Why your boss is programmed to be a dictator

I've just created a QuickQuiz - A Trivia Quiz on the Word "Boss"

2011-11-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

I've just created a QuickQuiz - A Trivia Quiz on the Word "Boss": Play this QuickQuiz now and test your knowledge!

UK's NHS tries to gag doctors

2010-08-01T22:50:00.000-07:00

More evidence that the workplace is a dictatorship (fear) system - this time from the British National Health Service (NHS).

Millions spent on doctor 'gagging orders' by NHS, investigation finds

Some key points from the article:

Nearly 90 per cent of severance agreements hammered out between NHS trusts and departing doctors contain confidentiality clauses

At least 170 doctors in England and Wales agreed such a settlement with the trust employing them – backed up by pay-offs totalling more than £3m.

31 trusts simply refused to disclose the size of the payments

The point is, free systems do not want to gag their employees - rather, they would do everything to encourage them to speak out.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. I have disabled the comments feature as there's too much spam)

Where do the laws of a system come from?

2010-06-19T05:45:00.000-07:00

Below is a very insightful take on systems - it's guest post from my friend and fellow Systems Thinker, Biren Shah.

I have been informally studying man-made systems (as opposed to the naturally found, complex, self-organising systems). And the most intriguing, confusing, frustrating and enraging thing I find about our systems (that is, our understanding of systems, and the practice of designing and building systems) is the rules and laws we use; thinking foolishly (and convincing ourselves) that they will help us gain control over the behaviour (and thus, outcome or results) of a system.

We have succeeded in convincing ourselves that rules and laws are what govern a system... drive a system... and give rise to a 'fixed' behaviour of a system. But like everything else, we have it topsy-turvy. We design and draft laws, to define the system... and create all the chaos and confusion that is the hallmark of our human systems - economic, social, educational...we have never stopped and wondered, if the above is true, WHO (or what) implements the rules - how are these rules followed, when there is no one single, central, governing feature or creature.

If we observe natural systems, we will see that rules, or laws, are followed and implemented by the whole system itself - the system constituents (both: the components, and the WAY they interact - the processes). There is no 'police' - a dedicated, separate governing part. That means, the rules and laws of a system are the property that arises BECAUSE of a 'coming together of specific components, in a specific way'.

The rules, or laws, are actually the emergent property of a system. They do not define (that is, make) a system; rather, they are a feature of the system.

The other important thing we can make out is, these rules do not reside (as knowledge) in the components of the system, but they arise, and thus reside, in the system - the complex interaction. That is, a lion does not know the law of 'the survival of the fittest', simply because, there is no 'law'. 'Survival of the fittest' is a property that emerges in our planet's natural world, out of the way the whole natural world interacts.

In other words... laws (what WE call laws) arise out of the system... the system does not arise out of the laws. So, why don't we see this? Recognise this?

We are focused on the behaviour - the 'emergent properties' - of a system. But we assume that those properties are 'designed' (and not 'emergent'). and then hastily move on, never stopping to wonder about who or what 'designs' this system.

Why?

What I am noticing is... that BECAUSE we look at life (and thus systems) from the 'fear' perspective of helplessness... and victimhood, we NEED to feel in control... we WANT to be in control. This 'control' perspective colours the way we perceive the behaviour of a system. We are focussed on finding WHAT controls the behaviour of systems... what makes it predictable? And as soon as we can find an answer, an explanation that sounds rational, we hastily move on.

And so, we convince ourselves that the laws are 'written in stone' - fixed - for that particular system. We don't see that the 'laws' are a result of the complex interplay of the system's components. and since both, the components and the interplay, are ever changing, the 'laws' may also change in accordance.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. I have disabled the comments feature as there's too much spam)

Air India plane crash in Mangalore - probable cause

2010-05-31T03:02:00.000-07:00

For those who aren't aware, an Air India aircraft crashed on May 22 2010, resulting in the deaths of 158 people. The accident took place in Mangalore, a city in southern India.

Essentially, the aircraft overshot the runway and plunged into a valley that lay just beyond the runway. Weather conditions were apparently not ideal; moreover, the runway is what's called a "tabletop" runway, leaving little room for error.

As I watched news of the accident unfold, I hoped that a probable cause was NOT that the co-pilot warned against landing, and being over-ruled by his commander. Why did I hope this? Because a rather similar thing happened 33 years back, resulting in the world's worst aviation accident (more on this later). If it was a probable cause again, it would mean the lessons hadn't been learnt.

Unfortunately, my hope doesn't appear to match reality. According to a newspaper report, the co-pilot of the Air India aircraft twice urged his commander to not land, but go around and try landing again. The co-pilot was over-ruled, and the commander tried landing the plane - with terrible results.

This problem - of the co-pilot or junior crew members being over-ruled by the flight commander - is not a new one. In fact, the airline industry has a type of training called CRM (Crew Resource Management) to ensure that commanders don't make arbitrary decisions. Yet, it happened on the Air India flight.

Worse, this happened 33 years back and was a factor in the world's worst aviation accident, in which 583 peopled died. In that accident, two 747s (belonging to KLM and the now defunct airline, Pan Am) collided on a runway in Tenerife, Spain. The flight engineer on the KLM asked his captain if they were indeed cleared for take-off, and if the Pan Am had cleared the runway. The captain brushed aside his engineer's warning, and continued taking off - with the Pan Am still on the runway. (The Tenerife disaster is a case study in my book).

Of course, disasters are not just the result of a commander over-ruling a junior. Typically, multiple factors are involved. In the Air India case, the airfield itself has issues; in the KLM's case, fog covered the runway, so visibility was poor.

That said, the human factor is a hugely significant one - and it's important to remove the human factor in these accidents. Specifically, it's important to remove the fear-factor - or the power-abuse factor - in cockpits. CRM is meant to neutralize these issues - but it doesn't. Why not? Simple. Because CRM does not take into account the power imbalance between a boss and his subordinate.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. I have disabled the comments feature as there's too much spam)

French man robs bank to take revenge on bad boss

2010-05-12T01:38:00.000-07:00

There's an article in the UK's Guardian newspaper that talks about a French man who stole millions of Euros from a bank, to take revenge on his bosses (read the article here).

The article quoted the man saying, "I had a problem with my boss. It was not the right choice." Further, "As I was single I couldn't have holiday during the summer, they didn't pay me all my hours, we were not respected. I respect the law but at a certain moment I crossed over to the other side because of all these injustices."

I obviously don't condone the crime. That said, it's amazing the extent to which people are pushed by bad bosses, so much so that the 'victims' are willing to commit such crazy and drastic acts. Underlying all this is the sense of utter powerlessness on the part of subordinates.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. I have disabled the comments feature as there's too much spam)

Exit interviews

2010-05-11T00:57:00.000-07:00

When you leave a company, your organization's HR (Human Resources) department will typically conduct an "exit interview" - an interview in which they ask you questions related to why you are leaving. This is usually an exercise in futility - first, the questions are designed to ensure you give bland answers. Second, the vast majority of people do not tell the truth because they don't want to burn bridges. So this ends up being a back-slapping exercise with answers such as, "I'm leaving for other opportunities" even if this isn't the truth.

And here's one question that HR never asks, even in an exit interview:"Are you leaving because your boss is terrible?"

Why HR doesn't ask that question, even though it's probably the most valid one?

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. I have disabled the comments feature as there's too much spam)

My ChangeThis manifesto

2010-05-11T00:48:00.001-07:00

As of today, my manifesto on ChangeThis is at no. 3 on the list of "Recently Popular Manifestos", ahead of the manifestos of the likes of Tom Peters and Seth Godin.

While I'm obviously pleased, the bigger message is this: bad bosses are a real problem, which is why so many people are reading my manifesto. Even today, when hierarchies are supposedly flatter and bosses are "leaders", bad bosses continue to create enormous amounts of stress.

Brilliant Dilbert cartoon

2010-05-07T03:54:00.000-07:00

There's a superb Dilbert cartoon today (May 7th). Check it out!

The cartoon simply and clearly shows how bosses ultimately wield power - through the appraisal.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

The role of VIP weight-throwing in air crashes (continued)

2010-04-13T22:48:00.000-07:00

In Sunday's post, I spoke about the death of Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, in an air crash, and a possible reason for it (see post below).

A couple of days back, I read a Telegraph newspaper report that said Mr Kaczynski had a bit of a history in over-ruling pilots:

In August 2008, Mr Kaczynski "shouted furiously" at a pilot who had disobeyed his order to land his plane in then war-torn Georgia for safety reasons. He later tried to have Captain Grzegorz Pietuczak removed from his post with the Polish air force for insubordination, however, Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister intervened. Captain Pietuczak was later awarded a medal for carrying out his duties conscientiously for his refusal to land having judged the risks.

Mr Kaczynski was lucky in 2008 that he had a strong-willed pilot; this time round, he apparently wasn't so lucky.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

The role of VIP weight-throwing in air crashes

2010-04-11T23:42:00.000-07:00

The recent death of the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, in an air crash has again put the spotlight on the power equations in a cockpit.

Mr Kaczynski (and a host of senior figures) died when their plane crashed while trying to land in thick fog. What went wrong? According to this report in the Independent newspaper, 'VIP syndrome' is being blamed. Apparently, because of the bad weather in the area, air traffic control directed the plane to land at another airport. But the pilots didn't listen and continued their approach to the runway. Why didn't the pilots heed the warning?

The suspected reason (as of now): The President wanted to ensure he would be able to attend a function they'd gone for. So he over-ruled the pilot.

Viktor Timoshkin, a flight safety expert, was quoted as saying, ""Air-traffic control told him to take the plane to Moscow or Minsk. I'm certain that the pilot will have told the President about this, and got a firm reply that the plane must land in Smolensk."

The President was the boss of the plane and he over-ruled his subordinates, the pilots. The result was a disaster for everybody. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that something like this has happened. The world's worst aviation accident (the collision of two 747s at Tenerife), in which over 500 people died, was partly caused by the captain's refusal to listen to his flight engineer. The engineer had warned that another aircraft (invisible in a dense fog) was on the runway, right in the path of his own aircraft. The captain didn't listen, and the planes collided.

In India, a chief minister of a state was recently killed when his helicopter crashed in bad weather. Here too, the pilots didn't want to fly, but the minister insisted on doing so, so he could attend a function (the same as the Polish President).

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

“Life as the wife of a Lehman Brothers banker”

2010-04-02T04:41:00.000-07:00

I’m no longer surprised by stories of controlling and dictatorial bosses. But an article about the wives of those who worked for the now dead financial firm, Lehman Brothers, really got my attention.

