|
|
Home | Switchboard | Unix Administration | Red Hat | TCP/IP Networks | Neoliberalism | Toxic Managers |
| (slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and bastardization of classic Unix | |||||||
| Natural evolution of large and complex organization tend to limit their
adaptive competence
empty suit: An executive in upper management who lacks the knowledge, experience, skills and/or intellect to hold in the position. "The director of marketing is an empty suit." Female "empty suits" are also known as a "hollow bunnies." Fearless Leader A reference to the Rocky and Bullwinkle cold-war cartoons, Fearless Leader was Boris Badenov's boss. We apply this term of endearment to all project leaders, managers or other authority figures that take credit for your successes, take no credit for failures, and in general don't have a clue as to what you're trying to accomplish! Don't say "The Fearless Leader", just refer to "Fearless Leader" as a proper name or you'll be screwing up this unique reference that no one under the age of 40 will get! Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. |
|
|
One of the worst sorts of bosses is incompetent, angry, undisciplined, chaotic boss.
We need to distinguish between normal and abnormal incompetence. The latter is also called pathological incompetence or colloquially "empty suits". It is usually quite toxic, and such managers typically are very aggressive and domineering. Often with bought of anger.
Extreme aggressiveness and bulling of subordinates typically go hand in hand with other personality problems -- most toxically incompetent managers are micromanagers. No substance and not much style. Just very sharp claws and elbows. Theodore Roosevelt once noted: "People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives [people into insanity]."
|
|
Such managers are more widespread that this is assumed in Harvard Business Scholl publications: in a large organization technical competence is not the primary value. Politics, connections, and clever tactics can compensate for technical incompetence. Actually I was surprised how low is the level of middle managers in IT departments of major corporations. The sad truth that they are pretty typical in any large organizations and for the reasons completely different from The Peter Principle. In "bootlickocracy", the most incompetents are valued for "different reasons" and can easily propel themselves into a supervisory role.
Toxic incompetence is usually correlated with various other personality disorders and is prominent among corporate psychopaths. Common clues include:
Margaret Heffernan in her article about traits that incompetent managers share distinguishes the following:
Those traits are often correlated with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). The latter is a personality variable defined by three attitudinal and behavioral clusters which correlate together: (Right-wing authoritarianism)
As annotation to the book The Incompetent Manager aptly states:
The longest chapter in the book looks at abnormal incompetence and what are called personality disorders. Well-known psychiatric disorders are described in detail and how to spot these in managers. Thus, the paranoid or sociopathic, narcissistic or passive-aggressive types are described in everyday language as well as how to deal with them. More importantly, the book considers how the pathologically incompetent managers influence organizations and groups to fulfil their often bizarre needs and wishes. The final section of the book attempts to help the reader correctly diagnose incompetence. It also offers various possible cures: the emphasis is that cure follows correct diagnoses. Some cures for incompetence actually accentuate it.
Ruthless, toxic incompetents typically use political games to promote themselves to upper echelons; they also try to hire subordinates with zero abilities ("subzeros"), but who are fiercely devoted to the benefactor as they have nowhere to go. Bill Joy once proposed an elegant explanation for the apparently inevitable metamorphosis of cool start-ups into hideous corporations, which he called the Bozo2 Principle. Wizards, he said, hire other Wizards. Bozos hire Bozos. As a company grows rapidly, it is inevitable that some Wizards will slip and hire Bozos, given the scarcity of the former and plenitude of the latter. However, once a Bozo has been hired, he hires another, and "everything beneath them turns Bozo after that." (This is related to Steve Jobs' famous: "A people hire A people. B people hire C people.").
|
Bozo2 Principle: Wizards, Bill Joy said, hire other Wizards. Bozos hire Bozos |
Few people read The Peter Principle, a seminal work on incompetence and even fewer understand it message. Laurence J. Peter wrote part satire part sociological research along with Raymond Hull in the late 1960s but as with any good books if you read it today you feel it was written yesterday. The problems that it touches are as vital in organizations in XXI century as they were in the second half of the XX century. The book has too layers: one serious about real problems in large organizations, and the second is Mark Twain-style depiction of the absurdity of the modern corporate life. The latter often misused and abused out of context.
According to Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull incompetence is an immanent feature of modern organizations. Theoretically, all men and women can be promoted to the level of their incompetence and many are: the number of talented managers is much less then the number of positions available in all large firms and organizations. There are just too many companies, firms and government institutions. In a short note The generalized Peter Principle written in 1993 F. Heylighen noted:
The evolutionary generalization of the principle is less pessimistic in its implications, since evolution lacks the bureaucratic inertia that pushes and maintains people in an unfit position. But what will certainly remain is that systems confronted by evolutionary problems will quickly tackle the easy ones, but tend to get stuck in the difficult ones. The better (more fit, smarter, more competent, more adaptive) a system is, the more quickly it will solve all the easy problems, but the more difficult the problem will be it finally gets stuck in. Getting stuck here does not mean "being unfit", it just means having reached the limit of one's competence, and thus having great difficulty advancing further. This explains why even the most complex and adaptive species (such as ourselves, humans) are always still "struggling for survival" in their niches as energetically as are the most primitive organisms such as bacteria. If ever a species would get control over all its evolutionary problems, then the "Red Queen Principle" would make sure that new, more complex problems would arise, so that the species would continue to balance on the border of its domain of incompetence. In conclusion, the generalized Peter principle states that in evolution systems tend to develop up to the limit of their adaptive competence.
The Peter Principle states: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." The natural corollary is that as organization became older the number on incompetents people at high levels increases until potentially the entire organization is manned by incompetent people.
|
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. |
This can be called the process of aging of organizations and incompetence is the cancer that often bring old organism down. The related Red Quinn principle stated "in this place it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." This principle that can be formulated as "for an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with" was proposed by the evolutionary biologist L. van Valen (1973), and is based on the observation to Alice by the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" .
Since every improvement in one species will lead to a selective advantage for that species, variation will normally continuously lead to increases in fitness in one species or another. However, since in general different species are coevolving, improvement in one species implies that it will get a competitive advantage on the other species, and thus be able to capture a larger share of the resources available to all. This means that fitness increase in one evolutionary system will tend to lead to fitness decrease in another system. The only way that a species involved in a competition can maintain its fitness relative to the others is by in turn improving its design.
The most obvious example of this effect are the "arms races" between predators and prey, where the only way predators can compensate for a better defense by the prey (e.g. rabbits running faster) is by developing a better offense (e.g. foxes running faster). In this case we might consider the relative improvements (running faster) to be also absolute improvements in fitness.
However, the example of trees shows that in some cases the net effect of an "arms race" may also be an absolute decrease in fitness. Trees in a forest are normally competing for access to sunlight. If one tree grows a little bit taller than its neighbours it can capture part of their sunlight. This forces the other trees in turn to grow taller, in order not to be overshadowed. The net effect is that all trees tend to become taller and taller, yet still gather on average just the same amount of sunlight, while spending much more resources in order to sustain their increased height. This is an example of the problem of local optimization: optimizing access to sunlight for each individual tree does not lead to optimal performance for the forest as a whole.
In sum, in a competitive world, relative progress ("running") is necessary just for maintenance ("staying put").
The Peter Principle spotlights the fact that every organization feels the overpowering compulsion to promote a person who performs well on his level to the next higher level of hierarchy. The danger of this move that is can often be move from the level of (relative) competence to a level of (relative) incompetence. Thus, a competent mechanic is promoted to become an incompetent foreman, a competent foreman is made into an incompetent superintendent, a competent teacher is made into an incompetent vice-principal and a competent Colonel is promoted to become an incompetent General.
The question arises "How the real work is still done in such situation?". Peter answer is somewhat fuzzy and incomplete: "Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." But in reality the notion of work became perverted and the whole organization is sliding into socialism. This explains how large government bureaucracies and large corporate bureaucracies looks from the point of view of environment as identical twins. Still his observation that at the base of the pyramidal structure of the hierarchy there exists a large workforce who, by virtue of their intelligence and education, is still functioning at levels where they are superior to their job or in other words competent, still makes sense.
The related question is "Who defines competence". It also answered by Peter somewhat fuzzy:
"His superior in the hierarchy determines the competence of an employee. If the superior is on the level of competence, he will evaluate his subordinate based on his output such as his productivity or his achievement of whatever goals he has been set."
He states that a superior who has reached his level of incompetence is likely to evaluate on the basis of superficial traits such as promptness, neatness, and courtesy to his superiors, internal paper work, conformity to rules and so on. Peter says that in such a situation, internal consistency is valued more highly than efficient service. This phenomenon, typical for bureaucratic organizations, Peter calls as the `Peter's Inversion' but a more proper term might be "Peter perversion". Also he underestimated the power of mimicry in humans: it is easy for corporate psychopaths to became `inverts' if this means a safe way to procure more promotions in an organization.
Also if we assume that most "organizational men" seek out and tend to rise in a hierarchy they will do their best to adapt to the requirements of the organization no matter how pervert they are. If the principle requirement for rising in a particular hierarchy is "brown-nosing", then the men who have selected this hierarchy to rise in will do it. If long work hours is what it takes, then a certain number of men will exhibit the characteristics necessary to fulfill this requirement. They will ignore family, friends, social life, intellectual life, etc. to rise in the hierarchy. There is a strong biological predisposition to this behavior.
Also there is an interesting collorary: imposters, especially sociopaths, tend to congregate in the mid to upper levels of large organizations because one imposter cannot spot another imposter.
Peter points out an interesting type of people that organization tent to cultivate. He cites the example of the mother of George Washington who, when asked how her son was so accomplished as a General, answered: "I taught him to obey." And that was a profound answer, authoritarian "kiss up, kick down" behavior is a universal opener for successful career in most large organizations. Much more so then personal intelligence. It might be that the modern organization environment has a need for such people as they tend to smooth the internal contradictions and cat-fights inherent in the large organizations. At least cat-fights became better structured ;-).
If incompetence along with "kiss up, kick down" attitude is rewarded then people who are flexible enough can successfully simulate it, even if this is not their natural behavior. So via mimicry non-authoritarians became also eligible. Psychopath usually is the most prominent group that benefits as they are perfect in mimicry.
If incompetence is rewarded then people who are flexible enough can successfully simulate it. Among possible strategies Peter half-jokingly mentions:
But the most useful among office phobias Peter mentions is "Death by PowerPoint" -- an obsession with flow charts and pie charts. Its efficiency is related to "compulsive attention deficit disorder" abound superiors of incompetent managers, which is the inability to read a report and instead ask for a one page executive summary from the subordinate. "Look I have no time to wade through all this garbage. Tell me about this in your own words and briefly".
Similarly choice of solution is influenced by the competence of managers. For example enterprise software systems (i.e. SAP/R3) are not a substitute for good management ability and often just mean conversion of the capitalist enterprise into socialist enterprise with the corresponding levels of inflexibility, bureaucratization and waist of resources on all levels. As popular joke tells "the path to continuous improvement in a large organization is actually a circle."
|
The path to continuous improvement in a large organization is actually a circle |
When you try to optimize the global outcome for a system consisting of distinct subsystems (e.g. maximizing the amount of prey hunted for a pack of wolves, or minimizing the total punishment for the system consisting of the two prisoners in the Prisoners' Dilemma game), you might try to do this by optimizing the result for each of the subsystems separately. This is called "local optimization". The principle of local optimization states that local optimization in general does not lead to global optimization. Indeed, the optimization for each of the wolves separately is to let the others do the hunting, and then come to eat from their captures. Yet if all wolves would act like that, no prey would ever be captured and all wolves would starve. Similarly, the local optimization for each of the prisoners separately is to betray the other one, but this leads to both of them being punished rather severely, whereas they might have escaped with a mild punishment if they had stayed silent. Another, more dramatic implication of the problem of local optimization is the "tragedy of the commons".
The principle of local optimization can be derived from the more basic dialectical principle stating that "the whole is more than the sum of its parts". If the system (e.g. the wolf pack) would be a simple sum or "aggregate" of its parts, then the outcome for the system as a whole (total prey killed) would be a sum of the outcomes for the parts (prey killed by each wolf separately), but that is clearly not the case when there is interaction (and in particular cooperation) between the parts. Indeed, a pack of wolves together can kill animals (e.g. a moose or a deer), that are too big to be killed by any wolf separatly. Another way of expressing this aspect of "non-linearity" is to say that the interaction the different wolves are engaged in is a non zero-sum game, that is, the sum of resources that can be gained is not constant, and depends on the specific interactions/cooperation between the wolves.
But it is one thing to read and discuss Peter Principle and its theoretical implications and the other to work for an incompetent manager. Rick Brenner recommends the following
After the boss commits even a few enormous blunders, some of us conclude that he or she is just incompetent. We begin to worry whether our careers are safe, whether the company is safe, or whether to start looking for another job. Beyond worrying, what else can we do?
