Caligula’s Boast
© Copyright Frank D. Kanu 2000-2008
As you might know I am writing a book about managing people right now and Alan M. Perlman, PhD from Perlman Communications, Ltd. did not only shared this wonderful article of his with me, he also allowed me to post it in my blog. Thank you Alan!
Caligula’s Boast
On the Allure of Management and the Inevitability of Bad Bosses
“Are We Any Better at Managing People?” asks the cover of the September/October 2002 issue of Across the Board magazine. Inside, various experts dance around the question, their answers ranging from “not much” to “yes.”
My response to the question had formed in my head even before I opened the magazine: better…compared to what? During 10,000 years of civilization, we have improved, refined or discarded almost all the institutions and practices of our primitive and ancient ancestors, with one glaring exception: when it comes to marshaling and managing human talent, we have barely progressed beyond slavery.
After over twenty years of observing, reading about, and participating in corporate life, my conclusion is that almost everywhere, autocracy and totalitarianism are the reality and the rule. With few exceptions, they are the essence of management and leadership. And regardless of how much the organization says that it prizes autonomy, the main motivator of human behavior is (and always has been) fear of the boss—because the power of the boss is very nearly absolute. Somebody gets put in charge, generally with little or no involvement of those over whom he or she is to exert power, and from that moment forth, the person can boast, with the Emperor Caligula, that “I have the right to do anything to anyone.”
It’s no wonder that (as I read in Kate Jennings’ novel Moral Hazards) that Mussolini is said to have admired American corporations. Il Duce was no doubt awed by the level of obedience, the profound uniformity of thought and behavior, that they were able to achieve.
And why not? When a chain of command is strictly maintained, when all are entangled in a tight web of consensual control, each boss has complete power over the economic destiny—thus effectively over the very lives—of his or her employees.
Some bosses—around 10-15% in my experience—wield this awesome power in a humane and rational way, because they are mature, psychologically healthy people. As for the rest…well, they are our bad bosses. They are petty tyrants who bring their character flaws to work and act them out on their defenseless employees, callously and with total impunity.
And it gets better, because the higher you go in an organization, the fewer the checks on your behavior, until you reach the very top, at which point there are no checks whatsoever! For many bosses, the freedom to be a jerk must feel like the greatest executive perk of all, much better than the corporate jet, better even than a seven-figure compensation package.
Think of the breathtaking possibilities! When you’re the boss, you can order other people around and make imperious, unilateral decisions over their lives, as long as it’s legal (and sometimes even if it’s not).
You can show your anger anytime you like, even throw temper tantrums. You can control every interaction: you can be late, waste people’s time, talk as long as you like, change the subject and interrupt at will. You can capriciously yank people away from whatever they’re doing and set them to work satisfying your whims.
If you really want to have some fun, you can jerk people around and chide them for doing exactly what you ordered them to do six months ago. You can belittle, threaten, humiliate, and criticize others at your pleasure…why, you can completely forget all that be-nice, golden-rule malarkey they’ve been harping on since kindergarten. You can be free as a child again—and this time, you own the sandbox. As long as they’re under you on the org chart, you have the right to do anything to anyone!
After over a century of labor laws and union organization, we still have bad bosses. Despite our best efforts to bring a measure of civility and autonomy to the workplace, they flourish. Part of the explanation is that bad bosses have been with us as long as the boss system has been with us. The two, are, in fact, inseparable. Bad bosses are the inevitable consequence of the boss system. Absolute power really does corrupt absolutely. But bad bosses are skillful at maintaining their status and keeping their abuses from being discovered.
Bad bosses don’t always act like Ebenezer Scrooge or Captain Bligh. Tyranny can take as many forms as there are bosses, from unctuous joviality to exclusion and ostracism to gruff sternness to out-and-out, browbeating intimidation. Mr. Dithers harasses and threatens Dagwood crudely and overtly, while Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Boss practices a more subtle humiliation clothed in the jargon of HR and management fads. But the two comic strips are philosophically (and in The Chicago Tribune, literally) on the same page.