The article, published in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, is called “Life as the wife of a Lehman Brothers banker.” The article talks about a book, “The Devil’s Casino”, written by journalist Vicky Ward, who reveals the horror of life at Lehman. The article says:

There was an annual summer jaunt to the Fuld’s ranch in Sun Valley, Idaho. Not for this lot relaxing walks and jovial team bonding; the weekend was planned with military precision. Ward writes that the men were expected to wear “khaki pants and either a golf shirt or button-down”; Fuld believed that sloppy dress equalled sloppy thinking. The women had to pack “pretty dresses, jewellery, and Manolo Blahnik shoes” as well as hiking gear for the day. This annual hike was so gruelling that one wife turned up with a fake plaster cast in an attempt to get out of it. To her horror, another wife had turned up with a real cast on, but still planned to do the hike. “The wives were just as competitive as their husbands,” says Ward. “If anything, they were more political.”

Even worse:

Yet Ward says she found the roles that the wives were expected to play “chilling”. There is one particular episode in the book that stands out in this respect. Karin Jack, the wife of executive Bradley Jack, recalls the moment one of their children had a seizure. That day some of the senior executives and their wives were due to go and look at a house that Joe Gregory, the company’s then chief operating officer, was building. “We were using Joe’s helicopter,” says Karin in the book. “But I said, 'I have to take my son to the paediatrician.’ So they landed the Sikorsky near our home and waited for me, and they were not leaving without me. Can you imagine the pressure? I have this really sick child, but I know that if I don’t get on that helicopter it’s going to hurt Brad.”

What stands out is that absolute obedience was expected. In the Q&A section on her book’s page on Amazon, Ward says:

You cannot run a major securities firm without tolerating dissent or change at the top. Lehman’s “one firm” culture that made it so great when it was a tiny sub-division of a much larger entity became its nemesis when it was a stand-alone investment bank. Anyone who disagreed with Dick Fuld, or more importantly, the firm’s day-to-day manager Joe Gregory was either fired or quit."

All this – expecting wives to stick by the firm’s rules, intolerance of dissent and so on – brings only one word to my mind: dictatorship. But then, Systems Thinking shows us that these behaviors are only to be expected.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

“I like being able to say turn right, and we truly have 67,000 people turn right.”

2009-08-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

That quote is from John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems from an interview he gave earlier this month to the New York Times. To be fair to him, he then said something in addition that. But for now, bear with me while I examine his quote.

I worked at Cisco towards the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, a time when the internet phenomenon was beginning to take off. His quote has particular meaning for me now, given all the research and work I’ve done related to Systems Thinking and bosses.

What struck me during my time at Cisco was a very, very strange dichotomy. On one hand, the company was very enlightened in that it allowed employees to access to everything on the internet. This was at a time when many employers blocked off access to innocuous sites such as Hotmail and news sites, fearing that employees would waste time. Cisco’s stand was roughly along the lines of, “When phones first made their entrance in the office, employers feared people would sit on the phone all day long. Hence, they let only a select few employees have phones. But today, companies give every employee a phone because they trust their employees to use phones responsibly. You can’t possibly work without a phone. And if we can trust you to use the phone responsibly, we can trust you to use the internet responsibly.”

That said, I was also struck by the command-and-control atmosphere present. It seemed that while Cisco was creating technologies that were apparently flattening hierarchies, a strong under-current of “chain-of-command” was ever-present.

I always wondered about this dichotomy. One thing I always felt strongly was that a company as enlightened as Cisco couldn’t possibly be command-and-control oriented. It simply didn’t make sense and I couldn’t figure it out. But I put it down to one of life’s mysteries and moved on.

The mystery was solved recently when I read an interview with Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers. In response to a question on his leadership style, Chambers answered, “I’m a command-and-control person. I like being able to say turn right, and we truly have 67,000 people turn right.”

I think this is plain crazy. How can you have 67,000 people all sincerely and whole-heartedly turn in the direction the CEO wants them to? Surely there would be some dissent, some grumbling? I’ve always thought the real measure of teamwork is not when everyone says “Yes Sir” and smartly turns when ordered to turn. You know there’s real teamwork when people are openly offering their opinions without fear rather than dutifully taking orders.

From my research, I know that the attitude of top management travels right down the chain-of-command. And so it was at Cisco – the command-and-control attitude traveled right down. Of course, Cisco is not unique in this. Virtually every modern corporation functions this way.

To his credit, Chambers continued to answer the leadership style question by saying, “But that’s the style of the past. Today’s world requires a different leadership style — more collaboration and teamwork, including using Web 2.0 technologies.”

Chambers was also asked, “What’s changed in the last few years?” His answer: “Big time, the importance of collaboration. Big time, people who have teamwork skills.”

What strikes me about this response is, what was so different about “yesterday’s world” that required a command-and-control style? People are still the same. Human beings haven’t changed much – if at all - in 10 years. Why on earth couldn’t we have more collaboration and teamwork decades ago? Saying collaboration technologies didn’t exist would be a red herring. People have been collaborating and working in teams since the Stone Age, hunting together for example.

What I feel is that Chambers has recognized that the world is a complex place; it always has been – and the way to deal with complexity is not hierarchy but teamwork and collaboration. Moreover, Chambers comes from a generation of ‘leaders’ who have grown up under the command-and-control philosophy so I don’t blame him. At least he has recognized that the old ways don’t work. But the answer lies not in new technology. It lies in new systems that have freedom as the emergent property – without real freedom, you cannot have real teamwork and real collaboration.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

Even pirates in the 18th century got to vote for their boss!

2009-05-26T03:16:00.000-07:00

There's a new book called The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, by Peter T. Leeson (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 296 pages, $24.95).

An article in Reason reviewing the book talks about the differences in the ways in which pirates and sailors on legitimate ships worked:

"[A] pirate’s life had less publicized qualities as well: Ships were known among sailors for their relatively decent living conditions, profitsharing opportunities, democratic practices, and racially integrated crews. Life “on the account,” as pirating was known, was often far more civilized than legitimate seamanship.

"[Pirates] invented their own ways of doing business. Decades before the American Founders got their act together, pirates were drafting documents full of voting rights, juries, checks and balances, rules for property allocation, even methods for impeachment. The buccaneers may have been less concerned with natural rights than with survival and claiming their fair share of booty, but the end result feels surprisingly like the kind of self-governance we expect from enlightened modern republics. Perhaps even better, since the deal was truly voluntary (for the pirates if not their prey). No one is born a pirate, and everyone has to swear into the contract on each venture.

"[T]his “rougish Commonwealth” also had due process. Caprtains were elected, and they could be removed by a vote of the crew. Speeches were given for and against candidates. One of Capt. Roberts’ sailors, for example, urged his fellows to vote for a leader “who by his Counsel and Bravery seems best able to defend this Commonwealth... such a one I take Roberts to be. A Fellow! I think, in all Respects, worthy of your Esteem and Favour.” Speeches also contained warnings and reminders of the power of the people: “Should a Captain be so saucy as to exceed Prescription at any time, why down with him! it will be a Caution after he is dead to his Successors, of what fatal Consequence any sort of assuming may be.

"Balancing the powers of the captain was the quartermaster, the captain’s peacetime counterpart. Sort of a den mother with a blunderbuss, he oversaw the distribution of loot and generally kept peace on the ship by enforcing the rules and arbitrating disputes. He too could be replaced at any time by a vote."

And in contrast, here's a look at the lives of (legitimate but lowly) sailors:

"If legally sanctioned sailor pay was bad, the working coditions were worse. Captains on merchant ships held absolute power over their crews, and they regularly ordered floggings, revoked pay or rations, or tied men to the mast. Sailors could sue when they got home, and they occasionally won, but that’s cold comfort when you’re six months at sea, stripes from the lash stinging your back, and ordered to forfeit your rum ration."

And here we are, in the 21st century, working in dictatorship systems that even pirates of the 18th century did not stand for!

For the record: Obviously, I do not support or condone piracy in any way.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

The insanity of our organization hierarchies

2009-04-26T11:03:00.001-07:00

Some time back, I read a quote that went something like this: “A soldier will not be scared of his enemy on the battlefield, but that same soldier will be scared of his boss in the bureaucracy.”

I don’t know who said that. But I read an article in Time magazine that made every word of the quote ring true. The article, titled “Why Are Army Recruiters Killing Themselves?” speaks about army recruiters who are committing suicide after suffering unrelenting pressure from their superiors.

The paradoxical part is this: most of these recruiters have fought in the battlefield. According to the article, “Soldiers who have returned from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan now constitute 73% of recruiters, up from 38% in 2005.”

The article states, “Last year alone, the number of recruiters who killed themselves was triple the overall Army rate.”

The pressure to recruit is very high, with rules being bent so that targets are met. Lawrence Kagawa, who retired a highly decorated recruiter, said, “You'll be told to call Johnny or Susan and tell them to lie and say they've never had asthma like they told you, that they don't have a juvenile criminal history. That recruiter is going to bend the rules and get the lies told and process the fraudulent paperwork.”

If the recruiter refused, the commander is “going to tell you point-blank that 'we have a loyalty issue here, and if I give you a "no" for loyalty on your annual report, your career is over.”

The army conducted an investigation into the deaths, and found that recruiters suffered from under a “poor command climate”, in addition to working punishing schedules in isolation from family and friends.

What does “poor command climate” really mean? Bad bosses. And exactly how bad are the bosses?

The article goes on to say:

“Christina Montalvo [a recruiter], had tried to kill herself a few years earlier, gulping a handful of prescription sleeping pills in a suicide attempt that was thwarted when a co-worker found her. Montalvo says a boss bullied her about her weight. And she was shocked by the abuse that senior sergeants routinely levied on subordinates. "I'd never been in a unit before where soldiers publicly humiliated other soldiers," says Montalvo, who left the Army in 2002 after 16 years. "If they don't make mission, they're humiliated and embarrassed.”

Another recruiter, Nils Andersson, had served two tours in Iraq, winning a Bronze Star. He killed himself while working as a recruiter. The article adds, “In the week before his suicide, Andersson was ordered to write three separate essays explaining his failure to line up prospective recruits. A fellow recruiter later told Army investigators that commanders "humiliated" this decorated battlefield soldier during a training session: “He was under a constant grind — incredible pressure. He just became numb.”

And there’s more:

His [Staff Sergeant Floreto, who hanged himself] superiors ordered him attend what the Army calls "low-production training. When you're getting home at 11 and getting up at 4, it's tough, but it's the dressing down that really got to him," says a recruiter who worked alongside Flores. "They had him crying like a kid in the office, telling him he was no good and that they were going to pull his stripes."

I would urge you to read the full Time magazine article to see the havoc the workplace dictatorship system can wreak.

But before you do that, here’s another line from the article, which quotes an email from the “leadership” after they decided to hold a picnic to improve morale: "Family fun is mandatory.”

(email me with your comments cvdhruve@gmail.com http://cvdhruve.com)

The death of kindness

2009-01-09T03:23:00.000-08:00

A reader of my book wrote in to me with the link to this article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Love thy neighbou r. The article states, “Kindness has gone out of fashion. In the age of the rampant free market and the selfish gene, compassion is seen as either narcissism or weakness.”

The article adds:

“Most people, as they grow up now, secretly believe that kindness is a virtue of losers.