Here are some insights and steps from Rick Brenner article that you might benefit from considering:
Your boss's poor performance is your boss's problem. What it does to you is your problem. You'll probably do better if you work your own problem. Chris Ortiz in Badbossology.com suggest that telling signs of an incompetent boss are:
Judge people by hours [spent at work] not performance. This is similar to #8. Again, I am not impressed with overtime junkies. They have lost all perspective on a healthy family/balance. Bad managers will promote the employees that work the most hours and not look at the smart ones who work less……….meaning have better time management. Stop watching the lock.
Act differently in front of their leaders. This is an indication of low self-confidence. They have doubts about their own ability to lead and they will act like little children when authority is present. A confident person acts the same around everyone. Remember, have respect for them, but also have self-respect.
As for the letter he is too benevolent. Acting differently in front of their leaders is just a typical sign of "kiss up, kick down" type of managers. Typically such jerks will tell you that he wants to obey orders from higher authority, no matter how stupid, to take from him the crushing responsibility of thinking for himself. Since the Republic is weak, he is led to break the law out of love for obedience. But in reality he demands rigorous execution of this orders by subordinates and reserves for himself the role of transmission line, absolving him from any responsibility.
Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov
|
|
Switchboard | ||||
| Latest | |||||
| Past week | |||||
| Past month | |||||
 |
 |
 |
Oct 25, 2020 | www.unz.com
Everybody and his goat has weighed in on the election, so I will too. This will make no difference to Trump's core followers, for whom he is a cult figure, or to those who detest him. The undecided may be interested.
Note how insubstantial Trump has been, pretending to be what he isn't and claiming to have done what he hasn't. Does no one notice? He has heavy support from Evangelicals. Ask him to name the books of the Pentateuch, or the second book, or what church he regularly attended, or ever attended, in New York. He was going to end the wars, but what war has he ended? To reduce the trade deficit, but it has grown . To get rid of all illegal aliens withing two years, but have they gone? To bring back factories from China and Mexico, but how many have returned? He is called a law-and-order President. Yet he hid, besieged, in the White House during the greatest eruption of lawlessness the country has ever seen, with a statue being pulled down across the street from his house. His handling of the virus? America remains hardest hit in the world, and it worsens by the day.
Trump, like all Presidents, has fulfilled the two critical jobs expected of him, protecting Wall Street and the military budget. What else has he done?
Almost nothing. All in good fun. But in the crucial field of international relations, he has been a disaster. I suspect that few of his followers in Flint and Gary study things beyond the borders. They should.
Here context matters. The US, or those who control the US, are trying to maintain American hegemony, or near hegemony, over the world. America has 600-800 military bases around the globe depending on what you regard as a military base. While many tens of thousands of America sleep on the sidewalks, while infrastructure crumbles, while standards of living fall and medical care is pricey but poor, the Pentagon always gets its budget. At the level of the White House, the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel, the arms industry, the important thing is to maintain the flow of money. And dominate the world.
Trump is the embodiment of this looking-for-a-fight attitude. Not good. He has surrounded himself with over-age Cold Warriors, with generals, with the pathologically aggressive hangers-on from think-tank Washington: John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Steve Bannon, and minor squibs of like outlook. He has pulled the US out of the arms-control treaties, START, INF, Open Skies. He has pushed NATO against Russian borders. In the Legion halls of Idaho, this may seem virile, the sort of thing that John Wayne would do. Back the commies down. Show them who is boss. No. It is just pointless and dangerous.
Worse, there is a new kid on the block. China is growing. It behaves no worse than other countries, does not inflict on the world nearly the destruction and horror that the United States does, but it is growing. For Washington, this makes it not a competitor but an enemy. This is very much Trump's policy. Don't negotiate. Threaten. "Do as I say, or I will break you."
Those favoring the continuance of Empire might note that, even at this, Trump has been a disaster. The First Rule of Empire is Don't let your enemies unite. Trump, having made Russia and China into enemies (why?) has forced them to unite. This is -- how shall I put it? -- stupid. Russia and China are not natural allies. China is a crowded country with 1.4 billion smart, industrious people, rapidly growing influence, and a very long indefensible border with Russia. Russia has barely 146 million people, a comparatively static economy, vast empty lands with rich resources. The Russians may have noticed this. The two have had territorial disputes. This is not a marriage made, as we say, in heaven. Instead of playing them against each other, allying with one against the other, or leaving them the hell alone, Trump has forced them into close alliance.
This is Trump's policy, in the sense that if it happens during his presidency, it is his baby, though it is fairly evident that Pompeo is Trumps brains and Trump is Pompeo's enabler.
Then there is Iran, a geopolitical linchpin, having eighty million people, a large and competent military, and lots and lots of oil. Under the JCPOA, the nuke deal, the Iranians were posed happily to integrate themselves into the Western economy -- buy hundreds of airliners from Boeing and Airbus, telecommunications gear, sell oil, have western companies develop its huge hydrocarbon reserves.
Then Trump pulled out of the treaty and, led by the egregious Pompeo, tries to starve the Iranians into installing a puppet government. Iran, seeing that the West is not friendly, turns to the East, allies itself tightly with Russia and China. Tehran and Beijing are about to sign a twenty-five year, multimanymuchoslotsa billion dollar development deal.
Three enemies, united, where none was before. Fucking brilliant, Mike. Just fucking brilliant.
Then Trump had Soleimani, an Iranian hero, murdered. This doubtless played well with his partisans in Joe's Bar in Chicago, being manly and decisive and making America great again. It was also idiotic, making Iranians even less likely to cave to American pressure.
The same counterproductiveness appears in his "trade war" with China, in fact an attempt to wreck China commercially and technologically. This is packaged by Trump as "standing up to China," "deterring China," "containing China," but it might as accurately be called "encouraging the genie to leave the bottle," or "asking for it."
|
|
|
Jun 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
JohnH , Jun 27 2020 14:45 utc | 2
Biden is the intelligence services' ideal candidate -- an easily manipulated empty suit. There's a reason why charges of Biden wrongdoing are as easily dismissed as nonsensical charges against Trump and Russia get fabricated. And that reason is that the media is as happy to be manipulated as Biden.
|
|
|
www.theamericanconservative.com
Michael N. Moore , says: at 12:13 pm
In my opinion the most under-reported event of the Iraq war was the suicide of military Ethicist Colonel Ted Westhusing. It was reported at the end of a Frank Rich column that appeared in the NY Times of 10-21-2007:Michael N. Moore , says: February 13, 2013 at 2:46 pm"The cost cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame. Its essence was summed up by Col. Ted Westhusing, an Army scholar of military ethics who was an innocent witness to corruption, not a participant, when he died at age 44 of a gunshot wound to the head while working for Gen. David Petraeus training Iraqi security forces in Baghdad in 2005. He was at the time the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq."
"Colonel Westhusing's death was ruled a suicide, though some believe he was murdered by contractors fearing a whistle-blower, according to T. Christian Miller, the Los Angeles Times reporter who documents the case in his book "Blood Money."
Either way, the angry four-page letter the officer left behind for General Petraeus and his other commander, Gen. Joseph Fil, is as much an epitaph for America's engagement in Iraq as a suicide note."
" 'I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars,' Colonel Westhusing wrote, abbreviating the word mission. 'I am sullied.' "
As per the request of James Canning for more information on Col. Ted Westhusing, please see:thefatefullightning , says: June 4, 2013 at 1:09 pmhttp://www.correntewire.com/a_disturbing_suicide_note_from_iraq
Or the book "Blood Money" by T. Christian Miller
"The tiny pink candies at the bottom of the urinals are reserved for Field Grade and Above." --sign over the urinals in the "O" Club at Tan Son Nhut Airbase, 1965.Terrence Zehrer , says: July 15, 2013 at 12:48 pmNow that sentiment, is Officer-on-Officer. The same dynamic tension exists throughout all Branches and ranks.
My background includes a Combat Infantry Badge and a record of having made Spec Four , two times. If you don't know what that means, stop reading here.
I feel that no one should be promoted E-5 or O-4, if they are to command men in battle, unless they have had that life experience themselves. It becomes virgins instructing on sexual etiquette.
Within the ranks, there exists a disdain for officers, in general. Some officers overcome this by their actions, but the vast majority cement that assessment the same way.
What makes the thing run is the few officers who are superior human beings, and the NCOs who are of that same tribe. And there is a love there, from top to bottom and bottom to top, a brotherhood of warriors which the civilian population will forever try to discern, parse and examine to their lasting frustration and ignorance.It is the spirit of this nation [Liberty, e pluribus unum and In God We Trust ] that is the binding filament of it all. The civilians responsible for the welfare of the armed services need to be more fully aware of that spirit and they need to bring it into the air-conditioned offices they inhabit when they make decisions about men who know sacrifice.
But the Pentagon is excellent at what it does – extort money from the US taxpayer. I call it treason."Massive military budgets erode the economic foundation on which true national security is dependent."
– Dwight Eisenhower
|
|
|
Mar 11, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
"The idea has been allowed to take hold in the army that general officers are a race apart, not subject to the norms of ordinary life and that nothing should limit their ambition, not even common sense. " It seems quite clear from this and other articles, that the ROE are about covering General officers backsides, and nothing else.
What is killing the Army is exactly the same disease that is killing the American economy and has killed American politics, and it is spreading internationally. That disease is the promotion or election of officials, be they Generals, CEO's or Congressmen who have a variant of narcissistic personality disorder.
People so affected may be intelligent and hard working, but they cannot empathise with anyone. Normal human emotions, shame, love, fear, embarrasssment, etc. are a mystery to them.
Such folk self select for high office because they will do anything to get ahead without the slightest qualm, and that includes lying, cheating, character assassination, backstabbing and outrageous flattery of their seniors. They mimic whatever behaviors they need to exhibit to get ahead, but they don't "own' those behaviours.
At the core of them, there is a gaping hole where empathy for their fellow humans should be. Furthermore, since only a narcissist can or will work for a more senior narcissist, once the infestation starts it multiplies and filters up and down through the organisation. Based on what I've read about the levels of frustration, lack of morale and junior officer turnover, I believe, it may be safe to say that Petreaus and McChrystal are afflicted this way and most probably many officers below them and elsewhere in the Defence Forces as well.
Since McChrystal no doubt thinks of his troops as no more than a pack of valuable hunting dogs, why would he possibly consider muzzling them with restrictive rules of engagement to be a problem? "I mean it's not as if we actually have to succeed in doing good in this god forsaken country, it's not as if the troops have to care about what is happening, I just need to construct the illusion of success in Afghanistan sufficient to get my next promotion. Why can't the troops see things that way as well?" If you wish to read about an extreme example of this type of behaviour look no further than the case of Capt. Holly Graf, whose narcissistic abilities allowed her to rise to command of a Navy cruiser. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Graf
To put it another way, the disease that permitted Goldman Sachs to sell bonds to investors while at the same time secretly betting that the value of said bonds would fall is one and the same as that affecting the Army. The absolute give away, which I have not yet heard of in the Army, is the mistreatment of subordinates. Of course the reason for the infestation of these folk in senior management is our well meaning efforts to end discrimination. Unfortunately discrimination on grounds of character is now forbidden, and solid evidence of good character provided by peers and subordinates is the only way to avoid promoting narcissists. To put it another way, there are people I was at school and university with who were rotten then and are rotten now, but today such evidence is inadmissible in promotion decisions. If you want a depiction of a Narcissist in high office, look no further than Australias current Prime Minister:
"The third example highlights Rudd's nascent contempt for most of the people who work for him and occurred days after his stunning election win. Staff who had gathered for a briefing on their responsibilities were told their Great Leader would address them. They were all on a high after the victory, but their excitement soon turned to dismay. They didn't get a version of the true believers speech; instead, Rudd had one clear message: if any of their bosses stuffed up, it would be on their heads. They were the ones who would pay the price. He told them they would be given their lines every day and their job was to ensure they and their bosses stuck to the script. They were not to put a foot out of line. Or else. No mistakes or deviations would be tolerated. Thank you and good night. Oh and the f-word, which Rudd loves dropping almost as much as the c-word, featured prominently in his little lecture. Old hands who had worked for previous Labor administrations didn't hang around for very long after that. One referred to him not by name but as "the megalomaniac from Queensland"."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/rudd-revenge-on-alp-agenda/story-e6frg6zo-1225858519372
There is no cure for this disease until moral character is once again assessed before promotion decisions are made. Walrus
Posted at 01:07 AM | Permalink
walrus , 9 years ago
Thank you all for your comments. I think I need to expand a few thing s alittle further.Norm Mosher , 9 years agoNarcissism is not "Self Love", narcissism is a love of "reflected" love from others. Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in the pool. While Narcissism is an essential part of all our personalities in the NPD disorder the demand for constant narcissistic stimulation from other people consumes all other desires.
Now many people who suffer from this condition sublimate this need through hard work and apply great intelligence to it as well. However there is a huge cost because of the character defects Narcissism causes - chief of which is an inability to empathise with normal human beings.
There has been serious discussion in management theory that NPD sufferers can be valuable sometimes as managers can make ruthless but necessary business decisions. However that cynical observation has to be balanced against the damage and loss of staff and morale such a manager inevitably causes.
