The insanity of our organization hierarchies

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

A reader of my book wrote in to me with the link to this article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Love thy neighbour. 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.”

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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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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?"

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

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

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'

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

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"

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

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

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

"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

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)