Bad bosses are everywhere, as is evidence of bad bossism. Bad bosses are the reason for the success of books like How to Work for a Jerk; It’s a Job, Not a Jail: How to Break Your Shackles When You Can’t Afford to Quit; When Smart People Work for Dumb Bosses: How to Survive in a Crazy and Dysfunctional Workplace and The Bully at Work: What You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on the Job.
The cries of anguish ring out in chat rooms, bulletin boards, and websites (the sites’ very names—Bullybusters.org, Workingwounded.com—tear at the heart) and appear regularly in the “Working” or “Workplace” advice column of the business section of the newspaper. Typically the best advice the columnist can give is “update your resume and get the hell out of there.” [If only it were that easy. All too often the escapee will find another bad boss awaiting him or her at the new company.] A letter to Fortune columnist Annie Fisher [Oct. 14, 2002.] begins “My boss is a bully who constantly undermines my work”—and this poor reader needs advice on how to get a letter of reference from the SOB.
Indeed, it’s extremely easy to create an organization full of autocratic bosses, since CEOs and senior managers hire people just like themselves, and these individuals, in a cascade effect, hire the same kind of people, while others who don’t fit are gotten rid of or leave on their own.
The inevitability of the bad boss is the underlying premise of a 2002 book, Fortune columnist Stanley Bing’s Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up[New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.].
The elephant is, of course, the all-powerful boss (the perfect metaphor, of course, since authoritarianism is the key fact of organizational life, yet everyone pretends not to notice). Bing writes that “Elephants play by rules of their own devising. These rules often make no sense to anyone but the elephant, and there is no reason to follow them, except that the elephant will hurt you if you do not.” [From book excerpt published in Fortune, March 18, 2002]
The Zen part is surrender and resignation: “We are all one with the corporation. It has no beginning and no end. So relax. Nothing really matters all that much anyway, particularly you.” [”The story of Sid Arthur,” Bing’s column in the March 18, 2002 issue of Fortune.] “Throwing the elephant” means practicing the appropriate servile, manipulative behaviors. Bing even recommends a “feeding schedule,” e.g., “6:00 a.m. - 1st feeding: short update (voice mail).”
I have long been a fan of Bing’s acerbic take on organizational life. When I first read the book excerpt, I thought it a pity that such formidable intellect and talent should be spent on creating this Machiavellian manual of brown-nosing. But then I realized that Bing’s purpose is entirely legitimate: he’s telling us all how he survived—and how anyone must behave in order to survive—under the boss system.
Yes, bad bosses are everywhere—everywhere but in the booming management/leadership industry (there are over 4,100 books on leadership in print). It almost seems that there are two parallel, coexisting universes. One is the rarefied and idealized world of management/leadership consultants and scholars, in which experts define “leadership skills” and managers take courses, read books, attend conferences and seminars, learn buzzwords like “empowerment,” and are then sent back transformed. The other is the real world of grinding, day-to-day absolute bossism, in which dysfunctional personalities ignore all the happy horseshit and get on with the business of ordering people around and doing senior management’s bidding.
I think Peter Drucker has it right. He says that “leadership is all hype,” and he notes that “we’ve had three great leaders in this century—Hitler, Stalin, and Mao—and you see the devastation they left behind.” As for modern, so-called “post-heroic” leadership, Drucker says “It’s nothing but hard work and conscientiousness.” [Quoted in Forbes, 2/21/94]
I’ve worked my butt off for numerous senior executives and CEOs, as did everyone around me. We needed the jobs; we needed the money. There were goals we had to meet. Our performance had nothing to do with the executive’s “leadership skills.” If we were treated respectfully, if we had fun on the job, if we felt creative, so much the better. But we learned not to expect any of that, regardless of the company’s happy-talk. Nobody fretted about adjusting to anybody’s “leadership style.” They all had the same style: they issue orders. You obey.