A classic example of Narcissistic behaviour was provided recently by the Chairman of an Airline, that for a whole year had ruthlessly worked to lower wages and employment conditions for its workers. At Christmas time she gave some Forty senior managers each a $600 bottle of wine (Penfold Grange Hermitage). Can anyone not imagine the multiple negative effects of such a gesture on the ordinary airline staff?
It is too big a task to catalogue the everyday examples of people with this condition. The movie stars and celebrities for example whose private lives, as seems normal with Narcissists, are a smoking wreck. Tiger Woods is a classic case.
However when we start talking about elected officials, or would be elected officials like Sarah Palin, we can see the serious implications. Australias Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for example has micromanaged a series of massive policy failures at home and now craves his narcissistic sublimation by impressing foreign dignitaries on every available occasion, earning him the nickname "Kevin 747" for his propensity to jet off overseas to speak at the U.N., confer with President Obama, etc. His bad, narcissistic, style of decision making has cost the nation a lot of money.
In the case of President Obama, what can we say about some one caught making an off the cuff remark about "The Special Olympics" or who was caught ogling a girl who was not much older than his own daughters? Do we see a pattern here?
I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the "Suicidal Statecraft" that destroy nations is a by product of narcissistic leadership - for example "The Habsburg Provocation" to "The honour Of France" that started the Franco - Prussian war.
At the General Officer Level, what can one say about Patton? A brilliant charismatic leader and strategist? What does the incident of the shell shocked soldier say? McArthur? Petreaus? The supposedly sleepless McChrystal? I don't know.
By way of contrats, and Col. Lang will take me to task on this, I was struck on reading Gen. Schwarzkopfs autobiography, by his apparent high degree of empathy with the average soldiers, even if he appeared far more uncompromising with the officer corps. I also was struck by his solution to logistical squabbling between Corps commanders in the lead up to Gulf war One - a field promotion of his logistics Chief from a Two Star to a Three Star General. Such a solution would be anathema to a narcissist.
I am amazed at a discussion of narcissistic personality disorder that to this point, at least, has not mentioned today's poster child for this disorder -- Sarah Palin.anna missed , 9 years agoIt would seem that narcissism is rooted in the notion of individualism, in that it expresses a love for the self over the group. Interestingly and ironically, wasn't it the Catholic Church that championed individualism in the post dark ages era, as a mechanism/method to disassemble the collectivist mentality of Germanic tribalism -- while at the same time replacing it with their own hierarchical social/religious authority structure.Sidney O. Smith III , 9 years agoI think what Walrus says is essentially true, but would be better said by including the social context by which narcissism or the cult-ification of individualism could be seen as generating its own kind of social order, or social hierarchy based upon meritocracy, or the illusion of merit when equated with raw power.
Or perhaps in better words, individualism or narcissism must be seen in the context of being its own hierarchical social structure, with its own construct of social (not individual) values that are internalized an acted upon by its participants.
And maybe, this why the "effects" of narcissism are so widespread and endemic in all of our institutions.
At least in the civilian world, there is an aspect to this personality trait that is not emphasized in Walrus' comment. A few -- not all -- of those with a narcissistic personality traits are brilliant. Megalomania is one of the pathways to creativity, albeit it usually ends w/ some kind of tragedy.Maureen Lang , 9 years agoYou can bring these people down, imo, and beat them at their own game but expect career sacrifice and do not expect fanfare. And I would never under estimate their extreme talent.
Can't say about the military world nor do I want to know. But it sure seems to be that General Bragg at Chattanooga fulfilled a lot of Dr. Dixon's categories in the article mentioned by S.Henning.
I don't understand all this hoopla about the greatness of Confederate Generals. Seems to be painting with too broad a stroke. Foote does a magnificent job debunking the myth as he continually details the shortcomings of various Confederate Generals. Where was Joe Johnston when Pembleton was suffering in the beleaguered city? Why isn't Ft. Bragg named Ft. Longstreet?
Arun,VietnamVet , 9 years agoRe: SST wardrobe malfunction- seems it's just too much to ask that these seals, statuary, etc. be left as they are by prudish pols (John Ashcroft, anyone?)
Personally, my idea would be if a change simply must be wrought, let's go in the other direction & have Virtus' appearance match the one on the 1776 VA four dollar note:
View HideRules of Engagement are simply the manifestation of tasking a bureaucracy, whose only purpose is to killing the enemy, to construct a puppet popular secular colonial government. It can't be done. "Winning Hearts and Minds", all over again.Arun , 9 years agoThere must be something that draws people to power who never learn from the past. On the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, there have been news stories that comment on the Vietnamese culture and their resistance to foreign Invaders. Yet, not one has mentioned the real hard nosed fundamentalist culture that has defeated every invader and has never been conquered, the Afghans.
Off-topic, but it would seem that Sic Semper Tyrannis has had a wardrobe malfunction - at least according to the Virginia Attorney-GeneralPatrick Lang , 9 years agoRoyGRoy G , 9 years agoYes. pl
Well put. I didn't know about Holly Graf, and found her story interesting.The Wikipedia article about her included this:Stanley Henning , 9 years agoCaptain Graf's awards include a Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Defense Meritorious Service Medal and Meritorious Service Medal with one bronze service star.
I'm not military, but that's some fairly heavy heroic hardware, especially for a seaman, no? Isn't the medal quest a game tailor made for narcissists?
The leadership conundrum is a crucial issue. It also brings to mind Norman Dixon's Psychology of Military Incompetence (1975), which I used to recommend to officers working under me in situations that reflected the problem. There is a good summary of this book at the following link:JohnH , 9 years ago
http://www.mindef.gov.sg/imindef/publications/pointer/journals/2004/v30n2/book_review.htmlUnfortunately I think that narcissism has always been the flip side of leadership. Most of us don't need the fawning adulation of our peers. And most of us have enough self-awareness to preclude us from exuding the self-confidence necessary for selection as a leader.rick , 9 years agoNarcissism and the accompanying tendency to put self-interest above public interest is why the founding fathers instituted a system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, leaders find ways to circumvent or disable checks on their authority over time.
HOW DO THESE MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE GET THEIR JOBS????J , 9 years agoOh. Wait. Never mind. The Americam People are the victims here...that's right.
I forgot that for a minute and in forgetting that it seemed for a second like the American People might get the behavior out of politicians that they consistently reward at the ballot box. How silly of me.
Walrus,Jane , 9 years agoWe have had to witness this plethora of Narcissism being carried to the extreme ever since 911. Instead of holding accountable those responsible for failing to do their duties, the Narcissists in both our Congress and White House decided to create 'more' Narcissistic 'castles in the sand' with their DHS, TSA, NORTHCOM, etc.. I can understand to a point DOD deciding to create NORTHCOM, but I had always thought that was what NORAD was for. Alas, no NORAD accountability, heaven forbid. Let's create more $$$ sank-holes like TSA, and America's very own version of an internal NKVD force known as DHS (as what many of my fellow Americans refer to DHS as).
While the Narcissists in our White House and Congress eat their crumpets and drink their tea, everyday people who do show signs of human life inside them (i.e. emotions, moral instincts,etc.) continue to be downtrodden by these bands of Narcissists who have in effect altered the food chain. Accountability and responsibility are not in their Narcissist dictionaries.
Our moral instincts are not logically consistent. A recent classic experiment shows that people would, without hesitation, hypothetically choose to flip a switch causing a speeding train to ploy into one person rather than into a group of people. But if the only way to stop the train was to shove the fat man next to them into its path they wouldn't do it even though doing so would produce one death rather than many.alnval , 9 years agoIt seems probable that in a combat situation a person of normal instincts would even more strongly favor the guy next to him and and tend to kill more freely to protect him even though in an insurgency situation the ultimate success would seem to rest on generating s little hatred among the populace as possible by killing as few bystanders as possible. Hence both the restrictive rules of engagement and the sickening taste they leave in the mouth of those required to act to risk a buddy for a bunch of strangers.
You can reach restrictive rules of engagement by either route: a deep empathic understanding of the human emotions of the insurgent population OR by an ant farm view which simply assigns no value to human life and emotions -- your own side or the others -- but simply sees ROE as the best means to success.
Col. Lang:An intriguing thesis and one with which I'm sure many would agree.
To keep it from turning into a never-ending and unresolvable debate, Walrus' argument would be strengthened significantly were he to describe the behavior and measurement techniques to be used to assess 'moral character' and the criterion to be used to determine the validity of the assessment results.
|
|
|
Jan 05, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
The Rev Kev , January 3, 2019 at 5:09 am
I think that the most ominous part of this article is where it is mentions that the Government gave a £13.8m (US $17.4) contract for ferry services between Ramsgate and Ostend in Belgium but that this company has no ships or any experience whatsoever in running a Channel service. In fact, it only came into existence about two years ago well after the Brexit referendum. A quick check shows that this company was awarded the contract without prior publication of a call for competition because of the "extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable for the contracting authority" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaborne_Freight ). Yeah, right! With 85 days left until Brexit, the Government has to really start getting its ducks lined up and making some tough calls. It may not be so but decisions like this make you wonder if this is a case of mates being taken care of by someone in Government and that this will be the trend after Brexit kicks in.
paul , January 3, 2019 at 5:56 am
That has always been the hallmark of this administration (to use the term very loosely), look at the 'help to buy scheme' and how it was a direct subsidy to the building industry's owners.
The minister in charge, grayling, is a serial incompetent and genuine z grade genetic landfill. In a reasonably sane world he wouldn't be put in charge of running a bath.
Brexit will just be a means to an end for the venal morons presiding over it. A way to continue austerity, rip the remaining copper out of the public realm e.g.privatise the NHS (even further) and put scotland back in its box.larry , January 3, 2019 at 7:15 am
Paul,
grayling, is a serial incompetent and genuine z grade genetic landfill. In a reasonably sane world he wouldn't be put in charge of running a bath.
Brilliant take on Failing Grayling.
|
|
|
Aug 29, 2017 | www.theregister.co.uk
Bonkers buy-up by bungling billionairess By Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco 28 Aug 2017 at 18:48 SHARE ▼ The New York Police Department will scrap 36,000 smartphones, thanks to a monumental purchasing cock-up by a billionaire's daughter.The city spent millions on the phones back in October 2016 as part of its drive to bring the police force into the 21st century. And the woman behind the purchase – Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology, Jessica Tisch – praised them for their ability to quickly send 911 alerts to officers close to an incident.
There was only one problem: Tisch chose Windows-based Lumia 830 and Lumia 640 XL phones, and Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 8.1 in July.
Even though those two models are eligible to be upgraded to Windows 10 Mobile, the NYPD will need to redesign more than a dozen custom apps it created to run on Windows 8.1. And every phone will need to be manually updated to the new operating system. In addition, Microsoft is only promising to support upgraded Windows 10 phones through to June 2019.
In other words, the phones are effectively obsolete and so, according to the New York Post , the police department has decided to scrap them altogether and go with iPhones instead.
That decision has not come as a huge surprise: even when the purchasing decision was made, Windows-based phones held just three percent of the market. In fact, back in 2016 when the program was launched, pretty much everyone applauded the idea of giving cops smartphones but were baffled as to why anyone would go with Windows phones over Android or iOS.
Tsk, tsk, TischWell, according to department sources quoted by the New York Post, the procurement disaster was all down to Ms Tisch – who, it turns out, is the daughter of former Loews CEO and billionaire James S Tisch.
"She drove the whole process," one unhappy cop told the paper, name-checking Jessica. "Nobody purchases 36,000 phones based on the judgment of one person," he complained. "I don't care if you're Jesus fucking Christ, you get a panel of experts."
Which is a fair point, since we have no hesitation in saying that even an expert panel of one would have concluded that Windows phones were a turn in the wrong direction for a huge police department.
According to other sources, the reason Tisch plumbed for the Lumia was because the NYPD was using Microsoft software on its video surveillance system – a system that Tisch has closely associated herself with and, back in 2012, demonstrated and boasted about to the press, raising eyebrows .
You can see how an inexperienced IT manager might think that it made sense to go with Microsoft all the way. But then that is also why anyone who carries out IT procurement into an area they are not expert on gets a team of people to review all the possibilities before they spend huge sums of money.
"She was in charge. It was her project, no question about that," another department source told the Post.
So why has the notoriously tight-lipped NYPD decided to dump on one of its own? It may be that Ms Tisch put a few noses out of joint with her smartphone plan, first announced in 2014.
At the time, then-police commissioner Bill Bratton specifically identified Tisch as being the driving force for the plan and joked: "She's a terror if she doesn't get her way, so I usually let her get her way. So she's certainly getting her way with this technology."
Oh dear.
We have asked the NYPD for confirmation and comment on the decision to scrap the phones. We'll get back if and when they respond.
|
|
|
Aug 28, 2017 | www.theregister.co.uk
When data disappeared, everyone knew exactly where to point the finger By Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor 25 Aug 2017 at 07:02 SHARE ▼ The Register 's weekly reader-contributed tales of workplace woe.This week, meet "Craig," who shared a story of working for a small IT services company that hired a new "team leader".