"There is nothing we feel more consistently deprived of than kindness; the unkindness of others has become our contemporary complaint. Kindness consistently preoccupies us, and yet most of us are unable to live a life guided by it.

People placed under unremitting pressure become estranged from each other. Like the bullied child who bullies others in turn, individuals coerced by circumstances become coercers. Sympathies contract as open-heartedness begins to feel too exposed. Paranoia blossoms as people seek scapegoats for their unhappiness. Such scapegoating is a self-betrayal because it involves sacrificing our kindness.”

------

We spend a large part of our lives at our workplaces, which are dictatorship systems. The emotions this system produces – fear, anger, paranoia, and so on – are bound to spill over into our non-working lives. As the research I’ve quoted in my book shows, people bullied turn into bullies themselves. Those bullied at the office can bring their anger home, bullying those less powerful than themselves.

It sounds a bit of a stretch to say that the dictatorship system is to blame for the lack of kindness and compassion in our lives, but I would say that it’s at least partly to blame.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

Why Lehman Brothers collapsed - a systems view

2008-12-30T01:56:00.000-08:00

I read an article in the UK's Times newspaper by Andrew Gowers, former editor of the Financial Times, who was working at Lehman Brothers as it collapsed. As the head of corporate communications at Lehman, Gowers had a ringside view of events. I’ve reproduced parts of his article below - it shows how the dictatorial attitude of Lehman’s CEO, Dick Fuld, lay the seeds for the company’s destruction.

Without further ado, here are some telling extracts from the article - you can read the full article here.

(all emphasis mine)

“To say he [Fuld] was surrounded with a cult of personality would be an understatement. He was the textbook example of the “command-and-control CEO”.

Those closest to him slaved like courtiers to a medieval monarch, second-guessing his moods and predilections, fretting over minute details of his schedule down to the flower arrangements and insulating him from trouble – from almost anything he might not want to hear.

His ferocity could be intimidating, his eyebrows beetling tight over his hard eyes, his brutally angular brow appearing to contort in rage. He would regularly upbraid colleagues for minor wardrobe malfunctions.

Even when in a relatively upbeat mood he seemed to take pleasure in violent imagery.

But the style also contained the seeds of disaster. It meant that nobody would or could challenge the boss if his judgment erred or if things started to go wrong.

The curious thing was that at some level Dick Fuld knew that trouble was brewing well before the crisis broke. I witnessed him give a fascinating talk about risk at a private lunch with newspaper editors nearly two years ago. With a precision that seems almost uncanny, he virtually prophesied the looming crash."

(So, he knew what was coming, but probably continued to delude himself because of the power he wielded)

"In truth Fuld had become insulated from the day-to-day realities of the firm and had increasingly delegated operational authority to his number two, a long-standing associate named Joe Gregory.

If Dick was the king, Joe was Cardinal Richelieu. [Joe] was also a ruthless enforcer for the boss. His job was not to encourage debate or intellectual curiosity in subordinates but to bend the bank to Dick Fuld’s will.

If something went wrong, you could be sure that Gregory would be on the telephone in a towering rage. Even very senior executives would dread getting one of those calls. They would describe the experience as analogous to being provided with “a new asshole” and called him Darth Vader behind their hands.

Standing in his way by showing aversion to risk could be fatal to your career. Divisional chiefs who urged caution or tried to rein back on risky bets were swiftly ousted.

So he [Fuld] was shut off from independent sources of information, from challenging questions and from up-to-date views from the front line of Lehman’s daily battle in the markets. He was fed instead with the carefully filtered facts that his inner circle thought he wanted to hear.

Here was a corporate governance structure almost preprogrammed to fail: an overmighty CEO, a top lieutenant eager to please and hungry for risk, an executive team not noted for healthy debate and a power struggle between two key players.

To make matters worse, they mounted an increasingly shrill campaign against their critics. One particular hedge fund manager, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, had been critical of Lehman’s financial disclosures, thus suggesting to some observers that the bank might have something to hide. Einhorn became an obsession for Fuld and his closest hench-men, who speculated openly about hiring investigators to tail him or search his rubbish bins.

You could say it was a case of shooting the messenger.

But it also led him and his closest associates latterly to say things that, while obviously sincere and reflecting genuinely held beliefs, had no connection whatsoever with business reality."

Fuld also reminds me of the attitude of Adam Applegarth, CEO of another shattered financial institution, Britain’s Northern Rock.

According to an article in the Daily Telegraph, an observer said: "He [Applegarth] had a habit of asking people who their top five fast bowlers [in cricket] were. And when they gave their opinion he would fire back that they were wrong and the real answer was X, Y and Z. Those who disagreed with Applegarth or questioned his decisions were brushed aside."

The Telegraph article added: "A banker once questioned Adam on his business model. Applegarth retorted that he clearly didn't understand the model or the business. That banker was ever after a persona non grata."

Is it any surprise that these companies collapsed? That said, it’s not the CEO’s fault; organization systems are set up as dictatorship systems, and that’s where the real problem lies.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

Frightening

2008-12-24T10:17:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times:

Laura Sweet, deputy chief of enforcement at the Medical Board of California, described the case of a resident at a University of California hospital who noticed a problem with a fetal monitoring strip on a woman in labor, but didn’t call anyone.

“He was afraid to contact the attending physician, who was notorious for yelling and ridiculing the residents,” Ms. Sweet said. The baby died.

(Full article here)

Fear. What system produces it? You know the answer: a dictatorship system. And dictatorship systems kill. Literally.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

Why your boss doesn't seem compassionate

2008-12-18T00:46:00.000-08:00

If you have power over someone else, you're likely to feel less compassion for that person's suffering, according to a study published in Psychological Science:

"The results, reported in the December issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that individuals with a higher sense of power experienced less compassion and distress when confronted with another's suffering, compared to low-power individuals."

Bosses come to mind.

Full story here

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

Publicizing my book - trying Scott Adams

2008-12-17T03:16:00.000-08:00

I’m going a little off-topic here, because like all authors, I get assailed with questions about how I got my book published, and my ongoing journey with the book.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for a first-time published author is, how do you get publicity for your book? One well-travelled route is getting big names to read the book and comment on it.

After my book came out, I emailed several big names in the business world asking if they would read the book and comment on it. Many of their assistants responded along the lines of, “Send the book, if s/he has the time, s/he will read it and respond.” In virtually every case, I didn’t hear again after I sent out the book. On some level this is perfectly understandable since the big-names are usually extremely busy and presumably, have tons of requests from other authors. Mostly, it seems to me that big-names end up commenting on other big names’s books, in a mutually beneficial, and perfectly reasonable, relationship.

That said, I sent an email to Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, especially because my book pertains to the root cause of boss behaviour. But that wasn’t the only reason I sent him the request. What I like about Scott is that he’s always thinking and searching for answers to rather deep questions, and is forever coming up with some model – or cartoon - to explain things. (My all-time favourite explaining the current financial crisis here)

Since my book offers a new way (ie, Systems Thinking) to explain the old problem of bad boss behaviour, I sent off my email to Scott, half expecting him to not respond – he obviously gets lots of emails every day, besides the comments on his blog.

I was pleasantly surprised when Scott himself responded, but disappointed to read that he has a policy of not reviewing books (this was several months ago, though I thought it would be useful to share, at least with authors who plan on writing to Scott - maybe his policy has changed!).

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

"Bad bosses may damage your heart"

2008-12-17T02:38:00.000-08:00

More evidence that bosses can do serious harm:

"A Swedish team found a strong link between poor leadership and the risk of serious heart disease and heart attacks among more than 3,000 employed men."

Full story here (BBC news)

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and his explanation for plane crashes

2008-12-10T02:43:00.000-08:00

Malcolm Gladwell, the celebrated author whose new book "Outliers" was recently published, talks about hierarchies and the problems it causes in plane crashes. In an interview, he gives the example of a crash of a Colombian airliner, stating that it was the country's hierarchical culture and a pilot's over-respect for authority that was partly to blame for the crash (listen to the interview here). In fact, Gladwell says that there is a strong correlation between plane crashes and the national culture (ie respect for hierarchy) of the pilots.

In my book, I've analyzed the world's worst aviation accident, the one that occurred in Tenerife, Spain, in which 583 people died. In that accident, a KLM 747 jumbo that was taking off collided with a Pan Am jumbo on the runway.

The KLM (Dutch) airliner hadn't been cleared for take-off because the Pan Am was still on the runway; nonethless, the KLM's captain began taking off. But what had happened in the cockpit was this: the flight engineer (lower ranked than the captain), questioned the captain, asking if the Pan Am had cleared the runway. The captain curtly said 'yes', saying the Pan Am was indeed off the runway. Effectively told to shut up, the flight engineer kept quiet. The captain got plane going, straight into the path of the Pan Am (it was foggy, so the pilots of both aircraft couldn't see one another).

Note that KLM is from Holland, a culture that is not as hierarchic as Colombia's. Nonetheless, the flight engineer kept quiet once his captain shut him up. The point that I am making is that while Gladwell says national culture plays a part, I am saying that the real issue is the power equation between a boss and his subordinate - in this case, the captain and the flight engineer.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com. You can get more information about my book and reader comments at cvdhruve.com)

Why US car companies are in trouble

2008-12-08T22:05:00.000-08:00

As you probably know, the top folks from America's top car companies - because of the dire straits they are in - went to the US government asking for money.

Why did these companies fail in the first place? Bob Sutton, Stanford professor, said in his blog (emphasis mine)

"My experience with GM is that – more so than any company I have dealt with – the norm in meetings is that the highest status person in the room does all or most of the talking. Plus, more so than any organization I have ever dealt with, employees are expected to express agreement with their bosses. Why didn’t anyone have the guts to tell the executives that taking a private plane to beg for a bailout was a bad idea? I suspect that it is just standard operating procedure: GM is a culture where subordinates are expected to shut-up and kiss-up when the boss is around."

Sutton added, "On the whole it is as if the system is designed to prevent the upward flow of information. At first, when I was in graduate school, I thought this was a personality characteristic of the first few GM executives I met. But then I started keeping track of what happened when managers and executives arrived and left meetings. To entertain myself as the top dog droned on, I would measure talking time. Regardless of the subject (and who had the greatest expertise in the room), the highest status person would blab away – and when he or she left the room, the next highest ranking person would then demonstrate GM’s blabbermouth pattern of leadership. Note I have been seen this pattern for almost 30 years at GM – the cars have changed but the yakking pattern has not. "

I'd say this is true not just of the auto companies but also of the financial services industry. Because the workplace system hasn't changed, the yakking pattern cannot change. The results are not pretty.

(If you have any comments, please email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Bangalore Nokia engineer commits suicide over boss

2008-09-29T02:29:00.000-07:00

An engineer, working for Nokia in Bangalore, has killed herself. In a suicide note, she said she was being harassed by her managers.

The question is not whether her accusation against her managers is well-founded. The problem with having unelected managers (ie, dictators) is perception - even if a boss is 'good', the sense of powerlessness experienced by a subordinate always translates into resentment, anxiety, fear or terror.