The management/leadership industry is well-intentioned, no question. The purpose of its cornucopia of tools and techniques is to get the unenlightened 85% to act like the enlightened 15%. Forget it. Most of them will not change because they do not want to and they do not have to. Bad bosses are not only ubiquitous and inevitable; they are, given present circumstances, impregnable.
To understand why and how bad bosses persist, let us look at an example of a master bad boss in action. It comes from my friend in a large, well-known corporation that actually prides itself on good management (and has the requisite HR bureaucracy in place spewing out the slogans). He tells the sad tale of his servitude under a senior executive we shall call David Dirt.
Dirt is the ultimate toady, the complete organization man. Everyone above him is his master. Everyone below him is his slave. He regards other males in his department as threats and drives them out by micromanaging them to the point of frustration and using his vice-presidential position to steal their assignments and demoralize them.
He treats his employees like, well, dirt. In the six years he was managed by Dirt-bag, my friend received only one or two thank-you’s, and not a single direct compliment, despite stellar reviews from people all over the company. Dirt never once asked his opinion, despite my friend’s outstanding reputation in his field.
Dirt-bag did harass him by micromanaging, but the main weapons were ostracism and assignment-swiping. Not only did Dirt not do what managers are supposed to do – teach, coach, motivate, develop – he did the exact opposite, with all the arrogance and impunity of an SS officer.
After his departure, my friend listened to a tearful report of similar tyranny from another of the professionals in the department—a woman, actually, so Dirt-bag seems to be an equal opportunity oppressor. In fact, shortly before my friend’s departure, the department hired a minority male. In an astonishing two weeks, he was back at his old job. He told my friend that Dirt-bag’s relentless top-down management was not for him.
Nor was Dirt-bag unique in that company. My friend told his story to another professional, who responded with her own bad boss story. Now here’s the kicker: he heard, from a new hire, a story about how autocratic her new boss was—and it was the same woman who’d told the bad-boss story!
Conclusion: it’s quite possible for bad bosses to be blind to their own abuses. Perhaps they’ve deadened themselves to what they’re doing. Or perhaps some spark of humanity was snuffed out decades ago. I’ve often found insight in Longfellow’s comment that “if we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” Who knows why bad bosses are so bad? Who knows what pain they must be suffering?
But more important from a practical point of view is the question of how bad bosses get away with it, year after year. How do they remain invisible to all but the poor souls they torment? They employ several strategies. David Dirt was a master of them all.
Put these all together—and I’m sure there are other ploys—and you begin to understand the ubiquity and perpetuity of David Dirt and the legions of other bad bosses. You begin to understand how the boss system can put unstable people with personality disorders in absolute charge of other people’s economic destiny—and how they stay there. You see how it can all happen routinely in companies that pride themselves on good management—companies that have in place all the programs, all the idealistic Organizational Development people, all the catchy acronyms, even desk calendars that urge bosses to praise and thank.
Do you think David Dirt was not exposed to his share of it, that he did not attend the required number of management and leadership training classes? But the sad fact is that the best-intentioned HR systems are no better than the people assigned to implement them.
And there seems to be no easy remedy. Well, there could be an easy remedy: that bad bosses acquire the ego strength to do what managers and leaders are supposed to do — hire people smarter than they are, people whom they trust. And these people would have the right to (indeed, would be expected to) call the boss on his/her inappropriate behavior or strategies and even appeal to a higher authority with no threat to him/herself. Why does the chain of command enjoy such unanimous support? Is it because it virtually eliminates restraints on a manager’s power?
All too often an organization takes a particular path just because the top person wants it, and nobody has the guts to question him or her. An assumption of management/leadership “questionability” could do a lot to offset the rigidity of the boss system. But adopting such an assumption would involve cultural change at the deepest level, and, paradoxically, only the top person can instill it.