Craig used italics because after meeting his new boss he quickly surmised the title "was an entire contradiction, as he was neither."
One fine day, Craig was given the job of sorting out an email issue at a small family owned legal firm. Craig knew the client well: he'd previously fixed their jammed printers, added new users to the company domain and lots of other mundane stuff.
On this occasion things were a bit more urgent as one of the senior partners had email issues and there was a whiff of data loss in the air. Enter the new team leader, who dispatched Craig to the client with thundered instructions to "JUST GO AND FIX IT!"
Upon arrival, Craig liaised with "Dianne", a worker at the law firm who helped him when he visited.
With Dianne's help Craig quickly figured out that senior partner's .PST file was corrupted. Craig tried his usual tricks but they didn't work, in part because "Outlook was throwing a hissy fit at every opportunity." So he called back to base to consult a colleague, but the phone was answered by the new team leader who insisted on taking control of the situation.
At this point, Craig put the call on speaker so that Dianne could hear it.
Both were treated to the new boss suggesting use of a .PST repair tool, which Craig had already tried.
"I don't care, run it again," was the response, so Craig obeyed and duly reported it had not worked.
"Delete the account and recreate it" was the next instruction, which again was hardly news to Craig and again didn't work.
So the boss got extreme and told Craig to "delete Outlook and Office from the registry."
Craig didn't like that idea and told the team leader so, while shaking his head at Dianne, making lots of bad-idea motions and telling his boss he felt this was not a sensible course of action.
"Just fucking do what I tell you" was the reply. Which got Dianne smiling as she now appreciated Craig's situation and realised the boss had no idea he was on speaker.
Craig protested that this was a dangerous course of action likely to create further problems in an already-unstable system and endanger the client's data.
To which the team leader responded that Craig was a lowly functionary and should do what he was told by his betters.
So Craig did as he was told, deleting any registry entry that mentioned Outlook while watching Dianne start to take notes about the incident.
Of course the glorious leader's idea didn't work and Craig was soon able to show Dianne that the partner's emails had gone, in all probability forever. Which is a bad look anywhere but even worse at a law firm.
Dianne was furious.
Craig was calm. He whipped out a third-party .PST repair tool he favoured, applied it to the backup of the partner's file he'd made just in case things went pear-shaped, and recovered just about all of the at-risk emails.
"Dianne hailed me as a hero," Craig recalls. And not long afterwards he was vindicated when the client sent his employer a letter saying that they'd be fired if the new team leader ever had anything to do with their IT again.
Said leader was gone two months later after other clients complained about his skills and service ethic.
"I was glad to see the back of him because he was an utter dickhead," Craig told us in his email to On-Call.
Has your boss ever asked you to do something dangerous? Write to share your story and it might be your anonymised name getting readers chuckling in a future edition of On-Call. ®
|
|
|
Jun 30, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Temporarily Sane | Jun 29, 2017 8:02:38 PM | 58 Temporarily Sane | Jun 29, 2017 8:18:54 PM | 59
@57 BenDemiJohn | Jun 29, 2017 9:19:34 PM | 60The present "empty suit", is proof, IMO, that the POTU$ really doesn't matter. The ship of state is controlled by a corporate cabal, that pursues the business interests of the empire,( U$A/NATO) regardless of who the POTUS is. Enriching the business elites globally, is the agenda. Join the club, or face destruction.Yes, but why are liberals so outraged at Trump? Is it only because they don't like his manners..his vulgarity? I really don't get it. All these spineless, gutless wonders in world capitals going on about what an evil guy Trump is etc. but when he says "jump!" they say "how high?" Even American "opponents" of Trump really only get upset at his rhetoric and his "Muslim ban" (killing Muslims is fine though, encouraged even). And the border wall of course.
But Obama was known as the "deporter in chief" and there is already a 700-mile fence along the U.S. - Mexico border.
I don't get where the hysteria is coming from because Trump is hardly uniquely evil...he's just more direct and vulgar Oh the horror! Can it be they are afraid people will be more alert to slick (or otherwise) politicians trying to pull the wool over their eyes after four or eight years of Trump's nonsense?
Somebody help me out here...
V. Arnold quotes : "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. "
Besides the point but my favorite variant is : "Power corrupts, absolute power is even better".
|
|
|
Feb 01, 2013 | www.theamericanconservative.com
It was tragic that the career of General David Petraeus was brought down by a mere affair. It should have ended several years earlier as a consequence of his failure as our commander in Afghanistan. Petraeus, like every other theater commander in that war except Stanley McChrystal, could have been replaced by a concrete block and nothing would have changed. They all kept doing the same things while expecting a different result.Thomas Ricks's recent book The Generals has reintroduced into the defense debate a vital factor the press and politicians collude in ignoring: military incompetence. It was a major theme of the Military Reform Movement of the 1970s and '80s. During those years, a friend of mine who was an aide to a Marine Corps commandant asked his boss how many Marine generals, of whom there were then 60-some, could competently fight a battle. The commandant came up with six. And the Marine Corps is the best of our services.
Military incompetence does not begin at the rank of brigadier general. An old French proverb says that the problem with the generals is that we select them from among the colonels. Nonetheless, military competence-the ability to see quickly what to do in a military situation and make it happen-is more rare at the general officer level. A curious aspect of our promotion system is that the higher the rank, the smaller the percentage of our competent officers.
Why is military incompetence so widespread at the higher levels of America's armed forces? Speaking from my own observations over almost 40 years, I can identify two factors. First, nowhere does our vast, multi-billion dollar military-education system teach military judgment. Second, above the rank of Army, Marine Corps, or Air Force captain, military ability plays essentially no role in determining who gets promoted. (It has been so long since our Navy fought another navy that, apart from the aviators, military competence does not seem to be a consideration at any level.)
Almost never do our military schools, academies, and colleges put students in situations where they have to think through how to fight a battle or a campaign, then get critiqued not on their answer but the way they think. Nor does American military training offer much free play, where the enemy can do whatever he wants and critique draws out why one side won and the other lost. Instead, training exercises are scripted as if we are training an opera company. The schools teach a combination of staff process and sophomore-level college courses in government and international relations. No one is taught how to be a commander in combat. One Army lieutenant colonel recently wrote me that he got angry when he figured out that nothing he needs to know to command would be taught to him in any Army school.
The promotion system reinforces professional ignorance. Above the company grades, military ability does not count in determining who gets promoted. At the rank of major, officers are supposed to accept that the "real world" is the internal world of budget and promotion politics, not war. Those who "don't get it" have ever smaller chances of making general. This represents corruption of the worst kind, corruption of institutional purpose. Its result is generals and admirals who are in effect Soviet industrial managers in ever worse-looking suits. They know little and care less about their intended product, military victory. Their expertise is in acquiring resources and playing the military courtier.
|
|
|
May 24, 2017 | www.dcdave.com
What with all the glorification of our "heroes" in uniform, a glorification that seems to grow in inverse proportion to the real need for them, a person could begin to feel afraid to utter aloud the sort of jokes that people used to make. For instance, you might feel the need to look over your shoulder before you repeat the old George Carlin observation that "military intelligence" is an oxymoron.
The growing military hype and the sort of military intelligence with which I became all too familiar in my two years of service, 1966-1968, came together on this Veterans Day weekend. The picture of the U.S. Navy's finest engaged in the Sisyphean task of mopping dew off the basketball court that had been laid on the deck of the USS Yorktown said it all. That was in coastal South Carolina on Friday night, November 9, in what was to have been a big military advertisement to kick off the weekend. The same fiasco played itself out on the deck of the USS Bataan in Jacksonville, Florida, except that the college basketball players there put themselves in harm's way for an entire half, attempting to play on the virtual skating rink that the very predictable condensation had made of the surface.
... ... ...
Now think about it a minute. These are the people to whom we have given the authority to make life and death, godlike, decisions, over thousands of their subordinates and millions of people in less fortunate foreign lands. As you will see toward the end of this article, their manifest failings have had some rather serious consequences-that could have been much worse-in an episode in Korea in the 1960s that is revealed in full here for the first time.
... ... ...
Before we were to do our one dry run we had a planning meeting, presided over by the lieutenant colonel from Eighth Army Headquarters in charge of the operation, at which the action plan was handed out. Right off the bat we noticed a problem. Each of the teams was identified with a number. We were team four. Each of the islands was also assigned a number, one through four, and they were called "sites." Our team four was to go to site one, team three was to go to site two, and so on.
We wanted badly to suggest that it might be a better idea to match up the sites and the team designations, so that team one went to site one, etc., but we were told that we would have an opportunity to make suggestions for the final action plan after we had done our dry run, so we held our fire.
... ... ...
"We're implementing the action plan," said he, or words to that effect. "Move out immediately."
Patting myself on the back for the decision I had made, and in a state of rather high excitement, I pulled out the phone number of the contact in the Kimpo engineer battalion to make sure that there would be boats for us when we got to our destination.
It's a good thing the phone worked-the military phones were something of a hit-or-miss thing at that time in Korea-considering his response. "We haven't had any move-out order," he responded to me.
I immediately got back on the phone to the Eighth Army lieutenant to ask him what was up.
"Hold that first order," he said. "We've decided to give it a little more time."
Now I was thinking that it was an especially good thing that I had not taken the "immediately" part of his move-out order too literally, and I was really glad I had gotten that boatman's phone number. Considering the weather conditions, "high and dry" doesn't precisely describe the position we would have found ourselves in at the evacuation site without the boats and without even a need for them, but it comes close.
Having heard many reports of predicted river flooding on the news where the levels expected are based upon levels already recorded upstream, I inquired of the lieutenant as to the basis on which the final decision would be made. I remember his response as though it were yesterday:
"Colonel 'Geronimo' is down looking at the river."
As it turned out, no one drowned because some would-be rescue helicopter had landed at Site 3 instead of the correct Site 2 because he had received an emergency radio call from Ground 3, and we never suffered from the lack of manpower that the Korean Army might have provided at our site. None of the islands flooded that day-or that year-and the "hold" on that first call from the Eighth Army lieutenant continued into perpetuity.
... ... ...
David Martin
November 15, 2012
|
|
|
blogs.hbr.org
Think twice before ratting anyone out
When you're working for someone who isn't getting the job done, it can be tempting to go to your boss's boss or another leader in the organization. First consider the consequences. "Hierarchy is alive and well. And this person has more power than you do. If you're going to expose them, you need to understand the political current in your organization," warns McKee. People at the top of an organization may feel threatened if they see someone trying to take down their peer and may be unwilling to help. Useem agrees. "It's hazardous to speak up in a very pragmatic sense. If it becomes known that it was you, who's going to be the first to go?" he says. So if you do decide to formally complain, he advises doing it carefully. Test the waters with someone you trust before going to HR or a superior.
Both McKee and Useem emphasize that there are times when you are obligated to speak up. "In extreme circumstances, if the boss is involved in malfeasance, you have a duty to act," says Useem. In these cases, you need to go to HR and report what you have observed. Be ready to share evidence.
Take care of yourself
Working for an incompetent boss can be bad for your health. "There is a lot of research on the negative psychological effects," says McKee. She suggests creating psychological boundaries that protect you from the emotional damage. We have a tendency to point to a bad boss and say, "He is ruining my life." But, this ignores the fact that you have agency in the situation: you can decide whether to stay or not. "Once you become a victim, you cease to become a leader," she says. Focus on what makes you happy about your job, not miserable. "We can come to work every day and pay attention to this horrible boss or we can choose to pay attention to the people we are happy to see every day or the work we enjoy. We can choose which emotions we lean into," says McKee.Of course, if you aren't able to do that, you shouldn't suffer indefinitely. Consider looking for a transfer to a new boss or a new employer.
Principles to Remember
Do
- Have empathy for your boss and the pressures he may be under.
- Create psychological boundaries around work so that your boss's incompetence doesn't negatively impact your health or wellbeing.
- Focus on the broader good of the organization and what you can do to contribute.
Don't
- Try to point out to your boss all the ways that she is incompetent.
- Go to your boss's boss unless you are aware of the potential ramifications.
- Stick it out if none of your coping strategies are working - know when you need to leave.
|
|
|
The American Conservative
Why, exactly, did the FBI wait until Labor Day Weekend to dump this startling news about Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal? Hard to believe it was a coincidence that official Washington wanted this story to have the best chance of going away. From the Daily Beast:
A laptop containing a copy, or "archive," of the emails on Hillary Clinton's private server was apparently lost-in the postal mail-according to an FBI report released Friday. Along with it, a thumb drive that also contained an archive of Clinton's emails has been lost and is not in the FBI's possession.
The Donald Trump campaign has already called for Clinton to be "locked up" for her carelessness handling sensitive information. The missing laptop and thumb drive raise a new possibility that Clinton's emails could have been obtained by people for whom they weren't intended. The FBI director has already said it's possible Clinton's email system could have been remotely accessed by foreign hackers.
