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False opportunities appear to be chances to contribute or achieve. They aren't.
Workplace politics can make any environment dangerous, both to your career and to your health. This excerpt from my little catalog of devious political tactics describes the false opportunity, which appears to be a chance to perform, to contribute, or to make a real difference. It's often something else.Jordan looked up to see Stephanie standing in his doorway. She didn't look happy. With her eyes, she asked him for some time. Jordan rolled over towards his table and pointed to a chair, palm up. Stephanie closed the door, set down her water bottle and slowly sat.
"Bad day," she began. "Marigold might be shelved."
Jordan had no words. Stephanie had created Marigold, and she'd hoped for a ride on its success. Marigold was a great idea, and she certainly deserved recognition. "I don't understand," he said. "Why?"
Stephanie stared at her water bottle. "Emmons mumbled something about new priorities from Diamond Square, that's all I know."
"But he must have known," said Jordan. "Why would he give you Marigold only to shut it down a month later?"
Lots of possibilities. Stephanie's predicament could be the result of having accepted a false opportunity. A false opportunity is a tactic some managers use to manipulate subordinates or to build empires. Here are some kinds of false opportunities.
- The rhinestone
- It glitters, but it's worthless. A rhinestone looks like an opportunity, but the grantor can undermine it in important ways: offering it too late; providing insufficient resources; requiring impossibly short completion dates or impossible amounts of work; or failing to remove conflicting demands.
- The diversion
- The offer might be less desirable than another opportunity that's out of your awareness or isn't yet announced. Once you accept, you're tied up, and unavailable for the really good one that comes along.
- The dead end
- It looks like an opportunity, but it's under threat of material change, such as reorganization, acquisition or downsizing; or a new high-level manager might be about to appear — one who's hostile to the opportunity; or a related business line is about to be sold off or shut down; or a competitive project is about to begin.
- The foray
- The opportunity might be an attempt to infringe on the turf of another, using you as a pawn. Sometimes the Foray is covert. If the project works, the grantor might go public, claiming an achievement. If it fails, it fails secretly. If it's discovered before completion, you might be left exposed, and bear some or all of the responsibility for the infringement.
- Calisthenics
- Some opportunities serve only to occupy the subordinate. Even if the project is successful, it will likely be shelved. This kind of "opportunity" is most often secret, because it could lead to demands from others for support for their own preferred opportunities.
You don't have to accept the False Opportunity when it appears — you can consider it a request for a favor, and ask for something in exchange before you accept. Remember to be careful what you ask for.
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
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