If there is no intervention—no change in the basic assumptions of management—bad bosses will continue to be tolerated, because they produce. Because they act collegial, manage their relationships carefully, and never challenge the groupthink. And especially because they produce. Numbers often trump all.
Yet this tolerance is a devil’s bargain. For one thing, the boss system is a factor in the worst excesses of capitalism. How might events have been different if the CEOs of Arthur Andersen, Global Crossing, Tyco International, Enron, and so many others had been confronted by principled and concerned senior mangers, backed up by outsider Board members, in a “this has got to stop” meeting? How much of the squandered wealth, how many of the vaporized jobs would have been saved, had it not been for the sanctity of the damned boss system?
And then there are the appalling human costs at the individual level. Some people benefit from churn. They eventually move to other jobs in the company and thus escape their bad bosses—a preferable alternative to complaining. But the wounds remain with them.
Others stay and suffer. A Dilbert List of the Day [Chicago Tribune, Feb. 20, 2002] asks readers to provide “ways your boss is a distraction.” One response: “Would ‘by ruthlessly crushing what little spirit I can muster’ count?”
Day after day, in thousands of organizations, David Dirt and his ilk continue their loathsome work, squandering and destroying the very human talent and energy they’re supposed to be nurturing and developing. Year after year, under the boot heel of Dirt et al., creative and motivated people are transformed into bitter, apathetic—but compliant and smiling—drones.
What reader of this article has not, at some point in his or her career, witnessed (or perhaps even experienced) the bad boss in full flower? The daily ostracism, criticism, jerking around, bullying, or any of a dozen other indignities? And who hasn’t seen (or perhaps even experienced) the results—the humiliation, the isolation, the desperation, the unexplained physical pains, the migraines, the depression, the heart attacks?
According to Curt Hoffman of The Gallup Organization, “Most system defects at the workplace relate to supervisors who deaden workers’ spirits rather than motivate them… People join companies because they like the firm’s reputation or salary, but most quit out of frustration with a direct manager.” [”Fighting the system: Can’t do the job? Maybe it’s not you,” Chicago Tribune, July 7, 2002.] In 2002, according to the Chicago Tribune, a Gallup poll revealed that “19 percent of workers felt no connection to their jobs at all. Among their complaints were that they seldom received recognition for good work, their supervisor did not seem to care about them as people and that no one encouraged their development.”
Can organizations deal with the bad-boss pandemic? Do they even want to, when the only people with the power to change the system are in charge of the system? In the movie Minority Report, there is a scene in a futuristic virtual reality arcade where patrons can construct whatever fantasy they like. One customer announces his choice—”I want to kill my boss”—and the movie audience laughs appreciatively. Amid the wonders of the future, some things don’t change.
But I believe change is possible. Strong business performance and responsible, accountable decision making do not require totalitarianism. Organizations can live up to their own rhetoric. I’m confident that with all the genius and experience out there, we can teach managers and leaders to stand up to the abuses and excesses of their bosses — and be rewarded for it because the entire organization adheres to a higher standard: humane management and ethical behavior. That day is very far off.
Still, I believe that organizations, if they really want to, can change the boss system, bend the sanctity of the chain of command, and raise management beyond what is it in all too many cases: the moral equivalent of slavery (or, at best, sharecropping). I believe they really can do what they say they do: manage people. But first they must admit the existence of the problem.
And you, gentle reader: if you know, in your heart of hearts, that you are a bad boss, you can change. In fact, you must, beginning tomorrow—else how can you sleep tonight?
© Alan M. Perlman, PhD
Perlman Communications, Ltd.
Professional Ghostwriting and Language Services
As you might know I am writing a book about managing people right now and Alan M. Perlman, PhD from Perlman Communications, Ltd. did not only shared this wonderful article of his with me, he also allowed me to post it in my blog. Thank you Alan!
On the Allure of Management and the Inevitability of Bad Bosses
“Are We Any Better at Managing People?” asks the cover of the September/October 2002 issue of Across the Board magazine. Inside, various experts dance around the question, their answers ranging from “not much” to “yes.”