The revelation of the two archives is contained in a detailed report about the FBI's investigation of Clinton's private email account. The report contained new information about how the archives were handled, as well as how a private company deleted emails in its possession, at the same time that congressional investigators were demanding copies.
More:
The archives on the laptop and thumbdrive were constructed by Clinton aides in 2013, using a convoluted process, before her emails were turned over to State Department officials and later scrubbed to determine which ones had classified information and should either be withheld from public view or could be released with redactions. The archive of messages would contain none of those safeguards, potentially exposing classified information if it were ever opened and its contents read.
The FBI has found that Clinton's emails contained classified information, including information derived from U.S. intelligence. Her campaign has disputed the classification of some of the emails.
The archive was created nearly a year before the State Department contacted former secretaries of state and asked them to turn over any emails that they had sent using private accounts that pertained to official business. A senior Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, told the FBI that the archive on the laptop and thumb drive were meant to be "a reference for the future production of a book," according to the FBI report. Another aide, however, said that the archive was set up after the email account of a Clinton confidante and longtime adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, was compromised by a Romanian hacker.
Whatever the rationale, the transfer of Clinton's emails onto two new storage devices, one of which was shipped twice, created new opportunities for messages to be lost or exposed to people who weren't authorized to see them, according to the FBI report. (The Clinton campaign didn't immediately respond to a request to comment for this story.)
Read it all. The disappearing laptop and thumb drive story is incredibly fishy. Either Team Hillary is lying about it, or they are spectacularly incompetent and reckless with national security information.
Clint says: September 3, 2016 at 12:00 pmThe Clintons have gotten away repeatedly by not playing by the rules that others must play by or get punished for breeching.Noah172 , says: September 3, 2016 at 12:08 pmIt's incrementally being exposed and Americans see that The Clintons act as if they're too big to jail.
KevinS wrote:Sebastien Cole , says: September 3, 2016 at 12:09 pmIt is like going through a red light because you weren't paying close enough attention as opposed to consciously choosing to run a red light
Lousy analogy. Running a red is a momentary lapse, not a years-long, well-thought-out conspiracy, with considerable effort given to covering tracks (BleachBit).
No one in the media wants to say it, but this report almost entirely exonerates Clinton. Yes, she's lawyerly and is inclined to walk too close to the line, but no – she didn't do anything immoral or unethical. If at some point it turns out that she's actually done something wrong then we revisit, but the obsession with this 'crimeless coverup' prevents us from stating the obvious – Clinton is a solid candidate for President, intelligent, diligent and serious enough to guide the nation through difficult times. Trump is uncontroversially not.mongoose , says: September 3, 2016 at 12:15 pmThe moral equivalence games the media plays with the two candidates amounts to a cancer in our civic fiber that allows us not to put away our childish things.
…like choosing a hangover…rather than a heroin overdoseBuckeye reader , says: September 3, 2016 at 12:22 pmYou're insulting Nixon.Abelard Lindsey , says: September 3, 2016 at 12:37 pmWe could have had Carly Fiorina dealing with the challenge of cyber warfare in the 21st century. Voters are choosing a woman who put an insecure server containing national security communications in her basement, and sold our intention and opportunities to do good in the world to rich people for her own financial gain.
(I lean toward voting for Trump. My issue is the immense paperwork drag on health care delivery and the increase in cost caused by the "affordable" care act. I expect more of the same with Clinton. )Hillary Clinton: Incompetent, Or Criminal? Both.Michael Guarino, says: September 3, 2016 at 12:51 pmDear God, from the Daily Beast article, apparently they were using one of the laptops as a way to transfer the emails to a contractor they had hired. Since no one knew how to do it, they effected the transfer by sending the entire archive to a personal gmail account, then transfering it again to the contractor. So we have a massive store containing quite classified information going to a major tech company, entirely over the internet with only ssl protection I can only presume, because they could not figure out how to transfer a file system. The incompetence here is astonishing. Even a Google employee who forwards sensitive information to a personal gmail account would risk being fired.Will Harrington , says: September 3, 2016 at 12:52 pmThis sort of astonishing incompetence is exactly why I originally thought this was a big deal. The reason you don't want HRC running her own server is because she plainly doesn't know how to manage, or even hire for, all the inane details of information security.
Of course the most important detail to come out of this is the use of BleachBit. You don't use that software to delete emails about yoga classes.
Jay, or, and hear me out, like the other Bill, there has to come a point in time where the shear amount of claims of criminal behavior has to be considered. The other Bill got away with rape for years, maybe its time to consider that this Bill and his wife lack credibility in the face of accusers that HRC has denigrated and called Bimbos.Michael Guarino, says: September 3, 2016 at 1:08 pmLeftists make me sick in this. They will cry that we should always believe the victim unless one of their political leaders are accused. You want to take out a conservative? Give credible evidence that he is guilty of rape or sexual harassment. We quit voting for them. Your side, deny, deny, deny….and ultimately demand we move on, just like a previous poster's five stages of a Clinton scandal.
The only exception to this I can think of is Weiner, not because he did something that is horrible. No, you guys abandoned him because he was pathetic and embarrassing.
This is the direct quote from the Daily Beast article:Andrew E. , says: September 3, 2016 at 1:23 pmAfter trying unsuccessfully to remotely transfer the emails to a Platte River server, Hanley shipped the laptop to the employee's home in February 2014. He then "migrated Clinton's emails" from the laptop to a Platte River server.
That task was hardly straightforward, however, and ended up exposing the email archive yet again, this time to another commercial email service.
The employee "transferred all of the Clinton e-mail content to a personal Google e-mail (Gmail) address he created," the FBI found. From that Gmail address, he downloaded the emails into a mailbox named "HRC Archive" on the Platte River server.
Honestly, Rod you should highlight this. I can assure you that if something this mindbogglingly reckless were ever done at a major tech company the employee would either be fired or told to find work elsewhere but never enter the office again (because severance is expensive and bad pr). I assume the same is true of the government as well.
It really makes the Nixon comparisons seem apt, except she has an out for her supporters in simply claiming that she is a bumbling idiot.
The good liberals here who are starting the writing on the wall with Crooked Hillary should begin considering the fact that Trump isn't that bad and is actually pretty good in many ways. Come on over, you will be welcomed warmly.
|
|
|
The Bozo Explosion, so colorfully described by Guy Kawasaki, is a theory which states that "A" players hire "A+" players, but "B" players hire "C", "C" hire "D", which ultimately leads to a company full of bozos.
"I refined this slightly-my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It's clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called "the bozo explosion" to happen in your organization." – Guy Kawasaki
Most of us have met "bozos" before in our work and personal lives. If you're lucky, you've only seen them in the check-out aisle at the grocery store and quickly been able to divert your path away to a different lane - never to see them again.
If you're unlucky, you work for a "bozo" or near one.
There is nothing more soul-crushing than being constantly surrounded by bozos in your life. And there's nothing that kills a company faster that the rapid proliferation of bozos working for it (especially as CEO).
What is a bozo? It's a little like pornography, you know it when you see it. However, let me try to more precisely define one.
A bozo is someone who thinks they are much smarter and capable than they actually are. They constantly over-estimate their abilities and under-estimate the risks and threats around them. They typically don't keep an open-mind. They look instead for data that confirms a previously held bias. They also don't handle details well. They expect other people to clean up their messes when they happen, and so don't feel the need to obsess over the little things. Because they don't have a keen sense for the competitive market in which they operate, they typically don't have good judgment in key strategic decisions or when hiring top talent. Instead of hiring the smartest folks around them, bozos prefer to hire people who blow smoke, telling them how great they are, or for some non-obvious business reason such as sharing the same college or frat.
One of the first detailed discussions of the damage bozos can do to companies was in Walter Isaacson's recent biography on Steve Jobs at Apple (AAPL).
Here are some choice Jobs' quotes from the book on the subject:
Apple's Dynamic Duo- On John Sculley:
I began to realize this a month after he arrived. He didn't learn things very quickly, and the people he wanted to promote were usually bozos.– From Atari's Al Alcorn:
Sculley believed in keeping people happy and worrying about relationships. Steve didn't give a shit about that. But he did care about the product in a way that Sculley never could, and he was able to avoid having too many bozos working at Apple by insulting anyone who wasn't an A player.
One Must Prevent a Bozo Explosion
– On getting rid of the bozos who worked at Apple after he sold NeXT to Apple: "I wanted to make sure the really good people who came in from NeXT didn't get knifed in the back by the less competent people who were then in senior jobs at Apple."
– When he was asked by an Apple director what he thought of then CEO Gil Amelio:
"I thought to myself, I either tell him the truth, that Gil is a bozo, or I lie by omission. He's on the board of Apple, I have a duty to tell him what I think; on the other hand, if I tell him, he will tell Gil, in which case Gil will never listen to me again, and he'll fuck the people I brought into Apple. All of this took place in my head in less than thirty seconds. I finally decided that I owed this guy the truth. I cared deeply about Apple. So I just let him have it. I said this guy is the worst CEO I've ever seen, I think if you needed a license to be a CEO he wouldn't get one. When I hung up the phone, I thought, I probably just did a really stupid thing."
– On how Amelio had no self-awareness that he was a bozo:
"He was just such a buffoon, and he took himself so seriously. He insisted that everyone call him Dr. Amelio. That's always a warning sign. For most things in life, the range between best and average is 30% or so. The best airplane flight, the best meal, they may be 30% better than your average one. What I saw with Woz was somebody who was 50 times better than the average engineer. He could have meetings in his head. The Mac team was an attempt to build a whole team like that, A players. People said that they wouldn't get along, they'd hate working with each other. But I realized that A players like to work with A players, they just didn't like working with C players. At Pixar, it was a whole company of A players. When I got back to Apple, that's what I decided to try to do. You need to have a collaborative hiring process. When we hire someone, even if they're going to be in marketing, I will have them talk to the design folks and the engineers.
My role model was J. Robert Oppenheimer. I read about the type of people he sought for the atom bomb project. I wasn't nearly as good as he was, but that's what I aspired to do."
So, what do you have to do to create a "no bozo" policy at your company? Here are 7 rules for how to implement one:
1. Never hire another bozo. If you are a hiring manager, you have the final say. Never let another bozo come in to your company. Sometimes we all have our blinders on because the candidate likes the same sports team as us. Therefore, get lots of input from others around you whose opinion you trust. Bozos are like cockroaches: you'll never get rid of them after bringing them into your home.
2. If you don't have a final say on hiring someone, tell the truth to your boss about what you think of a prospective bozo hire. You've got to tell the truth – even if there is a risk that you'll lose your job for speaking the truth. If your boss is going to hire a bozo, let's face it: you probably need to start looking for another job anyway. It's just a matter of time until they bring down your team and then your company. If you threaten to quit now, you'll probably get your boss to think twice before signing off on the bozo in question.
3. Get rid of any existing bozos already on the payroll. These folks might be pleasant and make good conversation in the lunch room, but they're a cancer. They need to be exorcised from the organization's body as soon as possible. If they're not rooted out, they will multiply. One new bozo will hire 4 more bozos in short order. Again, you've got to speak the truth to those who have the power to get rid of them. Even if it leads to a showdown between you and the bozo in front of your boss, you've got to fight for what you believe in. If you lose your job, it'll be a blessing.
4. Cut out the bozos at the root. Because bozos procreate so quickly, you've got to be surgically quick and precise in getting rid of them. Start at the root cause. The bozo from which all other bozos come. Many follow-on bozos will follow the chief bozo out the door when he or she departs. That's a good thing. Morale in the rest of the organization will noticeably rise overnight. A lightness and energy will return to the company.
5. Encourage active debate in order to serve your company's ultimate customer. It's a sad truth that some formerly great employees can turn into bozos over time. It happens. We all can lose interest and motivation over time. We might have been great basketball players in high school but not so much in our 30s. There might be a natural time when we all should leave a company. The recently ousted co-CEOs at Research In Motion (RIMM) – Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis - are a textbook case of that. Steve Jobs' ouster at Apple in the 1980s is another good example of how this can be even true for one of the greats. To keep everyone on their toes and fully engaged in the product and market dynamics, it's important to encourage active debate within a company. There should be no sacred cows. Mid-level managers shouldn't be afraid to call Steve Jobs - or some other senior executive who is seemingly always right - that he's being a bozo about a particular issue or decision. Jobs had lots of terrible ideas. His people didn't accept those terrible ideas and pushed back – and he eventually appreciated that even if he disagreed with them at first.
6. It's not personal, it's business. So many organizations fail under their own weight because people get caught managing up or worrying more about their own career path or organizational politics rather than ensuring the best decision gets made in the moment. Disagreements should never be personal - only focused on the best business decision.
7. You're never that important. Another way you can let yourself turn into a bozo over time is starting to believe you're brilliant. You've got to be self-confident, but you can't ever let yourself think you're too important to have lunch with your employees or meet with real customers. Calling yourself "Dr." Amelio was dumb because it signals to others that you think you're very important. Building yourself a fancy office - as John Thain did in his job at Merrill Lynch, even when the world was blowing up around him - is another sign that you're overly focused on insignificant priorities affecting your company. You might be in the top job as CEO, but you are always replaceable.