And in this awful and sad case, it's resulted in death.

"What do I do?"

2008-09-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

Many people from around the world have emailed me with this question: "What do I do?" with my current bad boss/organization. Unfortunately, apart from the usual don't-bully-me tactics that you can learn about elsewhere, my suggestion is: don't take on your employer. Just find another job.

If you do take on your employer (ie, a dictatorship system), here are some of the things you stand to lose - your job, your peace of mind, money (if you decide to sue), and so on. What do you stand to win? Not much - you probably get to keep your job, but you've antagonised your employer, and boss and colleagues as well for "creating trouble."

The only way to change things is to aim for the long-term: raise awareness, so that the system changes.

A king stands for elections to a cricket association

2008-02-27T21:25:00.000-08:00

First, a quick note to non-cricket lovers or those who don't understand the game: this is not a post about the game of cricket, so please read on.

Many people have a very difficult time with the idea of having the right to vote for your boss, and the idea of a boss having to submit to a vote. If you think that’s difficult, spare a thought for a real-life king.

In India, the game of cricket is administered by the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India). India is divided into several states, and each state cricket association is affiliated to the BCCI. Each state association runs elections for its office-bearers and recently, the Karnataka State Cricket Association held its own elections (you may not know Karnataka, but you almost certainly know its capital city, Bangalore).

Guess who was among the candidates in the KSCA elections? None other than the current Maharaja (Great King) of Mysore, Srikant Datta Wodeyar. Prior to India’s independence, Kings ruled at the sufferance of the British. Although the kingdom merged with India at independence, the King still has his palaces and pageantry, much like the Queen of England.

Imagine the change in mindset that Mr Wodeyar had to undergo in contesting the elections of a state cricket body, a state his father was the real-deal king of . (Karnataka was Mysore state in those days. Karnataka’s population is about 53 million, just a few million fewer than the population of Britain).

To put this in context, imagine someone telling Prince Charles or indeed Prince William that they would need to get the people’s vote to hold any meaningful position.

Mr Wodeyar has even stood for elections as a regular Member of Parilament – having won and lost seats.

Now, if a King (even though now titular) of a powerful state in India can change his mindset, why is it so difficult for bosses to change their mindset? Why is it so difficult for us to change out mindsets?

FYI – Wodeyar won the election for his post and is now an office-holder in the Karnataka State Cricket Association.

(Email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com - you can also visit my website at cvdhruve.com)

Powerless, and it shows

2008-02-24T01:37:00.000-08:00

I've created a poll on my website (cvdhruve.com), that asks, "Would you like to have the right to vote for your boss?"

So far, 100% of those who voted have said yes. While this may not seem surprising, it's reveals an unpalatable truth: that despite all the 'empowerment' programs, leadership training and suchlike, people still feel powerless in the face of bosses.

Ultimately, powerlessness results in fear. And this fear pervades our workplaces. It's about time we accepted the awful truth.

(Email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

'Bosses fire worker who put up 'Dilbert' comic'

2007-12-25T00:19:00.000-08:00

A man was dismissed for putting up a Dilbert strip - read the article here: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071219/NEWS/712190360
In which system would people be fired for drawing cartoons of their "leaders"? You guessed it: a dictatorship system. In fact, the subordinate didn't even draw a cartoon - he simply put up a Dilbert cartoon. For that, he lost his job.

Guess how bosses identified the 'culprit'? They viewed surveillance tapes. Which obviously pre-supposes the existence of surveillance cameras. What does that remind you of? You guessed it again: a dictatorship system.

The issue went to court, and the employer lost.

Merry Christmas!

(Please email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com, and also visit my website, cvdhruve.com)

Where a country's wealth comes from

2007-10-11T04:39:00.000-07:00

One of the assumptions made about rich and powerful countries is that they’re rich/powerful because of their inherent wealth – natural resources, capital, and so on. But a great article in Reason quotes a World Bank study that shows that by far, the biggest part of a country’s wealth can be its “intangible wealth” – wealth that arises because of the people, and the institutions that support them.

In the US for example, natural capital is $15,000 per person, produced capital is $80,000 and intangible capital a whopping $418,000 – so intangible wealth is over 80% of the country’s total wealth.

Some countries even have a negative intangible wealth – that simply means the intangible stuff actually destroys wealth. Countries such as Nigeria, Algeria and Syria have negative intangible wealth; countries such as Russia, Venezuela and Congo have very low positive intangible wealth figures.

The top ten countries in terms of intangible wealth are Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, the United States, Germany, Japan, Austria, Norway, France, Belgium-Luxembourg.

What’s the main difference the countries with high intangible wealth figures and those with low or negative intangible wealth figures? In a word, freedom.

In my book, I make the point that freedom results in health. From the World Bank study, it appears that freedom results in wealth too.

(Please email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com, and also visit my website, cvdhruve.com)

"Managers More Interested In Power Than People"

2007-10-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

Not that it's going to come as news to you, but here's an article in HRM Guide that confirms what you knew anyway: "It is clear from the findings that most people do not take the decision to move into a managerial position because they gain satisfaction from people development activities."

(Please email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com, and also visit my website, cvdhruve.com)

General who investigated Abu Ghraib suffers career dead-end

2007-09-27T02:17:00.000-07:00

Antonio Taguba was the general who investigated the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. A New Yorker article stated that Taguba himself became a casualty of Abu Ghraib, because he brought things out in the open - in short, because he simply did his job.

The report said, "A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid [John Abizaid was then head of Centcom]. Abizaid’s driver and his interpreter, who also served as a bodyguard, were in front. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”

The report quoted Taguba as saying, “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

The article states that Taguba's career suffered after that. In short, Taguba suffered from the usual dictatorship system response to an unwanted truth - shoot the messenger.

(Please email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com, and also visit my website, cvdhruve.com)

US army officer asks for for future generals to be evaluated by subordinates

2007-09-27T02:14:00.000-07:00

In a stinging article titled "A failure in generalship", Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an active duty commander in Iraq, says, "Different military and civilian leaders in the two conflicts [Vietnam and Iraq] produced similar results. To understand how the U.S. could face defeat at the hands of a weaker insurgent enemy for the second time in a generation, we must look at the structural influences that produce our general officer corps."

In other words, Yingling is saying the system was the same in both cases, and that something needs to be done to fix the system. Yingling calls for a 360 degree evaluation before promotions are made:

"Congress should require the armed services to implement 360-degree evaluations for field-grade and flag officers. Junior officers and noncommissioned officers are often the first to adapt because they bear the brunt of failed tactics most directly. Junior leaders have valuable insights regarding the effectiveness of their leaders, but the current promotion system excludes these judgments. Incorporating subordinate and peer reviews into promotion decisions for senior leaders would produce officers more willing to adapt to changing circumstances, and less likely to conform to outmoded practices."

I encourage you to read the full article.

(Please email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com, and also visit my website, cvdhruve.com)

Bad bosses get ahead

2007-08-03T05:29:00.000-07:00

"Be a bad boss and get ahead" - this article quotes an Australian university study and says, "the local workplace tyrant was either never censured or was promoted for domineering ways."

The study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia, said, "The leaders above them who did nothing, who rewarded and promoted bad leaders ... represent an additional problem."

As always, flip the word 'leader' to 'dictator', and everything will make sense: "The dictators above them who did nothing, who rewarded and promoted bad dictators ... "

(email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Self appraisals

2007-07-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

There was an interesting article recently in the Times newspaper (London) on the issue of self-appraisals. According to the article, staff turnover dropped quite a bit at one company after they used self-appraisals.

This is not surprising because self-appraisals effectively take power away from the boss (effectively getting rid of the boss). No wonder people are happier and stay on.

(Email me your comments at chetan@cvdhruve.com)

My new website

2007-06-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

I've created a new website at http://cvdhruve.com - please take a look. Also, you can now reach me at chetan@cvdhruve.com

You can also reach me at my gmail ID, ie cvdhruve@gmail.com

Bob Sutton's book - the No Asshole Rule

2007-03-12T06:43:00.000-07:00

Bob Sutton is a Stanford University professor who's written a book called, "The No Asshole Rule". The book is about, well, assholes at work. Although I haven't read the book itself, I've read an excerpt on the 800CEOREAD website.

Sutton says, "[S]tudies show that many workplaces are plagued by "interpersonal moves" that leave people feeling threatened and demeaned, which are often directed by more powerful people at less powerful people."

Sutton says that it's usually powerful people - especially bosses - who are horrible towards their subordinates. He quotes the example of a pregnant female employee, whose boss began timing her visits to the bathroom, and then counted these minutes against her lunch or break times. You can read more examples on the 800CEO read site. (If you want to buy the book, here's the 800CEOREAD link and here's the Amazon link)

If you think that subordinates can be equally nasty to bosses, the reality is that this happens very rarely. Sutton says, "Much of this nastiness is directed by superiors to their subordinates (estimates run from 50% to 80%), with somewhat less between coworkers of roughly the same rank (estimates run from 20% to 50%), and "upward" nastiness- where underlings take on their superiors-occurs in less than 1% of cases." [emphasis mine]

Sutton identifies twelve "Everyday Actions That Assholes Use":

1. Personal insults
2. Invading one's "personal territory"
3. Uninvited physical contact
4. Threats and intimidation, both verbal and nonverbal
5. "Sarcastic jokes" and "teasing" used as insult delivery systems
6. Withering e-mail flames
7. Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims
8. Public shaming or "status degradation" rituals
9. Rude interruptions
10. Two-faced attacks
11. Dirty looks
12. Treating people as if they are invisible

From what I've read, Sutton's book is excellent in that it has brought out the issue of nasty people - particularly bosses - into the open. Coming from a Stanford professor who is willing to use such a direct and hard-hitting title for his book, his words carry a lot of weight and credibility. Lesser mortals would be considered wimps or simply trouble-makers. Sutton is due a huge amount of credit for calling a spade a spade - something that's rare in the rarefied world of academia.

If you've read my manifesto, you know already know that I state that it's the system at fault, rather than individuals. Having said that, I feel the work of people such as Sutton is complementary to what I'm saying. We need both - a good system and good people.

(email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com)

My book

2007-03-09T11:08:00.000-08:00

If you've been wondering why I'd stopped blogging, the answer is that I've been writing a book titled, well, "Why your boss is programmed to be a dictator." It's published by Cyan Communications (London), and will be out in May. You can pre-order the book at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Your-Boss-Programmed-Dictator/dp/0462099024/sr=11-1/qid=1166779907/ref=sr_11_1/026-5263225-9467601

(comments - email me at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Announcing: A Little Book of f-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management

2006-11-02T23:17:00.001-08:00

A Little Book of f-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management by Russell Ackoff, Herbert Addison & Sally Bibb (published 9 November 2006).