My response to the question had formed in my head even before I opened the magazine: better…compared to what? During 10,000 years of civilization, we have improved, refined or discarded almost all the institutions and practices of our primitive and ancient ancestors, with one glaring exception: when it comes to marshaling and managing human talent, we have barely progressed beyond slavery.
After over twenty years of observing, reading about, and participating in corporate life, my conclusion is that almost everywhere, autocracy and totalitarianism are the reality and the rule. With few exceptions, they are the essence of management and leadership. And regardless of how much the organization says that it prizes autonomy, the main motivator of human behavior is (and always has been) fear of the boss—because the power of the boss is very nearly absolute. Somebody gets put in charge, generally with little or no involvement of those over whom he or she is to exert power, and from that moment forth, the person can boast, with the Emperor Caligula, that “I have the right to do anything to anyone.”
It’s no wonder that (as I read in Kate Jennings’ novel Moral Hazards) that Mussolini is said to have admired American corporations. Il Duce was no doubt awed by the level of obedience, the profound uniformity of thought and behavior, that they were able to achieve.
And why not? When a chain of command is strictly maintained, when all are entangled in a tight web of consensual control, each boss has complete power over the economic destiny—thus effectively over the very lives—of his or her employees.
Some bosses—around 10-15% in my experience—wield this awesome power in a humane and rational way, because they are mature, psychologically healthy people. As for the rest…well, they are our bad bosses. They are petty tyrants who bring their character flaws to work and act them out on their defenseless employees, callously and with total impunity.
And it gets better, because the higher you go in an organization, the fewer the checks on your behavior, until you reach the very top, at which point there are no checks whatsoever! For many bosses, the freedom to be a jerk must feel like the greatest executive perk of all, much better than the corporate jet, better even than a seven-figure compensation package.
Think of the breathtaking possibilities! When you’re the boss, you can order other people around and make imperious, unilateral decisions over their lives, as long as it’s legal (and sometimes even if it’s not).
You can show your anger anytime you like, even throw temper tantrums. You can control every interaction: you can be late, waste people’s time, talk as long as you like, change the subject and interrupt at will. You can capriciously yank people away from whatever they’re doing and set them to work satisfying your whims.
If you really want to have some fun, you can jerk people around and chide them for doing exactly what you ordered them to do six months ago. You can belittle, threaten, humiliate, and criticize others at your pleasure…why, you can completely forget all that be-nice, golden-rule malarkey they’ve been harping on since kindergarten. You can be free as a child again—and this time, you own the sandbox. As long as they’re under you on the org chart, you have the right to do anything to anyone!
After over a century of labor laws and union organization, we still have bad bosses. Despite our best efforts to bring a measure of civility and autonomy to the workplace, they flourish. Part of the explanation is that bad bosses have been with us as long as the boss system has been with us. The two, are, in fact, inseparable. Bad bosses are the inevitable consequence of the boss system. Absolute power really does corrupt absolutely. But bad bosses are skillful at maintaining their status and keeping their abuses from being discovered.
Bad bosses don’t always act like Ebenezer Scrooge or Captain Bligh. Tyranny can take as many forms as there are bosses, from unctuous joviality to exclusion and ostracism to gruff sternness to out-and-out, browbeating intimidation. Mr. Dithers harasses and threatens Dagwood crudely and overtly, while Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Boss practices a more subtle humiliation clothed in the jargon of HR and management fads. But the two comic strips are philosophically (and in The Chicago Tribune, literally) on the same page.
Bad bosses are everywhere, as is evidence of bad bossism. Bad bosses are the reason for the success of books like How to Work for a Jerk; It’s a Job, Not a Jail: How to Break Your Shackles When You Can’t Afford to Quit; When Smart People Work for Dumb Bosses: How to Survive in a Crazy and Dysfunctional Workplace and The Bully at Work: What You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on the Job.