Never forget that.
|
|
|
Urban Dictionary
Someone who enables the Bozo Explosion, either intentionally or due to their inexperience and incompetence.The Bozo Explosion was possibly coined by Steve Jobs at Apple:
"Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players-that is people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly-my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It's clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called "the bozo explosion" to happen in your organization." -- Guy KawasakiMy manager is the lead Bozo Bomber at my company. He makes sure everyone in the business is as dumb as a caveman, then he can swoop in like Superman and save the day. Man, does it make him look good. Terrible for the business though.by starfruitman December 06, 2011
|
|
|
Here's some gratifying news for any employees out there who are feeling bullied by a tyrannical boss: That aggressive behavior may have little to do with you, and a lot to do with your boss's feelings of incompetence. A new study in Psychological Science found that when managers are made to feel insecure about their job performance, their aggressiveness skyrockets. "Power holders feel they need to be superior and competent. When they don't feel they can show that legitimately, they'll show it by taking people down a notch or two" [New Scientist], says study coauthor Nathanael Fast.The researchers got 410 volunteers from various workplaces to fill out questionnaires about their position in the workplace hierarchy, how they felt about their job performance, and their aggressive tendencies. They also conducted a series experiments on the volunteers. In one, they manipulated the subjects' sense of power and self-worth by asking them to write about occasions when they felt either empowered or impotent and then either competent or incompetent. Previous research has suggested that such essays cause a short-term bump or drop in feelings of power and capability [New Scientist]. Next they asked the volunteers to set the level of punishment for (imaginary) university students who got wrong answers on a test. Those people who felt more powerful and more incompetent picked the harshest punishments, the study found.
So what's to be done with a bullying boss? Coauthor Serena Chen says a little ego stroking may make life easier for everyone. "Make them feel good about themselves in some way," Chen said, suggesting this might mean complimenting a hobby or nonwork activity provided it is "something plausible that doesn't sound like you're sucking up" [San Francisco Chronicle].
Related Content:
80beats: Teenage Bullies are Rewarded With Pleasure, Brain Scans Show
DISCOVER: So, You Want to Be the Boss?
|
|
|
Your boss could well be a barely restrained psychopath. Indeed, it is probable that he is the living incarnation of Cthulhu himself. Or he may be a bumbling incompetent who'll sink your career along with his. You, the downtrodden techie, need to learn how to deal with him - and fast.
First, stop thinking of him as a person because it is making you too soft and disabling the parts of your brain that can effectively change his behaviour.
... ... ...
10: The moron
This is actually the easiest to deal with, just so long as you never ever let them think you've worked out that this is their bug.
A good measure of intelligence is the number of things you understand and the depth to which you grok them so lack of intelligence is worked around by keeping the number and depth lower.
This expresses itself in a way familiar to those of you who've done search engine optimisation. Identify their buzzwords to work out what I call "Business Correctness," the more lucrative sibling of the political kind. Despite their track record, Accenture get a lot of business by using words like "team" because managers like teams (defined as doing what they are told) and in your firm there will be terms like "risk reduction", "delivery" and "cost reduction". Some even still talk of "quality".
All you have to do is note these terms and use them more often; firstly to make you look like a "good team player" and secondly as decoration on anything you want to make look better or worse, though in general positive BC words work better.
There are of course more types of AntiManager than this and feel free to share them in the comments below, but the point I'd like you to take away and use is that you can model their behaviour using skills you already have to turn their documented features into something useful.
|
|
|
Here's some gratifying news for any employees out there who are feeling bullied by a tyrannical boss: That aggressive behavior may have little to do with you, and a lot to do with your boss's feelings of incompetence. A new study in Psychological Science found that when managers are made to feel insecure about their job performance, their aggressiveness skyrockets. "Power holders feel they need to be superior and competent. When they don't feel they can show that legitimately, they'll show it by taking people down a notch or two" [New Scientist], says study coauthor Nathanael Fast.The researchers got 410 volunteers from various workplaces to fill out questionnaires about their position in the workplace hierarchy, how they felt about their job performance, and their aggressive tendencies. They also conducted a series experiments on the volunteers. In one, they manipulated the subjects' sense of power and self-worth by asking them to write about occasions when they felt either empowered or impotent and then either competent or incompetent. Previous research has suggested that such essays cause a short-term bump or drop in feelings of power and capability [New Scientist]. Next they asked the volunteers to set the level of punishment for (imaginary) university students who got wrong answers on a test. Those people who felt more powerful and more incompetent picked the harshest punishments, the study found.
So what's to be done with a bullying boss? Coauthor Serena Chen says a little ego stroking may make life easier for everyone. "Make them feel good about themselves in some way," Chen said, suggesting this might mean complimenting a hobby or nonwork activity provided it is "something plausible that doesn't sound like you're sucking up" [San Francisco Chronicle].
Related Content:
80beats: Teenage Bullies are Rewarded With Pleasure, Brain Scans Show
DISCOVER: So, You Want to Be the Boss?Login "
Create an account
Close
Flag comment as inappropriatealexander bogan said:
Harms of Bullying
Bullying is a serious problem that harms not only the victim, but everyone that it touches. It can have a serious negative effect on the bully, witnesses, and the environment as a whole.
The most obvious harm occurs to the victim. It could be anything from physical injury to embarrassment, to harm to their self esteem and even potential for success in the future. Extreme bullying (particularly coupled with sexual harassment) may cause depression or even lead to suicide. Victims often display lowered self-esteem and lowered grades, anxiety, and decreased attentiveness. Being bullied may cause a child to shy away from other children as well, or even adults--or it may cause them to become clingy, fearing separation from adults. It really depends on the individual child, the situation, and the intensity of the bullying, but it is clear that the harm is very real.
However, while attention is usually focused on this harm to the victim, also be aware of the negative effects on the bully. Studies have shown* that bullies are more likely to drop out of school, and that forty percent are convicted of at least three crimes by the age of twenty-four. Elementary school bullies are five times more likely than non-bullies to have a criminal record by the age of thirty. They are more likely to be involved in domestic violence and to work jobs below their skill level. Moreover, a bully's children are more likely to be bullies themselves, resulting in a vicious cycle of abuse.
Even if other students are not directly involved in the bullying, it can also have a negative impact on witnesses and the educational environment as a whole. Other children may be anxious or afraid that it could happen to them as well. They may be confused about whether to tell someone, or alienated by friends who are bullied. Bullying leads to an imbalanced environment, and can cultivate a culture of fear at a very young age.
Because Cyberbullying is a relatively new phenomenon, we do not know enough about how some of the harms above may or may not apply--but we do know that it is leading to more and more bullies, which means more and more victims. The next articles in this series will examine more closely how cyberbullying differs from traditional bullying.
Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/10833.aspx#ixzz0dwKvkjZPhfmyhrkjdghfkdh
3 years agoFlag comment as inappropriate
Shem said:
It sucks that we Live to work in the modern ages, The comment above by the "boss guy" regarding us moaning cos were not in chains @ our desk, well pal, thankfully we progressed a little beyond your slave driving ways. When they all agree its a 3 dayweek then we can spend more of our time with our loved ones more time being happy in life and not working for power greedy ego maniacs, studies on how to keep incompetent people out of positions with power is research thats needed....
after all the same guys are pressing the red buttons of war and making dumb ass choices for us "workers" and directing the course of our history.
Maybe in 500 yrs we work a 3 day week, now wouldnt that be cool!
3 years agoFlag comment as inappropriate
Kathleen said:
Sucking up doesn't really work in the long run based on my work with both victims and perps. It's obvious and disempowers the target. Share real compliments, if possible. Focus on work requirements and look the bully in the eye, that helps them to back down. Study avoids focus on one real purpose of bullying-consolidation of power including and especially control and ownership of careers. They may feel powerless but sometimes they're consolidating power by destroying others.
3 years agoFlag comment as inappropriate
Chad Cartwright said:
Employees have been coddled and cuddled too long in America. This decade has been seen thru the filter of television, popularising the poor office worker. Meanwhile office worker productivity has dwindled with the advent of the web and text messages.
I bet half of you whiny jokers are posting on the clock! Just be glad you aren't chained to your work space like your ancestors were. I slaved my way thru college while my employees were smoking pot and having babies before they could provide for them.
3 years agoFlag comment as inappropriate
gold brick said:
Driver type incompetents usually have little patience. When my maroon of an employer asks me a question, I barrage him with (way) too much information. I try to keep his eye contact as well so he can't fake that he is listrning to me. He squirms like the eel that he is. Now when he sees me coming, he moves on to an easier target.
3 years ago
|
|
|
Oct 23, 2007 | Fast Company
So what hallmarks of incompetence have I learned to identify?
- Bias against action: There are always plenty of reasons not to take a decision, reasons to wait for more information, more options, more opinions. But real leaders display a consistent bias for action. People who don't make mistakes generally don't make anything. Legendary ad man David Ogilvy argued that a good decision today is worth far more than a perfect decision next month. Beware prevaricators.
- Secrecy: "We can't tell the staff," is something I hear managers say repeatedly. They defend this position with the argument that staff will be distracted, confused or simply unable to comprehend what is happening in the business. If you treat employees like children, they will behave that way -- which means trouble. If you treat them like adults, they may just respond likewise. Very few matters in business must remain confidential and good managers can identify those easily. The lover of secrecy has trouble being honest and is afraid of letting peers have the information they need to challenge him. He would rather defend his position than advance the mission. Secrets make companies political, anxious and full of distrust.
- Over-sensitivity: "I know she's always late, but if I raise the subject, she'll be hurt." An inability to be direct and honest with staff is a critical warning sign. Can your manager see a problem, address it headlong and move on? If not, problems won't get resolved, they'll grow. When managers say staff is too sensitive, they are usually describing themselves. Wilting violets don't make great leaders. Weed them out. Interestingly, secrecy and over-sensitivity almost always travel together. They are a bias against honesty.
- Love of procedure: Managers who cleave to the rule book, to points of order and who refer to colleagues by their titles have forgotten that rules and processes exist to expedite business, not ritualize it. Love of procedure often masks a fatal inability to prioritize -- a tendency to polish the silver while the house is burning.
- Preference for weak candidates: We interviewed three job candidates for a new position. One was clearly too junior, the other rubbed everyone up the wrong way and the third stood head and shoulders above the rest. Who did our manager want to hire? The junior. She felt threatened by the super-competent manager and hadn't the confidence to know that you must always hire people smarter than yourself.
- Focus on small tasks: Another senior salesperson I hired always produced the most perfect charts, forecasts and spreadsheets. She was always on time, her data completely up-to-date. She would always volunteer for projects in which she had no core expertise -- marketing plans, financial forecasts, meetings with bank managers, the office move. It was all displacement activity to hide the fact that she could not do her real job.
- Allergy to deadlines: A deadline is a commitment. The manager who cannot set, and stick to deadlines, cannot honor commitments. A failure to set and meet deadlines also means that no one can ever feel a true sense of achievement. You can't celebrate milestones if there aren't any.
- Inability to hire former employees: I hired a head of sales once with (apparently) a luminous reputation. But, as we staffed up, he never attracted any candidates from his old company. He'd worked in sales for twenty years -- hadn't he mentored anyone who'd want to work with him again? Every good manager has alumni, eager to join the team again; if they don't, smell a rat.
Addiction to consultants: A common -- but expensive -- way to put off making decisions is to hire consultants who can recommend several alternatives. While they're figuring these out, managers don't have to do anything. And when the consultant's choices are presented, the ensuing debates can often absorb hours, days, months. Meanwhile, your organization is poorer but it isn't any smarter. When the consultant leaves, he takes your money and his increased expertise out the door with him.
- Long hours: In my experience, bad managers work very long hours. They think this is a brand of heroism but it is probably the single biggest hallmark of incompetence. To work effectively, you must prioritize and you must pace yourself. The manager who boasts of late nights, early mornings and no time off cannot manage himself so you'd better not let him manage anyone else.
|
|
|
October 23, 2007 | Fast Company
So what hallmarks of incompetence have I learned to identify?
- Bias against action:There are always plenty of reasons not to take a decision, reasons to wait for more information, more options, more opinions. But real leaders display a consistent bias for action. People who don't make mistakes generally don't make anything. Legendary ad man David Ogilvy argued that a good decision today is worth far more than a perfect decision next month. Beware prevaricators.
- Secrecy: "We can't tell the staff," is something I hear managers say repeatedly. They defend this position with the argument that staff will be distracted, confused or simply unable to comprehend what is happening in the business. If you treat employees like children, they will behave that way -- which means trouble. If you treat them like adults, they may just respond likewise. Very few matters in business must remain confidential and good managers can identify those easily. The lover of secrecy has trouble being honest and is afraid of letting peers have the information they need to challenge him. He would rather defend his position than advance the mission. Secrets make companies political, anxious and full of distrust.