Witty, ironic and deliciously un-PC, f-Laws are the hard truths about office life we'd rather ignore. Devised by Wharton emeritus professor Russell Ackoff, now in his 80s, A Little Book of f-Laws both challenges and confirms the orthodoxy of current management thinking. It will strike a chord with anyone who has ever worked in an organisation – whether it is an office, church, school or prison! Crucially, it asks: can management and employees ever work together in harmony to create the mythical 'best organisation'? Or is your office 'The Office'?

In response, award-winning writer and senior executive at the Economist group, Sally Bibb gives her own choice observations on life in the modern organisation. The result is a concise and engaged dialogue between three of the most original thinkers in business today across two generations, two continents and the two sexes.

f-Law: A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say 'no' but none to say 'yes'.

A Little Book of F-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management is a teaser for the forthcoming Management F-Laws: How organisations really work, which comprises more than 70 f-Laws (published by Triarchy Press on 24 January 2007).

You can read the Little Book of F-Laws e-book at the preview site www.f-laws.com/preview. The main site, http://www.f-laws.com/, goes live on publication day, 9th November. If you like the book, please feel free to put a link to the e-book on your site.

(email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Announcing: A Little Book of f-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management

2006-11-02T23:17:00.000-08:00

A Little Book of f-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management by Russell Ackoff, Herbert Addison & Sally Bibb (published 9 November 2006).

Witty, ironic and deliciously un-PC, f-Laws are the hard truths about office life we'd rather ignore. Devised by Wharton emeritus professor Russell Ackoff, now in his 80s, A Little Book of f-Laws both challenges and confirms the orthodoxy of current management thinking. It will strike a chord with anyone who has ever worked in an organisation – whether it is an office, church, school or prison! Crucially, it asks: can management and employees ever work together in harmony to create the mythical 'best organisation'? Or is your office 'The Office'?

In response, award-winning writer and senior executive at the Economist group, Sally Bibb gives her own choice observations on life in the modern organisation. The result is a concise and engaged dialogue between three of the most original thinkers in business today across two generations, two continents and the two sexes.

f-Law: A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say 'no' but none to say 'yes'.

A Little Book of F-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management is a teaser for the forthcoming Management F-Laws: How organisations really work, which comprises more than 70 f-Laws (published by Triarchy Press on 24 January 2007).

You can read the Little Book of F-Laws e-book at the preview site www.f-laws.com/preview. The main site, www.f-laws.com, goes live on publication day, 9th November. If you like the book, please feel free to put a link to the e-book on your site.

My response

2006-06-30T03:01:00.000-07:00

Here's my response to Mr Blanik:

"I agree with you in that if any crew member was SURE the Pan Am was on the runway, take off would be aborted. However, the issue of power distance comes into play especially when there is time pressure, a lot of stress and ambiguity.

In KLM's case, Captain Van Zanten was under pressure because of the flight delays. He was sure there was no plane on the runway. Of course, the flight engineer was not SURE and hence he couldn't make a firm statement. Because he wasn't sure, the flight engineer had to keep quiet when he was over-ruled by Van Zanten. But let's say Van Zanten himself had a doubt about whether the Pan Am had cleared the runway. Would he have taken off? Highly unlikely. So the fact that Van Zanten had more power than the flight engineer is significant.

As far as putting another group of people into a flight simulator goes, I would say that what matters is not what happens in the flight simulator. What matters is the mindset of the captain. If a captain has the attitude that he is the boss and hence has more power than the others, he will do what he thinks is right, regardless of the others' opinions. In that sense, putting another group of people in the simulator would have given the same result: the captain would have taken off. That is why I don't blame Van Zanten - I am not a pilot but if I was in Van Zanten's position, I would probably have taken off too.

On the other hand, let's say that captains had to be voted in. I am not talking of voting over an issue at the instant a decision has to be made (such as whether to take-off), but voting for the captain himself. This would not happen in the cockpit, but well before that - ie, when the captain is 'appointed'.

Once a captain/boss knows that subordinates have the power to vote him out, it produces a different mindset - bosses are more likely to listen to their subordinates. If the flight engineer had a doubt, then Van Zanten would probably have treated that doubt more seriously than he did.

This situation is very similar to that of space shuttle Challenger. The shuttle engineers had argued against lift-off, but they didn't have enough data to prove their case. The situation was ambiguous. Their bosses over-ruled them. Again, the bosses were under pressure – several earlier lift-offs had been cancelled and the rocket booster contractors had a billion dollars at stake. In this situation - ambiguity coupled with other pressures, the bosses used their power. The result was tragic.

Hence, in my opinion, power-distance was a significant factor in the KLM/Pan Am disaster. Of course, this factor would not have come into play at all, if the various other factors (bomb scare at the airport, fog, heterodyne etc) hadn't occurred in the first place. "

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Tenerife disaster, revisited

2006-06-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

In response to my post on the Tenerife disaster (in which two Jumbo jets collided and over 500 people died), "Mr Blanik" (a nickname) writes:

"I'd like to say that many people, including myself, disagree completely about blaming "power distance" among KLM 747's crew as a factor on this accident. Briefingly, I'd say that if any crew member were SURE the PanAm was actualy on the runway, they would have interrupted the takeoff. You should try putting a captain, a copilot and a FE into a flight simmulator and emmulate a situation where they should elect for aborting an important* manouver based on a doubtfull information from the copilot or theFE. See that by yourself.

*something all of them believe to be a mission.

PS- the copilot was acctualy a DC-8 experienced captain.PS2- sorry about my english. I'm a portuguese speaker."

---------------

My response in my next post.

(email me your comments cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Hierarchy insanity

2006-06-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

I received this email from an individual (who has asked to remain anonymous):

"I would like to share a recent experience of rankism I had when working on a new contract for a major UK utility company.

"I was at a handover meeting with a colleague from whom I was to take over the implementation of a project. I was expressing some concern at the timescale/resources which our boss had set and asking advice on how my colleague had proposed to complete the work. "Oh" she said "don't you do the work, get your team to do it for you, that's what I always do.

"The team in question consisted of a layer of first-line managers and clerical staff; I had noticed that they were miserable, overworked and very negative about the Company. When I thought about this advice in the context of the organisation I had observed over the short time I had been there, I realised that this was howthey probably operated right down the chain of command....The Chief Exec had probably told the Director to sort out such and such and the Director (notwanting to do the work herself) told the Head of Function to do it. The Head of Function didn't want to do any real work herself but told theoriginal manager (my colleague) to do it, which she had been doing until I came along, using the same management principle ie pushing it down!

"So I wonder how the first line supervisors had been accomplishing their workload? Doesn't take much guessing does it?

"This particular organisation had an appalling record of performance andcustomer service, but thought they were enlightened in their management mission to sort out a recalcitrant workforce - maybe these indicators were nothing to do with the practice I had witnessed... but somehow I suspect they were. The post-script to this story was that none of the executives involved were old farts - all were under 45, and the function involved was...Organisational Development!"

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Rankism

2006-05-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

Robert Fuller, author of Somebodies and Nobodies and All Rise, has coined a great term: rankism. He says rankism is the mother of all isms - sexism, racism and so on, because at the other of all isms lies a power advantage that one has over another. Of course, it's not power that's the problem, but abuses of power.

Obviously, some people use colour or gender (or whatever it is) to outline their claim of supremacy over others - but lying at the heart of all this is the issue of power.

Viewed in this context, all abuses of power - eg a doctor abusing a nurse, a professor exploiting a graduate student or a boss bullying a subordinate qualify as forms of rankism.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

"Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation"

2006-04-26T02:31:00.000-07:00

More evidence that managers are the biggest demotivators comes from this Harvard Business School paper. The paper mentions a survey of 1.2 million employees and concludes, "The fault lies squarely at the feet of management—both the policies and procedures companies employ in managing their workforces and in the relationships that individual managers establish with their direct reports."

And then of course, the HBS paper provides the usual solutions - how managers should coach their employees, inspire them, promote teamwork and so on. Nothing new there. These solutions aren't going to make you fall out of your chair. Why not? Because you've heard them all before. And yet, nothing has changed. Why not? Because as I keep emphasizing, the system needs to change. Until that changes, all changes will be superficial.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Minor revision to airplane example

2006-04-24T05:45:00.000-07:00

If you've read my manifesto, you will know that I have referred to flight as an emergent property for aircraft. Of course, the environment is also part of the 'system', in that the atmosphere/air plays a big role in flight. The sentence including the environment somehow got deleted from the final version of my manifesto. Apologies for that!

(email me your comments cvdhruve@gmail.com)

"Triarchy"

2006-04-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

Gerard Fairtlough (former CEO of Shell Chemicals UK and founder of biotechnology company, Celltech), has written a book called: and He talks about a concept called 'triarchy' - you can read more about it here.

He says, "Hierarchy will not easily withdraw. Understanding, inventiveness, balance and bravery will be needed to shift it. But there is good reason to think it can be shifted. Vast energy presently goes to propping up hierarchy. Releasing this energy for constructive use will bring great and clearly recognizable benefits. It will allow organizations to emerge that are much more effective for getting things done and much better places in which to work."

Also, read an interview with Sally Bibb, the author of Stone Age company at the same site (here's the link). There's one point in Sally's book that I particularly like, and that is the comparison of the corporate world to life in a school playground - often, top managers are "overgrown school kids running companies". This is just so true! Unfortunately for the sufferers, they don't have the stomach to fight the bullies - perhaps the same happened in their schooldays. In a lot of ways, the workplace reminds many of the terrible times they had in school - with the awful knowledge that they aren't going to be able to quit work any time soon. With the retirement age creeping upwards, there is no immediate light at the end of the tunnel for those trapped in the corporate schoolground.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

The power to humiliate

2006-03-29T07:07:00.000-08:00

With great power comes great responsibility, but it seems to me that some people (well, many people) seem to want to attain power not only to gain authority or make money, but also because it puts them in a position in which they can humiliate others.

Sally Bibb has written a superb article in the UK's Guardian newspaper about Alan Sugar's rude behaviour with contestants on the BBC TV show, The Apprentice. In the article, Sally says, "Those who cling on to that style of managment do so because it feeds their need for dominance and power, and, presumably, because they feel it brings them results."

I completely agree with Sally in that there is no need for Mr Sugar to behave as arrogantly as he does. Given his obvious success, one would hope that he play the role of a mentor, rather than a snarling, intimidating bulldog. I suspect that even if Mr Sugar is putting on an act, he's basing that act on a 'tough-guy' image that belongs, as Sally would say, to the stone age.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

"Do I Dare Say Something?"

2006-03-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

The Harvard Business School Working Knowledge site mentions a research paper that's concluded that people are too scared to talk at the workplace, because of bosses and hierarchies.

The research was done by HBS professor Amy Edmondson and her colleague, Professor James Detert from Penn State. In an interview, the professors say, "Perhaps most surprising to us has been the degree to which fear appears to be a feature of modern work life."

They also say, "Turning to the modern economy, most of us depend on hierarchical organizations and their agents (i.e., bosses) to meet many of our basic needs for economic support and human relationships. Thus, fear of offending those above us is both natural and widespread. "

The professors' research was titled "Latent Voice Episodes: The Situation-Specific Nature of Speaking up at Work." Basically, they were trying to figure out why people don't speak up at work, and found that it was because of fear.