The cries of anguish ring out in chat rooms, bulletin boards, and websites (the sites’ very names—Bullybusters.org, Workingwounded.com—tear at the heart) and appear regularly in the “Working” or “Workplace” advice column of the business section of the newspaper. Typically the best advice the columnist can give is “update your resume and get the hell out of there.” [If only it were that easy. All too often the escapee will find another bad boss awaiting him or her at the new company.] A letter to Fortune columnist Annie Fisher [Oct. 14, 2002.] begins “My boss is a bully who constantly undermines my work”—and this poor reader needs advice on how to get a letter of reference from the SOB.
Indeed, it’s extremely easy to create an organization full of autocratic bosses, since CEOs and senior managers hire people just like themselves, and these individuals, in a cascade effect, hire the same kind of people, while others who don’t fit are gotten rid of or leave on their own.
The inevitability of the bad boss is the underlying premise of a 2002 book, Fortune columnist Stanley Bing’s Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up[New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.].
The elephant is, of course, the all-powerful boss (the perfect metaphor, of course, since authoritarianism is the key fact of organizational life, yet everyone pretends not to notice). Bing writes that “Elephants play by rules of their own devising. These rules often make no sense to anyone but the elephant, and there is no reason to follow them, except that the elephant will hurt you if you do not.” [From book excerpt published in Fortune, March 18, 2002]
The Zen part is surrender and resignation: “We are all one with the corporation. It has no beginning and no end. So relax. Nothing really matters all that much anyway, particularly you.” [”The story of Sid Arthur,” Bing’s column in the March 18, 2002 issue of Fortune.] “Throwing the elephant” means practicing the appropriate servile, manipulative behaviors. Bing even recommends a “feeding schedule,” e.g., “6:00 a.m. - 1st feeding: short update (voice mail).”
I have long been a fan of Bing’s acerbic take on organizational life. When I first read the book excerpt, I thought it a pity that such formidable intellect and talent should be spent on creating this Machiavellian manual of brown-nosing. But then I realized that Bing’s purpose is entirely legitimate: he’s telling us all how he survived—and how anyone must behave in order to survive—under the boss system.
Yes, bad bosses are everywhere—everywhere but in the booming management/leadership industry (there are over 4,100 books on leadership in print). It almost seems that there are two parallel, coexisting universes. One is the rarefied and idealized world of management/leadership consultants and scholars, in which experts define “leadership skills” and managers take courses, read books, attend conferences and seminars, learn buzzwords like “empowerment,” and are then sent back transformed. The other is the real world of grinding, day-to-day absolute bossism, in which dysfunctional personalities ignore all the happy horseshit and get on with the business of ordering people around and doing senior management’s bidding.
I think Peter Drucker has it right. He says that “leadership is all hype,” and he notes that “we’ve had three great leaders in this century—Hitler, Stalin, and Mao—and you see the devastation they left behind.” As for modern, so-called “post-heroic” leadership, Drucker says “It’s nothing but hard work and conscientiousness.” [Quoted in Forbes, 2/21/94]
I’ve worked my butt off for numerous senior executives and CEOs, as did everyone around me. We needed the jobs; we needed the money. There were goals we had to meet. Our performance had nothing to do with the executive’s “leadership skills.” If we were treated respectfully, if we had fun on the job, if we felt creative, so much the better. But we learned not to expect any of that, regardless of the company’s happy-talk. Nobody fretted about adjusting to anybody’s “leadership style.” They all had the same style: they issue orders. You obey.
The management/leadership industry is well-intentioned, no question. The purpose of its cornucopia of tools and techniques is to get the unenlightened 85% to act like the enlightened 15%. Forget it. Most of them will not change because they do not want to and they do not have to. Bad bosses are not only ubiquitous and inevitable; they are, given present circumstances, impregnable.