- Over-sensitivity: "I know she's always late, but if I raise the subject, she'll be hurt." An inability to be direct and honest with staff is a critical warning sign. Can your manager see a problem, address it headlong and move on? If not, problems won't get resolved, they'll grow. When managers say staff is too sensitive, they are usually describing themselves. Wilting violets don't make great leaders. Weed them out. Interestingly, secrecy and over-sensitivity almost always travel together. They are a bias against honesty.
- Love of procedure: Managers who cleave to the rule book, to points of order and who refer to colleagues by their titles have forgotten that rules and processes exist to expedite business, not ritualize it. Love of procedure often masks a fatal inability to prioritize -- a tendency to polish the silver while the house is burning.
- Preference for weak candidates: We interviewed three job candidates for a new position. One was clearly too junior, the other rubbed everyone up the wrong way and the third stood head and shoulders above the rest. Who did our manager want to hire? The junior. She felt threatened by the super-competent manager and hadn't the confidence to know that you must always hire people smarter than yourself.
- Focus on small tasks: Another senior salesperson I hired always produced the most perfect charts, forecasts and spreadsheets. She was always on time, her data completely up-to-date. She would always volunteer for projects in which she had no core expertise -- marketing plans, financial forecasts, meetings with bank managers, the office move. It was all displacement activity to hide the fact that she could not do her real job.
- Allergy to deadlines: A deadline is a commitment. The manager who cannot set, and stick to deadlines, cannot honor commitments. A failure to set and meet deadlines also means that no one can ever feel a true sense of achievement. You can't celebrate milestones if there aren't any.
- Inability to hire former employees: I hired a head of sales once with (apparently) a luminous reputation. But, as we staffed up, he never attracted any candidates from his old company. He'd worked in sales for twenty years -- hadn't he mentored anyone who'd want to work with him again? Every good manager has alumni, eager to join the team again; if they don't, smell a rat.
Addiction to consultants: A common -- but expensive -- way to put off making decisions is to hire consultants who can recommend several alternatives. While they're figuring these out, managers don't have to do anything. And when the consultant's choices are presented, the ensuing debates can often absorb hours, days, months. Meanwhile, your organization is poorer but it isn't any smarter. When the consultant leaves, he takes your money and his increased expertise out the door with him.
- Long hours: In my experience, bad managers work very long hours. They think this is a brand of heroism but it is probably the single biggest hallmark of incompetence. To work effectively, you must prioritize and you must pace yourself. The manager who boasts of late nights, early mornings and no time off cannot manage himself so you'd better not let him manage anyone else.
|
|
|
10/19/2004 | Badbossology.com
Poor leadership surrounds us, it's a fact of life and they seemingly find a way to keep their jobs. They are more focused on their personal needs and not of the professional needs of those below them. They have a hard time developing their employees because they lack the proper management techniques to do so. A leader is someone who you would follow to a place you would not go alone. Leadership is about action not status.
However, the question is, how do we know when we are dealing with these flaw ridden individuals. A lot of the time, a poor manager can make the perception that he/she is busy and organized. I have developed a small guideline that can help pinpoint these leaders.
Incompetent Leaders will:
1. Delegate work rather than balance work loads. This allows all attention to be diverted from them in case of failure. It may seem to them that are managing their people but in actuality they are creating work imbalances within the group. It can create unnecessary overtime for some and under utilization of others. A good manager is aware of the skill sets of all the people below them and should allocate work accordingly while trying to enhance the skills of everyone to be even more productive.
2. Reduce all answers to Yes or No rather than explaining their reasoning. This is an example of a crisis manager who can not think farther than a few hours ahead. A yes/no manager finds it a waste of time to find the real answer through intellectual thought. They are already thinking about the next crisis.
3. Not separate personal life from professional life. They will bring their personal problem to work. Working for these types of managers can be very dramatic. They are unable to separate their emotional imbalances while trying to manage people. They are less focused and will not give you the attention and direction you need for success.
4. Manage crisis. If you are a company that has crisis managers, then you can say goodbye to innovation and progression. Proactive thinking is critical to the success of any company. If you are not finding ways to stop or reduce the amount of crisis that has to be managed, then your competition will pass you by. Leaders have to think out of the box and make change.
5. Create an environment where mistakes are unacceptable. Being held accountable for wrong decisions is a fear for them. Making mistakes only helps you become a better person, manager, etc. I use the analogy of a basketball player that has no fouls. If they are not going for the ball and taking chances with their opponent, then they are trying hard enough. Take a chance and don't be scared.
6. Humiliate or reprimand an employee within a group. This is a clear and visible sign of a poor leader. A good leader takes employee problems away from a group setting to a more private setting. If you have a boss that does this, it is time for a visit to human resources.
7. Not stand behind subordinates when they fail. Never leave your people to hang out to dry. Always back them up, right, wrong, or indifferent. If an employee tries their best in a situation and they fail to come through. They should be commended on their effort and not punished for the failure
8. Encourage hard workers not smart workers. I am not impressed with hard workers. A hard worker is usually defined by hours. Smart workers are the ones that I hire and embrace. Smart workers understand the concept of time management and multi-tasking. Poor leaders miss this connection. Smart workers are methodical in their thinking and can generally be successful because of their abilities management projects and time. Hard workers may take twice as long to do the work. It is important to assign work accordingly to the skills and personalities
9. Judge people on hours not performance. This is similar to #8. Again, I am not impressed with overtime junkies. They have lost all perspective on a healthy family/balance. Bad managers will promote the employees that work the most hours and not look at the smart ones who work less……….meaning have better time management. Stop watching the lock.
10. Act differently in front of their leaders. This is an indication of low self-confidence. They have doubts about their own ability to lead and they will act like little children when authority is present. A confident person acts the same around everyone. Remember, have respect for them, but also have self-respect.
Chris Ortiz is also the author of : 40+ Overtime Under Poor Leadership
Book Available at: Authorhouse.com
|
|
|
June 01, 2010 | Bullying of Academics in Higher Education
ABSTRACT
When and why do power holders seek to harm other people? The present research examined the idea that aggression among the powerful is often the result of a threatened ego. Four studies demonstrated that individuals with power become aggressive when they feel incompetent in the domain of power. Regardless of whether power was measured in the workplace (Studies 1 and 4), manipulated via role recall (Study 2), or assigned in the laboratory (Study 3), it was associated with heightened aggression when paired with a lack of self-perceived competence. As hypothesized, this aggression appeared to be driven by ego threat: Aggressiveness was eliminated among participants whose sense of self-worth was boosted (Studies 3 and 4). Taken together, these findings suggest that (a) power paired with self-perceived incompetence leads to aggression, and (b) this aggressive response is driven by feelings of ego defensiveness. Implications for research on power, competence, and aggression are discussed...
CONCLUSION
The present findings highlight the importance of perceiving personal competence when holding a position of power. Power holders who do not feel personally competent are more likely than those who feel competent to lash out against other people. Additionally, the finding that self-worth boosts assuage the aggressive tendencies of such power holders implies the effectiveness of a strategy commonly employed by underlings: excessive flattery. It is both interesting and ironic to note that such flattery, although perhaps affirming to the ego, may contribute to the incompetent power holder's ultimate demise-by causing the power holder to lose touch with reality.
Full paper at: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~nathanaf/power_incompetence_and_aggresssion.pdf
|
|
|
The first is important because, yes, believe it or not, many folks are still threatened by a Black face in corporate America. The last person you want threatened is your boss, who can either make it easy for you to pursue your vision or make life a day-to-day hell. Therefore, remembering tip number 5, you want your boss to seem as if he or she is the smartest person in the world for hiring you. To do that you have to give credit generously and publicly in front of clients or top management for the great guidance and direction your boss provides in conducting whatever project you are working on.Simultaneously you also need to let those same people know that most of the good works they are seeing are your own original ideas come to life, and that without all the hard work you put into the project, there would be no project. You need to do this especially if your boss is not the type to be forthcoming with praise (a trait more typical of an empty suit than a power broker). Therefore, in casual conversations with your clients or others, let it be known how at 2:15 in the morning, when you were just going over the documents one last time, it hit you what the answer to the issue was.
Praise your boss in public forums; take credit in one-on-one conversations--but don't overdo it or appear to be showing off.
|
|
|
If you've been in the business world very long, it's likely you've run into a manager who just wasn't doing the job right. If that hasn't happened to you yet, it will probably happen sometime in your career. The question is how do you relate and react to the incompetent boss? You need to remember biblical principles in dealing with these people.
Someone once told me that you can learn as much from an incompetent or bad manager as you can from a good one, and I think that's probably true. But the learning is more difficult and painful!
- Trying to work for a boss who is either lazy, disorganized, inexperienced, or unqualified for their job as manager.
- Others work for a boss who uses tactics or methods which are either unethical or ineffective or contrary to company policy.
Their "people skills" are usually sadly lacking, and they are not willing to accept suggestions or help from anyone else.
Well, there's no question that our relationships with those in authority over us are unique. While we recognize that a person's level or position does not make that person better than anyone else, we also know that we should respect those who are over us. That is a biblical principle.
Romans 13:1-2 says: "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves."
Now, frankly, this is not an easy passage to either understand or accept. Our natural minds rebel against this statement that all authority comes from God, since we see so much evidence that many people in authority are neither godly nor competent. Can their authority be God-given? What about the Peter-principle; the person who has risen to his or her level of incompetency?
The Apostle Paul is teaching us that God has established authority as the order for the universe. We see it in every part of creation; some things have authority over others. And if it were not for the principle of authority, we would have nothing but chaos. You and I daily submit ourselves to all kinds of authority: red lights, stop signs, the law of gravity, taxes, police officers, etc. Without these authorities governing us, and everyone else, our world would be inhabitable and unmanageable.
The same is true in our business world. We require authority in order to operate a business of any kind. The buck has to stop somewhere. Therefore, the people in positions of authority are part of God's plan for authority. And as Christians, we are directed to submit ourselves to those people who have risen to those authority positions. To rebel against that is to rebel against God's order, and, Paul said, it will bring judgment on us.
Obviously there have been and are people in positions of authority who should never be there. But that was true when Paul wrote this letter to the Romans. The principle still holds true; we may not respect the people themselves, but we must respect their position.
This is contrary to the times. I remember a business training class I conducted where a woman said to me privately, "Mary, I'm older and I'm used to the old way of doing things. I treat my boss with lots of respect, do things for him that the other secretaries don't do. That's the way I was trained. But the other women in the office are angry at me for treating my boss like I do, and they keep telling me that it makes them look bad and I shouldn't do it. What do you think?"
She was taught to respect authority almost to the point of fear. But during the 60's and 70's we saw a backlash against all authority, when everyone over 30 was seen as suspicious, and that generation was taught to reject and challenge all authority. Neither extreme is right: We should not give respect to authority out of fear, but neither is it right to be disrespectful toward authority. We seem to have much difficulty with balanced and biblical attitudes, don't we?
Given the general disregard and disrespect we find in our culture for authority, this passage in Romans 13 which tells Christians to submit to authority doesn't sit well in our ears. That's not the way the world looks at it.
But as Christians in the marketplace, it is where we start. We have to make certain that in our hearts we accept this principle of authority and recognize that even though the authority over us may be incompetent or inadequate in some way, they are nonetheless in authority and therefore we respect their position.
First Peter 2:18 says that we must submit ourselves to our masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. An incompetent boss is harsh, difficult, unpleasant. But the principle of submitting and respecting their authority still applies. Now, if you're not willing to apply that biblical principle, you will invite trouble into your life.
Well, how do you apply it when you don't feel it? You do it by faith, not by feelings. You pray it into your life on a daily basis. You read those verses from Romans 13 often, and you ask God to change your attitude and change your thinking so that you can accept the authority that is over you.
First Timothy 2:1-2 tells us to offer requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving for everyone, for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. We are to pray for those in authority, and we are to pray for peaceful relationships. Now, if you're dealing with an incompetent boss, have you been praying for him or her regularly? How have you been praying for that person? This is where it starts, and until you begin to truly pray for them, you won't see much change in your attitude or in their behavior.
So, we begin by accepting God's principle of authority, respecting that incompetent boss, praying for them, praying that we will be able to get along with them in peace and display a godly attitude. Praying that they will improve in their job.
Smart employees understand that their job description includes making their boss look good. The world uses that principle as a manipulative tool, but we have other reasons to do it. First Corinthians 13 describes the kind of love we are to develop in our lives, a love that is like God's love. And that kind of love "does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
As Christians we are to ever be seeking to have God's love fill us and overflow through us to everyone in our lives, including our incompetent bosses. Therefore, we should try to make them look good, not for manipulation purposes, but because God's love motivates us to protect others from bad exposure, to delight in the good things they do, not the bad things, to try to cover up their mistakes whenever we can.
Proverbs 17:9 says, "He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends." One of the typical things that happens when we encounter an incompetent boss is that we talk about that person in derogatory ways. It's easy to do. A friend was sharing with me that her boss is very difficult and no one agrees with the way her boss runs the department. She has no trouble gaining confirmation from her co-workers that her negative attitude toward her boss is justified; everyone feels the same way.