I'm sure you knew that already. But thanks to the professors, we now know that 'officially'. Their research just confirms what I said in my manifesto, the emergent property at our workplace is fear.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

The consequences of over-work

2006-03-23T10:19:00.000-08:00

Sorry for disappearing for a while. I was travelling and forgot to say this in my previous blog.

Although not directly related to bosses, I saw this great article Be smarter at work, slack off. It has this gem of a quote:

"The physiological effects of tiredness are well-known. You can turn a smart person into an idiot just by overworking him," notes Peter Capelli, a professor of management at Wharton.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Why good ideas are resisted

2006-03-06T23:36:00.000-08:00

Here's a great line from Hugh Macleod's manifesto, How to be creative:

"GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED."

This is just so true, especially where bosses are concerned.

(email me your comments cvdhruve@gmail.com

Monster's Toxic Boss Contest

2006-03-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

Monster is running a 'Toxic Boss Contest' between February 27th and March 31st, and there are already 30 pages of responses.

What does this tell us? That people just seem to be waiting to for an opportunity to vent their frustrations about their bosses.

In some ways, it is extremely disappointing that the top people in the 'leadership' field - such as Tom Peters and Stephen Covey - completely ignore this crucial issue. All the things they talk about - such as wowing customers, being radically innovative and so on, cannot be possible under our current system which produces bad bosses.

As I've mentioned in my manifesto, 'leadership' is a sexy word. And we've been so well trained to not talk about bad bosses, that we prefer to ignore the issue altogether even though it gnaws away at people's insides.

The tragedy is that the people with the most influence in the leadership field don't talk about it either. Perhaps the reason is that almost everyone is told to have a 'tough it out' attitude, and even top people have been well trained from an early age to do this. Hence, they would rather talk about big things like leadership, than apparently wimpy things like bad bosses.

In fact, one person who read my manifesto told me that he almost didn't read it because of the title - he thought, "Oh, not another rant on bosses". He said that if the manifesto was on leadership, he would have read it without a second thought. I suspect he's not the only one with this attitude - that anything to do with bosses is a rant, and therefore useless.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Self-censorship, democracy style

2006-03-02T03:05:00.000-08:00

Whatever your views on the rights and wrongs of the war on Iraq, one thing seems to be clear: people within the intelligence community (both the US and UK) had serious misgivings about the war and the aftermath.

Why didn't this information percolate upwards?

It's ironic, but today's Guardian newspaper carries two separate articles with quotes involving self-censorship - one in a dictatorship, the other in a democracy. I've already posted (prior to this one) the first quote, and here's the second:

"Wayne White, who coordinated Iraq intelligence for the state department until last year, said he helped put together a National Intelligence Estimate in 2003 warning that "prospects for tamping down the insurgency were unexpectedly grim". Mr White wrote that "the senior official chairing the meeting looked around at his fellow intelligence analysts and exclaimed rhetorically, 'How can I take this upstairs'?" to then-CIA director George Tenet. He argued the resistance to bad news in the White House led to the "temptation among subordinates within the intelligence community to engage in self-censorship". [emphasis mine]

The US is a free system. Why is self-censorship taking place? The answer is quite simply: the CIA organization system is that of a dictatorship, with the usual bosses and hierarchies.

If a head of state wants accurate information, the system that he's getting information from must be a free system. Otherwise, he will only be told what he wants to hear.

It should be the job of an organization like the CIA to provide the head of state with accurate information. Once they provide that information to the head of state, it's up to that person do do what he wants with it, even perhaps ignore it.

But the problem with a dictatorship system at the workplace is that it actively prevents accurate information from travelling upwards. The results, as we've seen in the shuttle disasters, and now the Iraq war, can be disastrous.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Self censorship, dictatorship style

2006-03-01T21:23:00.000-08:00

There's this article in Britain's Guardian newspaper, about Belarus, "an authoritarian, often forgotten corner of Europe."

Pulled out a couple of quotes about Belarus - how different is it from our workplaces?

"Self-censorship is the strongest weapon." [emphasis mine]
"Sack three people and 100,000 are scared."

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Great quote

2006-03-01T08:36:00.000-08:00

Organizations and leaders who want to achieve great things need to really understand this:

"Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash."

- Harriet Rubin

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com

Problems with authority?

2006-02-24T23:47:00.001-08:00

One of the things that a subordinate who cannot work with a boss is sometimes told, "you have problems dealing with authority figues", or that "you don't know how to take orders."

The problem is not dealing with authority figures or taking orders. The problem is WHO you take orders from. If you've elected someone, you're more likely to take orders from that person.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com

Wolves in sheep's clothing

2006-02-22T23:17:00.000-08:00

The worst bosses are, in my opinion, not the ones who are conspicuously autocratic, abusive or loud. Because with them, you know where you stand. The worst ones are those that Sally talks about her book, The Stone Age company. She describes them as, "very autocratic, but in a gracious, gentlemanly way." Such a boss is, "a wolf in sheep's clothing."

Why are these bosses the worst kind? Because you think you can offer your opinions or be proactive. And after you take action, you find out that the boss really doesn't like the fact that you have a mind. After that, all hell can break loose - you can be ostracised or even lose your job.

Given this reality, this has terrible consequences for the company. Sally lists several, including the fact that people stop thinking for themselves and that they stop bringing new ideas. But most destructive of all (for the company), employees "spend their time on activities that will please the boss, instead of on things that will please the customer." (emphasis mine).

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Bosses can be like abusive parents

2006-02-21T20:34:00.000-08:00

In her excellent book The Stone Age Company, Sally Bibb makes a point that hits home to anyone who's had a terrible boss. She says, "It is like living with an abusive parent or husband; there are periods of calm where they are happy and not picking on you, but you always know that at some point it will start again. The price of putting up with it is high, and it is constant."

Sally makes the other point that HR is of no help either: "It is a commonly held fallacy that if you have a problem with your boss you can go to HR and they can help. Most focus on policy and policing, and the majority haven’t got the courage to stand up to badly behaved bosses."

This echoes what I read somewhere: That HR is designed to protect your boss from people like you!

More on Sally's book later.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

A big thank you to ChangeThis

2006-02-19T23:28:00.000-08:00

In the space of just three months after my manifesto was published on ChangeThis, there have been over 4,800 downloads of my manifesto. I've received emails from people as far apart as Norway, South Africa, Australia, the US and the UK. I doubt if this would have happened as quickly through the traditional route of getting a book published.

Before I wrote the manifesto, I planned to write a book on dictator bosses. But there were several obstacles:

1. I was a first-time author
2. I needed to find a literary agent
3. Although my aim wasn't to make money, the money is in fiction (think Harry Potter), not non-fiction. Hence, literary agents specialising in non-fiction business books are few and far between.
4. The literary agent needed to sell the idea to a publisher
5. There is too much legal stuff involved
6. You may not believe this, but some agents and publishers still insist on interacting by regular snail mail (ie proposal and manuscripts have to be sent in hard copy!).
7. You have to spend a significant amount of time and energy marketing your book.
8. Most of all, according to one book on getting your book published, the time-scales involved are 'geological'.

Obviously, there are tons of business books that are published. But for the effort involved, I wasn't sure if it was the right route for me. Since my aim was not to make money from the book but spread an idea, I wondered what to do. Luckily, I discovered ChangeThis, via a link on Tom Peters blog.

While I would still love to have a book published, ChangeThis offers a fantastic route to people who want to spread an idea. In that sense, ChangeThis perfectly achieves Seth Godin's goal.

Hence, I'd like to publicly say a big Thank You to the folks at ChangeThis (and 800-CEO-READ who own ChangeThis). To anyone contemplating writing a manifesto, I can't recommend ChangeThis strongly enough.

(email me your comments cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Ideas on implementation (2)

2006-02-19T20:27:00.000-08:00

Dave Ellison writes:

"First and foremost, while many governments have already proven the success of the concept, there must be experimentation within the business world with successful, breakthrough results. In other words, just as software vendors typically provide a 'proof of concept' prior to winning any large corporate contracts, so must this idea of elected leadership in business be proven. The best opportunity to do this would be to either create a small, privately funded company, or target non-conservative industry leaders who control smaller (perhaps struggling) subsidiary companies to 'pilot' the idea.

"Once an understanding of the existing system and functions are known, the new model can be developed. As is the case with various different democracies around the world, each business would have to have a unique model that best supports their culture and values. That said, each system would have to include something comparable to a Constitution, a base set of irrevocable laws/rules/principles that govern the fundamental process, created by representative groups and approved by the majority. Additionally, there would have to be some set of controls around corruption. Not to say that corruption isn't present in corporate dictators today, but this will be likely be a primary fear of the business owner(s)."

Thanks Dave.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Dilbert cartoon - spot on!

2006-02-17T22:03:00.000-08:00

If you haven't already, take a look at this Dilbert cartoon. It perfectly describes the dictatorship system behaviours of bosses - and colleagues!

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Patients die because junior doctors are too scared of their bosses

2006-02-17T02:00:00.000-08:00

This article says that 98,000 people die in the US each year "from medical mistakes caused by cultural and systemic problems. In many cases a junior member of staff saw the error being committed but was too afraid to speak up. Bullying by consultants is rife in health services, many of whom fit the Guru profile. [Examples: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5]"

It's frightening to see that people are dying in such large numbers simply because subordinates are scared of their bosses.

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Ideas on implementation (1)

2006-02-15T22:17:00.000-08:00

Scott Brenner writes:

"A well-defined set of steps an organization can follow to put a new team structure in place would help avoid a lot of false starts and urges to go back to the way things were.

"Second, some proven successes using the new system. Organizations are more likely to adopt a new way of thinking if they can see proof from a "guinea pig" who's gone before them. Nothing breeds success like success."

I think this is the way to go - start with baby steps, and then take things from there. Doubtless, issues will arise, and we can't predict what those issues are in advance. Hence, it's going to be more of a guided missile approach as opposed to a 'ready, aim, fire' approach.

(email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Being a King vs being a leader

2006-02-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

I just want to emphasise a line from Don Blohowiak's post (that refers to my manifesto), a line that perfectly describes the human lust for power, vs the need for effectiveness:

"It’s good to be King. It may well be more effective to be elected Leader."

(email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Tom Peters "sayings" on leadership

2006-02-13T23:47:00.000-08:00

Tom Peters is someone I admire greatly, and I read his blog every day. However, it seems to me that his ideas of leadership are defined in the usual terms.

