: they come with a promise of “You get just me”, and that makes them very attractive candidates for admission into the elite. Non-stickiness is seen as desirable from above– no one wants to invite the guy who’ll invite his whole entourage– but, in the business world, it’s negatively correlated with pretty much any human attribute that could be considered a virtue. People who are good at their jobs are more likely to be well-liked and engaged and form convivial bonds. People who are socially adept tend to have friends at high levels and low. People who care a lot about social justice are likely to champion the poor and unpopular. A virtuous person is more likely to be connected laterally and from “below”. That shouldn’t count against a person, but for an exclusive club that wants to stay exclusive, it does. What if he brings his friends in, and changes the nature of the group? What if his conscience compels him to spill in-group secrets? For this reason, the non-sticky and unattached are better candidates for admission. The value that executive suites place on non-stickiness is one of many possible explanations for managerial mediocrity as it creeps into an organization. Before addressing why I think my theory is right, I need to analyze three of the others, all styled as “The $NAME Principle”.

The “Peter Principle” is the claim that people are promoted up to their first level of incompetence, and stay there. It’s an attractive notion, insofar as most people have seen it in action. There are terminal middle managers who don’t seem like they’ll ever gain another step, but who play politics just well enough not to get fired. (It sucks to be beneath one. He’ll sacrifice you to protect his position.) That said, I find the Peter Principle, in general, to be mostly false because of its implicit belief in corporate meritocracy. What is most incorrect about it is the belief that upper-level jobs are harder or more demanding than those in the middle. In fact, there’s an effort thermocline in almost every organization. Above the effort thermocline, which is usually the de facto delineation between mere management roles and executive positions, jobs get easier and less accountable with increasing rank. If the one-tick-late-but-like-clockwork Peter Principle were the sole limiting factor on advancement, you’d expect that those who pass the the thermocline would all become CEOs, and that’s clearly not the case. While merit and hard work are required less and less with increasing rank, political resistance amplifies just because there are so few of the top jobs that there’s bound to be competition. Additionally, even below the effort thermocline there are people employed below their maximum level of competence because of political resistance. The Peter Principle is too vested in the idea of corporate meritocracy to be accurate.

Scott Adams has proposed an alternative theory of low-merit promotion: the Dilbert Principle. According to it, managers are often incompetent line workers who were promoted “out of harm’s way”. I won’t deny that it exists in some organizations, although it usually isn’t applied within critical divisions of the company. When incompetents are knowingly promoted, it’s usually a dead-end pseudo-promotion that comes with a small pay raise and a title bump, but lateral movement into unimportant work. That said, its purpose isn’t just to limit damage, but to make the person more likely to leave. If someone’s not bad enough to fire but not especially good, gilding his CV with a fancy title might invite him to (euphemism?) succeed elsewhere… or, perhaps, not-succeed elsewhere but be someone else’s problem. All of that said, this kind of move is pretty rare. Incompetent people who are politically successful are not known to be incompetent, because politics-of-performance outweighs actual performance ten-to-one in terms of making reputations, and those who have a reputation for incompetence are those who failed politically, and they don’t get exit promotions. They just get fired. The general idea that people are made managers to limit their damage potential is false because the decision to issue such promotions is one that would, by necessity, be made by other managers. As a tribe, managers have far too much pride to ever think the thought, “he’s incompetent, we must make him one of us”. Dilbert-style promotions occasionally occur and incompetents definitely get promoted, but the intentional promotion of incompetents into important roles is extremely rare.

Finally, there’s the Gervais Principle, developed by Venkatesh Rao, which asserts that organizations respond both to performance and talent, but sometimes in surprising ways. Low-talent high-performers (“eager beavers” or “Clueless”) get middle management roles where they carry the banner for their superiors, and high-talent low-performers (“Sociopaths”) either get groomed for upper-management or get fired. High-talent high-performers aren’t really addressed by the theory, and there’s a sound reason why. In this case, the talent that matters most is strategy: not working hard necessarily, but knowing what is worth working on. High talent people will, therefore, work very hard when given tasks appropriate to their career goals and desired trajectory in the company, but their default mode will be to slack on the unimportant make-work. So a high-talent person who is not being tapped for leadership will almost certainly be a low performer: at least, on the assigned make work that is given to those not on a career fast track...The Gervais/MacLeod model gives the most complete assessment of organizational functioning, but it’s not without its faults. Intended as satire, the MacLeod cartoon gave unflattering names to each tier (“Losers” at the bottom, “Clueless” in middle-management, and “Sociopaths” at the top). It also seems to be a static assertion, while the dynamic behaviors are far more interesting. How do “Sociopaths” get to the top, since they obviously don’t start there? When “Clueless” become clued-in, where do they go? What do each of these people really want? For how long do “Losers” tolerate losing? (Are they even losing?) Oh, and– most importantly for those of us who are studying to become more like the MacLeod Sociopaths (who aren’t actually sociopathic per se, but risk-tolerant, motivated, and insubordinate)– what determines which ones are groomed for leadership and which ones are fired? If there’s an issue with the Gervais Principle, it’s that it asserts too much intelligence and intent within an organization. No executive ever says, “that kid looks like a Sociopath; let’s train him to be one of us.” The Gervais model describes the stable state of an organization in advanced decline, but doesn’t (in my opinion) give full insight into why things happen in the way that they do.

So I’m going to offer a fourth model of creeping managerial mediocrity...

GO READ ABOUT IT AT THE LINK!