To understand why and how bad bosses persist, let us look at an example of a master bad boss in action. It comes from my friend in a large, well-known corporation that actually prides itself on good management (and has the requisite HR bureaucracy in place spewing out the slogans). He tells the sad tale of his servitude under a senior executive we shall call David Dirt.
Dirt is the ultimate toady, the complete organization man. Everyone above him is his master. Everyone below him is his slave. He regards other males in his department as threats and drives them out by micromanaging them to the point of frustration and using his vice-presidential position to steal their assignments and demoralize them.
He treats his employees like, well, dirt. In the six years he was managed by Dirt-bag, my friend received only one or two thank-you’s, and not a single direct compliment, despite stellar reviews from people all over the company. Dirt never once asked his opinion, despite my friend’s outstanding reputation in his field.
Dirt-bag did harass him by micromanaging, but the main weapons were ostracism and assignment-swiping. Not only did Dirt not do what managers are supposed to do – teach, coach, motivate, develop – he did the exact opposite, with all the arrogance and impunity of an SS officer.
After his departure, my friend listened to a tearful report of similar tyranny from another of the professionals in the department—a woman, actually, so Dirt-bag seems to be an equal opportunity oppressor. In fact, shortly before my friend’s departure, the department hired a minority male. In an astonishing two weeks, he was back at his old job. He told my friend that Dirt-bag’s relentless top-down management was not for him.
Nor was Dirt-bag unique in that company. My friend told his story to another professional, who responded with her own bad boss story. Now here’s the kicker: he heard, from a new hire, a story about how autocratic her new boss was—and it was the same woman who’d told the bad-boss story!
Conclusion: it’s quite possible for bad bosses to be blind to their own abuses. Perhaps they’ve deadened themselves to what they’re doing. Or perhaps some spark of humanity was snuffed out decades ago. I’ve often found insight in Longfellow’s comment that “if we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” Who knows why bad bosses are so bad? Who knows what pain they must be suffering?
But more important from a practical point of view is the question of how bad bosses get away with it, year after year. How do they remain invisible to all but the poor souls they torment? They employ several strategies. David Dirt was a master of them all.
- Bad bosses perform.
They follow orders, do their jobs well, put the numbers on the board, and bask in the glow of senior management’s pleasure. In many companies. this alone puts them beyond the reach of restraint. - Bad bosses manage up.
They cultivate very carefully their relationships with their own bosses, thus assuring that complaints about them will go nowhere and will in fact backfire on the complainer. - Bad bosses are collegial.
They preserve a fine sheen of bonhomie between themselves and their peers. They are like the nice neighbor who couldn’t possibly be—but alas, really is—a spouse- or child-abuser. This practice plays into the professional feudalism that already exists: managers and executives are extremely reluctant to question what goes on in their colleagues’ bailiwicks. - Bad bosses are buddies with HR.
A refinement of the collegiality technique. Bad bosses eat lunch with the HR officer in charge of their department, thus further assuring that complaints about them will go nowhere.
Put these all together—and I’m sure there are other ploys—and you begin to understand the ubiquity and perpetuity of David Dirt and the legions of other bad bosses. You begin to understand how the boss system can put unstable people with personality disorders in absolute charge of other people’s economic destiny—and how they stay there. You see how it can all happen routinely in companies that pride themselves on good management—companies that have in place all the programs, all the idealistic Organizational Development people, all the catchy acronyms, even desk calendars that urge bosses to praise and thank.
Do you think David Dirt was not exposed to his share of it, that he did not attend the required number of management and leadership training classes? But the sad fact is that the best-intentioned HR systems are no better than the people assigned to implement them.
And there seems to be no easy remedy. Well, there could be an easy remedy: that bad bosses acquire the ego strength to do what managers and leaders are supposed to do — hire people smarter than they are, people whom they trust. And these people would have the right to (indeed, would be expected to) call the boss on his/her inappropriate behavior or strategies and even appeal to a higher authority with no threat to him/herself. Why does the chain of command enjoy such unanimous support? Is it because it virtually eliminates restraints on a manager’s power?