In a recent post on his blog, he says he was asked to provide some sayings on leadership. So he gave several such as "Dream. The Only Worthwhile Reality.""Beware Those Who Agree With You." "Seek Dissidents. Nurture Dissidents. Cherish Dissidents."Enthusiasm, the Ultimate Virus." "Technicolor Times Demand Technicolor Actions." However, Tom doesn't say anything about leaders being elected. The closest he get is, "Leaders 'do' People. Period." (you can get the full list from his blog, www.tompeters.com)

Tom asked readers of his blog to provide their sayings, and most responses were along the lines above. This is a common perception everywhere - that leaders are people with a bunch of certain skills/attitudes. In short, when you ask "who is a leader?", you get the answer to a different question, ie, "what skills/attitudes should a leader have?". The answer to "who is a leader" is simple: a person who's been elected.

The problem is, with the current mis-perception of leadership simply being a bunch of skills and attributes, we get less of real 'leadership' and more of real 'dictatorship'.

(email me your comments - cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Wishful thinking?

2006-02-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

"Dr Yoshio Maruta, CEO of Japan's Kao Corporation, says that if your finger gets cut, every organ in your body than can provide support to it would automatically do so, immediately. That is what is needed in an organization. Whenever one unit or an individual faces an opportunity, a problem or an issue, anybody in the company who can help must do so without having to be asked. "

- Quoted in the book Managing Radical Change (Sumantra Ghoshal, Christopher Bartlett and Gita Piramal)

In the current system, what are the chances that your organization or team are going to help you in the manner described above?

(Email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

"Buy Your Boss?"

2006-02-08T22:18:00.000-08:00

Don Blohowiak of the Lead Well Institute asks, "Would you willingly pay your boss -- out of your own pocket - for the help that he or she provides you?" (read his article here)

Don also says, "If you aren't sure if your colleagues value you so much they'd gladly pay for your services, ask them. And listen closely to the answer. If they say they would pay you, ask why -- understand the value you deliver. And if they would not, ask what help you could deliver that would be worth paying for."

I think the underlying question is even more profound: do 'leaders' at work even consider themselves people who provide a service? In most cases, they see themselves as people in power over subordinates, rather than people in power to HELP subordinates.

Again, as I've said earlier, we need to take a systems view, so that leaders ask these questions of themselves automatically. And if they don't, subordinates are automatically empowered to ask their leaders these questions.

(Email me your comments cvdhruve@gmail.com)

"Why Employees Should Lead Themselves"

2006-02-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

In a sense, leadership is about people having a say in leadership itself - ie, that they have a voice. This interesting article says,

The result is a sense of ownership that delivers the biggest benefit of all: a collective mind and spirit that comes through in the music. "

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

'Leadership potential'

2006-02-06T04:49:00.000-08:00

One of the things that many companies look for - and MBA programmes - is something called 'leadership potential'. Exactly what is this? No one asking for 'leadership potential' defines it clearly. Leadership, even today, is somewhat of an abstract term - everyone has his/her own views of what it should be, but there's no generally accepted definition.

If I was looking for leadership potential, I would simply ask the candidate - how many times have you been elected to positions? And how many times have you been re-elected? In all other cases, rather than 'leadership potential', they're looking for dictatorship potential.

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Empowerment and other fallacies

2006-02-03T10:44:00.000-08:00

One of the things that companies - and bosses - say often is that they 'empower' their employees. It sounds fine in theory.

The problem is that the extent of empowerment depends on individual bosses. And even then, you never know to what extent you are really empowered - you might go off and do something thinking you've been empowered, only to find yourself in deep trouble. Hence, you don't often know where you really stand - do you actually take intiatives, or make the right noises but do nothing? In some ways, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

In some ways, it's better to have an explicit dictatorial culture. You do what the boss says. That way, there's no scope for misinterpretation. But unfortunately, what we have is a half-way house - not explicitly dictatorial, yet not explicitly free.

I'm sure NASA employees have been told that they're empowered. But as we've seen, that's really not the case.

The only way out: change the system, so empowerment becomes inevitable - it's not in the hands of the boss.

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

More on the space shuttle...

2006-02-01T20:51:00.000-08:00

Astronaut Mike Mullane (referred to in an earlier post) has distanced himself from the article that called the shuttle a 'deathtrap', stating he was misquoted. That said, he re-inforced his comment that NASA culture discouraged freedom.

I mentioned in an earlier post that astronauts worry about things like job security. I was wrong, because Mike says they don't. He says it goes way beyond job security - it goes into the very heart of who they are, the very reason for their existence. In that sense, the stakes are even higher and hence, astronauts are even less likely to say what they feel. Here's what Mike had to say (taken from a discussion thread at space.com):

(Excerpt from Riding Rockets, The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut, Scribner, copyright 2006 by Mike Mullane.) “Astronaut concerns about the shuttle’s “operational” label, the lack of an escape system and the passenger program should have been heard by every key manager, from Abbey to the JSC Center Director to the NASA Administrator. But they were not. We were terrified of saying anything that might jeopardize our place in the line into space. We were not like normal men and women who worried about the financial aspects of losing a job, of not being able to make the mortgage payment or pay the kids’ tuition. We feared losing a dream, of losing the very thing that made us us. When it came to our careers, we were risk adverse in the extreme. Effective leaders would have done everything possible to eradicate that fear. George Abbey, the JSC Director and the NASA Administrator all should have been frequent visitors to the astronaut office actively polling our concerns and each visit should have started with these or similarly empowering words, “There is nothing you can say to me that will jeopardize your place in the mission line. Nothing! If you think I’m doing something crazy, I want to hear it.” I had experienced this form of leadership many times in my Air Force career. I saw it during an F-4 mission with a General officer. I was a 1st Lieutenant—and terrified. I had never flown with a Flag officer before. But this man was a leader who understood how fear could jeopardize the team and did his best to eliminate it. As my foot touched the cockpit ladder, the General stopped me and said, “See these stars,” and pointed to his shoulder. “If I make a mistake they won’t save our lives. If you see anything that doesn’t look right on this flight, tell me. There’s no rank in this jet. Flying is dangerous enough as it is without having crewmembers afraid to speak up.” It was an empowering moment. The astronaut office desperately needed the same empowering moments, but they never came. Fear ruled—a fear rooted in Abbey’s continuing secrecy on all things associated with flight assignments. We kept our mouths shut.” [sentences in bold - emphasis mine].

Mike states that he is not criticising the current NASA administration, but the pre-challenger one. The tragic part is that it took two shuttle disasters to get NASA to sit up and take notice. Again, as I keep stating, the system needs to change. Otherwise, we're going to get more disasters, until we get that message.

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Prison experiment link

2006-01-29T22:17:00.000-08:00

To learn more about the prison experiment (including a slide presentation and video clips), click on the link below.

http://www.prisonexp.org/

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

How nature works

2006-01-27T05:03:00.000-08:00

If organizations claim they have to work in very complex environments, consider nature. How on are things like bodies or plants able to cope with mind-boggling complexity and changes that happen in nanoseconds?

How does nature work without strong command-and-control structures and heroic 'leadership'?

Here's the answer:

"You can't look at something like self-organization or complex adaptive systems in science, no matter what unit you're looking -- plants, molecules, chemicals -- without realizing that this is a kind of democratic process. Everybody is involved locally and out of that comes a more global system. "

- Meg Wheatley, The Berkana Institute

Google's way

2006-01-26T00:47:00.000-08:00

Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, has written an article giving 10 golden rules that Google will live by. One of those rules is:

"Strive to reach consensus. Modern corporate mythology has the unique decision maker as hero. We adhere to the view that the "many are smarter than the few," and solicit a broad base of views before reaching any decision. At Google, the role of the manager is that of an aggregator of viewpoints, not the dictator of decisions [emphasis mine]. Building a consensus sometimes takes longer, but always produces a more committed team and better decisions."

Schmidt has got the right attitude, obviously. But unfortunately, attitudes can change, and often do. And attitudes change most under the heat of battle - as the Tenerife and Shuttle disasters show. You might be willing to take consensus along the way, but under pressure, you succumb to the temptation of dictatorship behaviour.

Hence, as I've stressed earlier, the system needs to change. Individuals come and go, and attitudes come and go - so it's the system that's got to work properly.

(You can read Schmid's full article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10296177/site/newsweek/

What's the role of a boss?

2006-01-23T03:58:00.000-08:00

Strangely, organizations don't ask this question: "What's a boss's role, in terms of his subordinates?"

Does a boss have duties/responsibilies towards his/her subordinates? I mean things like communicating clearly, passing on information, setting clear expectations, motivating and so on. In short, bosses have to add value - if they don't, why have them? Just like employees have objectives, managers should have objectives for each subordinate - ie, how are they going to add value for their subordinates?

Currently, managers aren't explicitly expected to add value, so by default, they do the job of policing. They become policemen or dictators. HR is of little or no use. As Sally Bibb's wonderful book points out, "It is a commonly held fallacy that if you have a problem with your boss you can go to HR and they can help. Most focus on policy and policing, and the majority haven’t got the courage to stand up to badly behaved bosses. "

(Please send your comments to me at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

"Shuttle a deathtrap, says astronaut" (Headline in Britain's Observer newspaper)

2006-01-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

More evidence of the dicatorship culture at NASA:

In today's Observer newspaper, veteran astranaut Mike Mullane was quoted as saying that "Only janitors and cafeteria workers at Nasa were blameless in the deaths of the Challenger seven. Columbia was a repeat of Challenger, where people had a known design problem and launched anyway."

Why was this? Again, the answer is scarily mundane. Mullane said, "It's not like other jobs, where if you get frustrated you can go in to your boss and say "Shove it!" You can't do that at Nasa because there's no other place to go fly shuttles."

Think about it: employees are too scared to tell the truth to their bosses, because they won't be able to find another job!

Forgive me for sounding naive, but I thought NASA would make sure its employees don't have to worry about mundane things like job security, because they should be worrying about things like mission safety. Instead, it's horrifying to know that NASA employees feel that their jobs are on the line if they speak the truth!

You can read the full Observer article at
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1692139,00.html

(Please send your comments to me at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

The use of the word 'leader'

2006-01-20T22:37:00.000-08:00

Several people, after reading my manifesto, have stated that I'm arguing that leaders should be elected. While that sounds right, there's a nuance that they seem to be missing - I'm not saying that leaders should be elected. I'm saying that by definition, leaders ARE elected. No one is a leader UNTIL elected. Until such time that someone is an unelected 'leader', that person is a dictator.

What I'm saying is simply this: don't use the word leader unless that person is elected.

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Tenerife disaster (continued)

2006-01-17T03:06:00.000-08:00

So why did the KLM captain take off in such a hurry? As in the case of the Challenger and Columbia disasters, the KLM captain was also subject to pressures.

Both the Pan Am and KLM jets had in fact been diverted to Tenerife, after a terrorist bomb exploded at the original destination - Las Palmas. Both were long-haul flights from LA (via NY city) and Amsterdam respectively, so passengers were tired. Moreover, the captain of the KLM flight was aware that his crew was fast approaching the time after which they would not be allowed to work - flight regulations stated that the crew were allowed to work only a fixed number of hours per day, so that they would not be fatigued.

Hence, the KLM captain was worried not only about the tiredness of his passengers, but also whether they would be able to fly at all. Under this pressure, he ignored warnings that led to the disaster.

