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Minimise that Evil

Entry 2270, on 2023-04-24 at 12:48:18 (Rating 4, Comments)

It's been a while since I talked about my friend, Fred, hasn't it? In case you haven't encountered him before, Fred (not his real name) is an "IT professional" who works in a large company (or other type of organisation; I can't be more specific to protect him from the consequence of having an opinion) where he regularly encounters issues common to those types of institutions. And like many people working on those places, he likes to complain about what he sees as problems to anyone who will listen, like me!

Anyway, the big issue this time, is who takes responsibility for the direction a company is taking and its subsequent successes or failures. It seems that this depends on the current direction of the company. When things are going well, the management congratulate themselves on doing a good job, and might expand their numbers in order to take advantage of that opportunity. When things are going badly, it is inevitably blamed on a poor global economic environment, or an epidemic, or poor employee performance, or some other factor indirectly related to management. And the solution is often to hire more managers to help fix the situation, while "letting go" people of lower status to save money.

You might think this is a very inconsistent, dishonest, and irrational way to act, and you would be right, at least according to Fred (note that I am relaying his opinions in this post, and these might or might not agree with my own). But there is never any control over management, because who manages managers? It's a little bit like asking "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (translation: "who watches the watchers", see my blog post from 2013-05-23, with this title, for a discussion in the context of politics).

Fred wonders whether the management of his company sometimes, in their most honest personal moments, question their own abilities and the directions they are taking, because it should be apparent to anyone but the most determinedly ignorant that there is something wrong in what they are doing.

There are three ways in which these doubts might be overcome...

First, the Dunning-Kruger Effect might be prominent, that is they are too stupid to know how stupid they are. Note that the word stupid here can be substituted with delusional, corrupt, or some other negative attribute of your choice, depending on the specific situation.

Also note that this effect is a genuine, recognised part of social psychology, This section from Wikipedia summarises the origin of the effect quite well: Although the Dunning–Kruger effect was put forward in 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger have quoted Charles Darwin ("Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge") and Bertrand Russell ("One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision").

Second, they know things are bad, but they don't care, because except for in genuinely extreme situations, they still get paid the "big bucks" for doing whatever it is they do all day (see point three for one possibility for this).

Fred tends to play down this possibility though, because as he says: never attribute to malice that which can more easily be explained by incompetence. I also often use this phrase, so I would generally concur.

Third, their self-worth is reinforced by others in exactly the same situation they are in. For example in meetings (likely the major activity which answers the question in point 2 above) they tend to be very self-congratulatory, and reinforce each others worth. It's a bit like a mutual admiration society in a lunatic asylum!

I have a cartoon which puts this quite well, although in a different context. It's a picture of a sign outside a church which reads "Meet here Sunday, to shout down your doubts". I think many people would abandon their beliefs if they weren't occasionally reinforced by others in the same situation, and I think the connection between self-sustaining belief systems and religion is more than coincidental.

Of course, the problems with managers is a well-known phenomenon in everyday life. Scott Adams cartoon series "Dilbert" is (or was before his attempted cancellation) very popular, presumably because many people identified with the issues he portrayed. The most popular phase of the series followed Dilbert through his work in a large, bureaucratic company with incompetent management and cynical employees: does this sound familiar?

Here's a description from Wikipedia: Dilbert portrays corporate culture as a Kafkaesque world of bureaucracy for its own sake, where office politics preclude productivity, employees' skills and efforts are not rewarded, and busy work is praised. Much of the humor involves characters making ridiculous decisions in reaction to mismanagement.

If you haven't encountered the concept before, Kafkaesque refers to: Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech-born German-language writer whose surreal fiction vividly expressed the anxiety, alienation, and powerlessness of the individual in the 20th century. Kafka's work is characterized by nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority. Thus, the word Kafkaesque is often applied to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening. (Merriam-Webster)

Anyone who works in a large organisation today almost certainly identifies with the concepts of "anxiety, alienation, and powerlessness" and being "crushed by nonsensical, blind authority". Note that it is not authority in general which is the source of anxiety and alienation, it is the "nonsensical" and "blind" aspects of it which cause the problem.

Fred, when he is in one of his more aggressive phases likes to say "the only good manager is a dead manager", a reference to the original use, "the only good Indian is a dead Indian", attributed to American Civil War General Philip Sheridan. I'm sure Fred doesn't really believe this, because he isn't really a hateful or violent person (unlike General Sheridan), but it is indicative of his level of frustration and disgust.

Large organisations need some form of control over the direction they take, and some way to ensure the components (usually employees) work together towards a common goal - preferably a sensible and positive one - but is the current multi-layered hierarchy, where the people at the top are usually completely out of touch with what is happening at the lower levels and "in the real world" the best way to do it?

Surely there must be a better way, at the very least involving less layers of management. Fred estimates there are about 7 layers between him and the person at the top, and that might even increase in the near future. Not only are massive amounts of money spent on these people's salaries, but having that many layers hinders communications and overall efficiency.

Or maybe the "consultation" the management are always claiming to be committed to might be actually made real rather than just a word in a mission statement which is completely ignored. When a consultation exercise is initiated, often at great cost by external consultants, is it not reasonable to expect that the feedback might be acted on instead of ignored?

Or maybe when a company claims they are "client focussed" in their list of priorities they might actually make some effort to make that real. The people at the top (which Fred often prefer's to think of as the bottom) shouldn't make decisions in a vacuum; they should make them in response to requests from the people performing the company's actual core functions. It's like a bottom-up approach as opposed to top-down.

And when things do go badly wrong, those responsible, and that is often the management, should take the blame. Not only should they resign, but they should disestablish as many management positions as they can. If we have to accept the evil of management, at the very least let's minimise that evil as much as possible.

Comment 1 (7426) by Anonymous on 2023-04-24 at 17:12:58:

Yes it is interesting, because (in the case of the University of Otago at present in the headlines, and probably not related to your comments) if the head of administration only realised it they could probably make the savings they require by eliminating all the bureaucratic heads of departments. They should be leaving the staff who are in effect providing the services intact.

Unfortunately it is probably the department heads who will be making the redundancy decisions and you can be sure they will not be considering eliminating their own positions. It is a shame because they will try to reduce the number of employees who are in effect the very staff they rely on to provide the hands on support to the business concerned.

As I say, the University is probably not where Fred is employed but I think my comments are relevant to all big businesses who over time tend to build up a bureaucratic structure of control under a system that I would refer to as the Drone Syndrome.

Comment 2 (7427) by OJB on 2023-04-24 at 19:29:51:

I can't comment on any companies or organisations by name, of course, but yes, I agree with your thoughts there: it's like in those old World War 1 scenes, the general says: "right chaps, over the top and attack the enemy machine guns. I'll stay back here to direct the attack from safety".

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