All too often an organization takes a particular path just because the top person wants it, and nobody has the guts to question him or her. An assumption of management/leadership “questionability” could do a lot to offset the rigidity of the boss system. But adopting such an assumption would involve cultural change at the deepest level, and, paradoxically, only the top person can instill it.
If there is no intervention—no change in the basic assumptions of management—bad bosses will continue to be tolerated, because they produce. Because they act collegial, manage their relationships carefully, and never challenge the groupthink. And especially because they produce. Numbers often trump all.
Yet this tolerance is a devil’s bargain. For one thing, the boss system is a factor in the worst excesses of capitalism. How might events have been different if the CEOs of Arthur Andersen, Global Crossing, Tyco International, Enron, and so many others had been confronted by principled and concerned senior mangers, backed up by outsider Board members, in a “this has got to stop” meeting? How much of the squandered wealth, how many of the vaporized jobs would have been saved, had it not been for the sanctity of the damned boss system?
And then there are the appalling human costs at the individual level. Some people benefit from churn. They eventually move to other jobs in the company and thus escape their bad bosses—a preferable alternative to complaining. But the wounds remain with them.
Others stay and suffer. A Dilbert List of the Day [Chicago Tribune, Feb. 20, 2002] asks readers to provide “ways your boss is a distraction.” One response: “Would ‘by ruthlessly crushing what little spirit I can muster’ count?”
Day after day, in thousands of organizations, David Dirt and his ilk continue their loathsome work, squandering and destroying the very human talent and energy they’re supposed to be nurturing and developing. Year after year, under the boot heel of Dirt et al., creative and motivated people are transformed into bitter, apathetic—but compliant and smiling—drones.
What reader of this article has not, at some point in his or her career, witnessed (or perhaps even experienced) the bad boss in full flower? The daily ostracism, criticism, jerking around, bullying, or any of a dozen other indignities? And who hasn’t seen (or perhaps even experienced) the results—the humiliation, the isolation, the desperation, the unexplained physical pains, the migraines, the depression, the heart attacks?
According to Curt Hoffman of The Gallup Organization, “Most system defects at the workplace relate to supervisors who deaden workers’ spirits rather than motivate them… People join companies because they like the firm’s reputation or salary, but most quit out of frustration with a direct manager.” [”Fighting the system: Can’t do the job? Maybe it’s not you,” Chicago Tribune, July 7, 2002.] In 2002, according to the Chicago Tribune, a Gallup poll revealed that “19 percent of workers felt no connection to their jobs at all. Among their complaints were that they seldom received recognition for good work, their supervisor did not seem to care about them as people and that no one encouraged their development.”
Can organizations deal with the bad-boss pandemic? Do they even want to, when the only people with the power to change the system are in charge of the system? In the movie Minority Report, there is a scene in a futuristic virtual reality arcade where patrons can construct whatever fantasy they like. One customer announces his choice—”I want to kill my boss”—and the movie audience laughs appreciatively. Amid the wonders of the future, some things don’t change.
But I believe change is possible. Strong business performance and responsible, accountable decision making do not require totalitarianism. Organizations can live up to their own rhetoric. I’m confident that with all the genius and experience out there, we can teach managers and leaders to stand up to the abuses and excesses of their bosses — and be rewarded for it because the entire organization adheres to a higher standard: humane management and ethical behavior. That day is very far off.
Still, I believe that organizations, if they really want to, can change the boss system, bend the sanctity of the chain of command, and raise management beyond what is it in all too many cases: the moral equivalent of slavery (or, at best, sharecropping). I believe they really can do what they say they do: manage people. But first they must admit the existence of the problem.
And you, gentle reader: if you know, in your heart of hearts, that you are a bad boss, you can change. In fact, you must, beginning tomorrow—else how can you sleep tonight?
© Alan M. Perlman, PhD
Perlman Communications, Ltd.
Professional Ghostwriting and Language Services
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