As we've seen from the NASA cases, pressure seems to bring out the worst in bosses - perhaps not in terms of their behaviour, but in their dictatorial attitudes.

Hence, it's crucial that 'leaders' are elected right from the start - so that genuine leadership behaviour - not dictatorial behaviour - becomes a part of their person. We can only guess, but if Captain Van Zanten knew that he would be accountable to the flight engineer and the co-pilot, he perhaps would have aborted take-off as soon as the engineer questioned him. Morever, the engineer would have pressed his case more forcefully, rather than taking the captain's answer lying down.

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

World's worst air disaster - hierarchy plays a part

2006-01-17T02:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I watched a National Geographic programme on TV that analysed the world's worst aviation disaster.

In March 1977, two 747s collided on the runway at Tenerife aiport in Spain, killing 583 people. One jet was that of the Dutch airline KLM, the other one Pan Am. The KLM jet was taking off while the Pan Am jet was still on the runway, directly in its path. The KLM lifted off, but its bottom hit the top of the Pan Am.

There were several reasons for the disaster, including fog on the runway and mis-communication between the control tower and pilots.

However, there was an instant at which the disaster could been averted. The KLM flight engineer questioned his captain when he began taking off without confirming with the control tower that the Pan Am was off the runway. The co-pilot asked the same question too, initially. The captain, focused on the take-off, said yes, and continued with the take-off. In fact, the captain hadn't been cleared for take-off by air traffic control.

Both the co-pilot and flight engineer were obviously junior in rank to the captain of the KLM flight, Jacob van Zantent. The captain was highly regarded by his employers - so much so that his photos were featured in the airlines adverts.

The fact that the captain was not just higher in rank but was also highly respected meant the flight engineer and co-pilot did nothing after the captain over-ruled them.

The investigation report released by the Spanish civil aviation department stated, "The fact exists that a co-pilot not very experienced with 747s was flying with one of the pilots of greatest prestige in the company who was, moreover, KLM's chief flying instructor and who had certified him fit to be a crew member for this type of aeroplane . in case of doubt. these circumstances could have induced the co-pilot not to ask any questions and to assume that this captain was always right."

For more on this, see http://atcsl.tripod.com/world_aircrashes.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_disaster

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Inviting suggestions for an implementation plan

2006-01-15T22:12:00.000-08:00

We're not going to get from A to B without a plan to get there (ie, an implementation plan).

What I suggest is that we come up with a plan together, like the programmers did with Linux. So if you have any suggestions, ideas or thoughts, email it to me at cvdhruve@gmail.com - I will publish your suggestions on this blog, and attribute it to you. (If you don't want your identity revealed, please say so.)

How do we get to a new system?

2005-12-02T23:42:00.000-08:00

How do we go from A to B? How do we go from a dictatorship system to a free system? The problem is, even if we know that a dictatorship system is what we have at work, that's what will continue until we have a new (free) system in place. By default, that's what will happen. You can't get from A to B, if B doesn't yet exist.

So we need to start thinking about what a new system will look like, and what we can do to get there.

Why elected leaders are like new fangled aircraft

2005-11-19T21:06:00.000-08:00

I attended an airshow in Farnborough (near London) some time ago, and there was a mock cockpit of one of these new generation aircraft on display. As I waited in line for my turn to enter the cockpit, I overheard the conversation of a couple of elderly men and a boy walking past, after they had taken a look.

One of them said to the other, "It's like being in a video game. I just can't relate to it. Remember all the dial and knobs in our days!" The other responded, "That's so true....but did you notice my grandson here...he just hopped into the cockpit and looked at home immediately! It's obviously because of all the video games he's playing!."

The point is, one reason that we don't imbibe the concept of having elected leaders at work is that our generation (anyone who's already in the workforce) hasn't had exposure to it. Hence, like the older pilots, we don't know what it looks like and feels like. So we're very uncomfortable with it. Once we introduce the concept of genuine leadership at the workplace, we may continue to feel uncomfortable, but the next generation will take to it the same way the grandson took to the 'video-game' cockpit.

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

What to do about bad bosses - right now?

2005-11-16T02:56:00.000-08:00

I received an email from someone who has a terrible boss, and asked what we could do about it. Unfortunately, the way organizations are, change still has to be enforced from the top. Once the people at the top decide to go ahead with changing their organizations, it's only then that things can happen. Otherwise, we will have to use the traditional (and more expensive) route: revolution.

Revolution might sound like an inappropriate word to use in the context of the workplace, but this will be the only alternative - once there is a huge amount of pressure from the bottom (and I'm not talking blood pressure!) on senior management for change, only then will they feel pressurised to do something. So it's up to underlings (as Dilbert would say) to start creating that pressure. This doesn't have to be difficult - it could simply be introduced to workplace conversations - once this effect snowballs, things will start happening. So what can you do right now? Simply start talking about the issue. Not aggressively, not accusingly, but simply as a better way of doing things.

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Brazil's Semco

2005-11-14T05:47:00.000-08:00

Thomas Eyde writes from Norway:

"I find it odd when you speak of democratic workplaces, you fail tomention SemCo and Ricardo Semler. There you have a workplace which really proves you right. Not only is SemCo successful, but it was also successful during one of Brazils greatest recessions."

Thomas - thanks for pointing this out.

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

Why be flat, when you can be free?

2005-11-12T22:51:00.000-08:00

Memo to organizations:

Why be flat, when you can be free?

The era of flat organizations will draw to a close. The era of free organizations will dawn.

Why? Either you survive, or you die. If you die, there's nothing to be said. How will the ones that survive, survive? As Darwin said, only those species that respond to change can survive. The only way to survive is to be supremely adaptive to change.

The pace of change is manic in a world that's getting increasing more complex. How do we survive in this scenario? Best to look at nature for guidance. There's nothing more complex than nature. How does nature deal with it? I'll talk about this in my next post.

The big question

2005-11-12T22:25:00.000-08:00

As Shakespeare might have put it, To be flat or not to be flat?

Most organizations respond with: To be flat.

Then they boast about it to potential employees. But the question is not of flatness, because even flat organizations are fear-based given that they are run by dictators-by-definition.

The big question is, "To be free or not to be free?"

We know the answer we want, but are companies willing to turn themselves into genuinely free organizations?

This means having real leaders - leaders who have been elected.

Democratic capitalism

2005-11-10T06:56:00.000-08:00

Dave Bayless has written a great post on democratic capitalism, and I quote: "Two hundred years ago, mercantilists' financial capital supplanted natural capital (i.e., land) as the key resource in the advanced economies of the world. Today, there is reason to believe that human, intellectual capital is ascendant. Might it be possible that knowledge workers who possess and control strategic know how will demand - and will be able to achieve - a meaningful role in business decision making? Will there come a day when Steve Jobs is elected (and fired) by the people who both invest in, and work for, the company?"

Take the time to read Dave's full post: http://radio.weblogs.com/0111718/2005/05/11.html#a280

Bullying bosses - news report

2005-11-10T03:14:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports that two million people face bullying at the workplace - and that most of the bullying is done by bosses. Senior managers are the worst perpetrators - not surprising given that they have the most power in the organization. So now, the British government is spending a million pounds on an anti-bullying campaign. (Read Two million face 'work bullying'.)

My prediction - this may work in the short term, but in the longer term, things are going to remain the same because for lasting change, the system needs to change.

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

ChangeThis manifesto corrections

2005-11-09T10:12:00.000-08:00

If you've seen my manifesto on ChangeThis, note that some minor errors have appeared:

Page 5 (under “The Hidden Factor That Influences Our Behavior): First line – “Is it our genes, our background or something else?” It should read: “Is it our genes, our background or also something else?”

Page 12, para 4, first line: This should read: “No one tells people in dictatorships that because they don’t have the right to vote, they should behave fearfully.”

Page 39, 2nd para (“Definition given by the late….”): This should be end-note ‘A’ on page 40.

Page 40: End-note ‘A’ (“Will this new system be perfect.....process”) should be last para on page 35.

If you want to read my manifesto, please go to http://www.changethis.com/19.BossDictator

(Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com)

ChangeThis Manifesto

2005-01-27T22:24:00.000-08:00

This blog serves as a place to discuss the ideas in my ChangeThis manifesto. Please email me your comments at cvdhruve@gmail.com

Why your boss is programmed to be a dictator

I've just created a QuickQuiz - A Trivia Quiz on the Word "Boss"

UK's NHS tries to gag doctors

Where do the laws of a system come from?

Air India plane crash in Mangalore - probable cause

French man robs bank to take revenge on bad boss

Exit interviews

My ChangeThis manifesto

Brilliant Dilbert cartoon

The role of VIP weight-throwing in air crashes (continued)

The role of VIP weight-throwing in air crashes

“Life as the wife of a Lehman Brothers banker”

“I like being able to say turn right, and we truly have 67,000 people turn right.”

Even pirates in the 18th century got to vote for their boss!

The insanity of our organization hierarchies

The death of kindness

Why Lehman Brothers collapsed - a systems view

Frightening

Why your boss doesn't seem compassionate

Publicizing my book - trying Scott Adams

"Bad bosses may damage your heart"

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and his explanation for plane crashes

Why US car companies are in trouble

Bangalore Nokia engineer commits suicide over boss

"What do I do?"

A king stands for elections to a cricket association

Powerless, and it shows

'Bosses fire worker who put up 'Dilbert' comic'

Where a country's wealth comes from

"Managers More Interested In Power Than People"

General who investigated Abu Ghraib suffers career dead-end

US army officer asks for for future generals to be evaluated by subordinates

Bad bosses get ahead

Self appraisals

My new website

Bob Sutton's book - the No Asshole Rule

My book

Announcing: A Little Book of f-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management

Announcing: A Little Book of f-Laws: 13 Common Sins of Management

My response

Tenerife disaster, revisited

Hierarchy insanity

Rankism

"Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation"

Minor revision to airplane example

"Triarchy"

The power to humiliate

"Do I Dare Say Something?"

The consequences of over-work

Why good ideas are resisted

Monster's Toxic Boss Contest

Self-censorship, democracy style

Self censorship, dictatorship style

Great quote

Problems with authority?

Wolves in sheep's clothing

Bosses can be like abusive parents

A big thank you to ChangeThis

Ideas on implementation (2)

Dilbert cartoon - spot on!

Patients die because junior doctors are too scared of their bosses

Ideas on implementation (1)

Being a King vs being a leader

Tom Peters "sayings" on leadership

Wishful thinking?

"Buy Your Boss?"

"Why Employees Should Lead Themselves"

'Leadership potential'

Empowerment and other fallacies

More on the space shuttle...

Prison experiment link

How nature works

Google's way

What's the role of a boss?

"Shuttle a deathtrap, says astronaut" (Headline in Britain's Observer newspaper)

The use of the word 'leader'

Tenerife disaster (continued)

World's worst air disaster - hierarchy plays a part

Related reading

Inviting suggestions for an implementation plan