It's likely if you truly work for an incompetent boss that everyone else feels the same way you do, and therefore, at lunch and on breaks that's what you talk about. Instead of covering up the offense, you repeat the matter and make the situation much worse.
If you work for an incompetent or difficult boss, stop talking about him or her to other people. Pray for that boss; talk to the Lord; get counsel from respected Christians and others inside and outside the company. But don't be a part of the office gossip and character assassination which usually happens when you have this type of boss.
Now, when you've got those biblical principles in place in your life, then you can start to consider whether it is ever right to confront an incompetent boss, or to blow the whistle on them. And there aren't any black and white answers here because the circumstances would dictate what type of action to take. However, I believe confrontation or exposure should be the last thing we do, after other attempts have failed, and after much prayer.
Here are some guidelines to consider in deciding whether or not to confront your incompetent boss. First, is their incompetency truly affecting the quality of the product or service which the customer receives? Is their inability to manage truly causing unfair treatment for employees, others as well as yourself? Are they doing things which are contrary to your organization's stated standards and policies? In other words, is there a larger picture here than simply your own irritations and frustrations at having to work for an incompetent manager?
If you're convinced there is a larger picture, then confrontation may be advisable. But, again, this must be done with great respect for their authority. You look for ways to make suggestions for improvement without pointing the finger at them. You try to find a way to make it look like their idea to which you are contributing. You do everything you can not to undermine their own self-image as the boss.
An incompetent boss is likely to be very insecure. They are most probably quite aware of their shortcomings, though they may not be able to openly admit them or talk about them. Indeed, they may deny them. But underneath the facade, you can be fairly certain they are very uncertain and insecure about their performance. Therefore, they're going to be worried about someone else showing them up and exposing their shortcomings.
Sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness, as we read in Proverbs 16:21, and if we truly want to help our incompetent manager to improve, we have to make our suggestions with carefully chosen words. I am not suggesting we use flattery or deceit of any kind. But if we look long enough, we can find something good to say about them and to them, something positive to lead with, some way to confront without seeming confrontational.
It's not easy; I know. But let me tell you this. It's easier than doing it the other way. If you've been stewing and fretting over your incompetent boss; if you're constantly frustrated because you want to get rid of him or her or tell them off; if you've been angry at having to put up with their incompetency when you know you could do it better-tell me, has that been easy?
Of course not. It's a more natural reaction than following biblical principles, but it's not easier on you or anyone else. It's harder-takes a much greater mental and emotional toll on you.
Doesn't it make sense, then, to simply ask God to give you his perspective and his power to deal with your incompetent boss in a Christlike way? The good news is, because of Jesus we have the power to do it. But we have to be willing to allow Him to do it through us.
Mary's book, Getting Along with People @ Work, gives much good advice in dealing with difficult people. You can order by calling 1-800-292-1218 or online at www.christianworkingwoman.org
|
|
|
If it's any consolation, you're not alone if you're saddled with an incompetent boss.
Thousands of unqualified bosses somehow manage to hold onto their jobs. There are even inept CEOs who couldn't run a broom closet, let alone multimillion-dollar corporations.
How Do You Know If Your Boss Is Incompetent?
Don't berate yourself for not realizing your boss was a hopeless nincompoop before you took the job. How could you know what the future would hold back at the interview when you were totally focused on making a great impression? And your boss probably didn't have any opportunities to demonstrate incompetence while being on his best behavior.
But now that you've settled into your job, the signs of incompetence can be likened to headlights on a pitch-black night. They're unavoidable.
Common clues include:
- Inability to make decisions: An incompetent boss often waffles over decisions that should be made instantly.
- Tendency to make bad choices: Ineffectual bosses often make poorly planned, miscalculated decisions. Miraculously, most incompetent bosses manage to save themselves at the 11th hour.
- Reliance on subordinates to get work done: Incompetent bosses may not have a clue how to get their own jobs done, yet they have the uncanny sense to rely on their teams to cover for them.
- Ability to keep the job despite failings: You'd be shocked how many inept bosses hold onto their jobs despite their failings. Many management consultants have yet to figure out why. Typically, they rely on their subordinates to get them through hard times.
Take Advantage Your situation looks far worse than it is. Don't be so quick to take the first new job you can find just to get away from your boss. Learning to adjust could be a career-enhancing experience. Incredible as it seems, your boss's ineptitude could be a blessing.
For example, you have the chance to stand out by becoming an asset to your boss. The more you do and accomplish, the better it looks on your resume. It also scores points with management and potential employers.
Try these strategies for turning unfortunate circumstances into an advantage:
Cover in a Crisis. If your boss is away on a business trip or vacation and an issue requiring instant decision-making arises, you have two choices: either turn the problem over to a senior manager or make the decision yourself. Calling in senior managers makes your boss look bad. If you're confident you can take over, you'd be wise to make the decision. Remember: Heroes are born in crisis situations.
Compensate for Deficiencies. It's to your advantage to discover your boss's weak spots and help him in those areas. You want to be part of a winning team, and your boss is this team's captain. You will get much further in a company if you can be associated with successful projects. For example, an incompetent boss will struggle with complex ventures. Guide him through it until everything is completed. You'll look good by making your team look good.
Beware. Watch what you say about your boss. It's very easy to complain and vent frustrations about your less-than-qualified boss to coworkers. Without realizing it, you could be talking to the boss's good friend or someone who wants to score points with him. Keep your opinions to yourself.
|
|
|
As a mid-level employee, you've been working for the ACME Company, a manufacturing firm, for the past two years. Your job performance has been solid, and on occasion, even praiseworthy. However due to the current economic conditions – poor profit earnings, massive layoffs and company restructuring, you now find yourself working for a new boss. Ordinarily reporting to a new leader would not pose a real problem but this time it feels different -- management practices have changed. The team environment has been transformed from one of true collaboration, honest dialogue and a commitment to problem solving to one where backstabbing, finger pointing and plain fear are the norms. Congratulations – you are now under the control of an "incompetent" leader!
An "incompetent" leader by definition is someone whose action destroys camaraderie, instill gossip, encourage dishonesty, and prevent people from speaking freely. "Incompetent" leaders tend to use their own weapons to get noticed and promoted. They usually lack vision, interpersonal communication skills and confidence to resolve conflict.
You might think the term "incompetent" leaders should only be reserved for those in the company's upper echelon such as the Chief Executive Officer of Chief Financial Offer.
After all, aren't they the ones entrusted with setting the direction for the entire organization? While this may be true to a certain extent – CEOs do serve as the "compass" for the company, but many CEOs are not directly involved in the daily operations of their organizations. Those responsibilities fall on the shoulders of senior and middle managers. And, it is the "collective leadership" of those managers -- their style of execution, their effective ability to communicate, manage and motivate their teams that keep companies on course. If a leader lacks the competency to manage his or her team, then team morale diminishes, productivity and performance drops, and companies ultimately fail. What's worst is the fact that today we live in a heavy Information Economy where bad news about a company spreads instantly thereby allowing competitors to profit from your company's incompetent leadership.
In the quest to attain "better and cheaper staff," one would think that organizations had all the advantages needed to rid their companies of every single under-performing employee – managers included. However, nothing could be farthest from the truth. Unfortunately in many cases, it is the good, high-performing, mid-level employees who first are shown the door, while ineffective managers – the ones who really need to take a hike – remain.
For whatever reason these foul apples may have been left behind; the fact that they are present causes a lot of problems either through their actions or sometimes through their inactions. The tnt initiatives to detect and remove them before bringing irreparable harm to an organization.
So what can you do to protect yourself and survive working for an "incompetent" leader? Here are some quick tips:
1. Do not make it a personal matter. This is a hard one, simply because working for an incompetent boss is such a personal matter. Remember, that most of these leaders do not have a problem directly with you, but they too are frustrated and are shouting loud their own insecurities -- most likely mirroring to you things that they should be doing.
2. Observe Your Boss. It might sound funny, but notice what is going on around your boss. In case you've known or worked with your boss before and you observe a sudden change, then your next step should be to take action right away. The problem could be as simple as someone asking him something way out of his league, or someone talking to him about you and your team. Whatever the reason might be you need to act and confront your boss as soon as possible. If you do this at the beginning, you might be able to stop a snowball effect -- not only for you but also for the entire team. Confrontation does not come easy for most people, yet if you seek a constructive conversation, have an open mind, avoid turning it into a personal attack, you might be able to ease tensions with your boss and also improve his position.
3. Accumulate Facts. Nothing is irrelevant if you work in an unhealthy environment. You need to make sure that you accumulate all the things that matter for your career -- the good as well as the bad stuff. Good things that you've done, bad things that have happened to you, and things that you could have done better. The key here is to have nothing against you, nothing that will give people permission to talk about you and question your character.
4. Know Your Value. You might feel beaten down, overworked, under appreciated and doubtless about your true value. Grow up! Things happen and your value does not diminish simply because one cannot see your true value. If you are a professional, do a good job, and the people that work with you will see a direct contribution to the team's success. Then be sure that you have created your own evangelists – people who will tell others about your true value.
5. Expand Your Network. Now, more than ever, you need to think that working for a large company is not very different than working on your own. You need to learn to promote yourself. People need to know who you are, within your company and outside your company. Successful business owners never stop networking. There are so many things you can learn simply by networking. The key here is to find 2 or 3 networking initiatives that you feel comfortable doing and commit to them.
6. Seek For Comfort Outside Your Office. Many people often make this mistake. They work for an incompetent boss and they start complaining about her or him to a "good friend" who also works for the company. For whatever reason this might happen because you are seeking comfort or love. Sometimes you simply need a sounding board in order to release the pinned-up stress. Do it outside the office and avoid discussing your problems with others with whom you work.
Times have changed and even though it might seem hard to work for someone that you know is not suitable for his or her position, remember things and people appear to us to teach something. The sad reality is most "incompetent" leaders do not get fired; they just move on and reinvent themselves in new companies. The chance that you will either work with the same leaders or someone like them again before your career ends is great. However if you manage to stay calm and think about the lessons you've learned and how to counteract incompetent behavior, you will have all the wisdom needed in order to become a better leader yourself in future jobs.
Copyright ©2003, All Rights Reserved
|
|
|
Having worked for the old AT&T monopoly which had more levels of management than any other bureaucracy in the world, with an employee-management ration of 2:1, I can say that the Peter Principle is not based upon sound observation. Then having worked for the second largest employer in the USA, the Federal government, I also observed that the Peter Principle is unsound. No employee is ever promoted because that employee was competent or good at the position to which they were initially hired. No one is promoted up the hierarchy because of good job performance. Promotions are based solely upon sexual activity within the managerial group in control and nepotism. Problems are solved by contracting the issue with consultants who simply charge an arm and a leg to give back suggestions from the employees, which the management could have gotten for free if they ever bothered to talk with those employed within the problem area.
The Federal bureaucracy has a slightly different approach depending upon the agency/department. Competent persons are hired from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) register with a 12 month probationary period. The competent probationary employee then proceeds to resolve the problem and bring order to the chaos. However, when the work is done, usually before the end of the 12 month probationary period, the employee is then fired with the Federal agency alleging "poor job performance." The supervisor with the problem area keeps his/her job, which is no more than a prostitute on-call for their superior managers, and the probationary employee is stigmatized as a poor unproductive employee and their career is ended. Even where the lives of the public and employees are endanger from the company or Federal agency, this is how bureaucracy really works.
L. Peter must have been wearing rose-colored glasses when he made his observations.
|
|
|
The Hindu Business LineIncompetence, the word most dreaded by managers. Woe betides the manager who is declared incompetent by his superior and worse, by his subordinates. In the corporate world, it is certainly a state worse than death. The word itself is so potently disagreeable by virtue of its connotations that it is so sedulously avoided in the workplace. So much so that in a recent farewell function when a speaker stated that the retiree had not reached his level of incompetence, the audience thought a grave insult had been heaped on the poor man on the day of his superannuating.
The learned speaker was, in fact, complimenting the retiree on his capabilities, which had never been adequately challenged in the organisation. Some of the audience thought the retiree needed an extension to finish his alleged mission in the organisation, namely indulging in incompetence. This was largely due to the fact that most in the audience, in their late thirties and early forties, had never read the Peter Principle, a seminal work on incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull enunciated the Peter Principle in their eponymous book. Incompetence, according to Peter, was the level at which a man could no longer be equal to his work. Theoretically, all men and women are potentially incompetent; only that some fail only when called upon to play God!
Thus, incompetence is latent in some and blatant in most.
The Peter Principle states: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." And this occurs in an organisation by the vice, not virtue, of over promotion. The natural corollary is that over a period of time the entire organisation is manned by incompetent people. The efficiency of a hierarchy is inversely proportional to its Maturity quotient (MQ), where MQ=Sigma employees at level of incompetence multiplied by 100 and in turn divided by Sigma employees in the organisation.
Thus, when MQ reaches hundred no useful work will be accomplished.
Peter wrote his seminal work along with Raymond Hull in the late 1960s . People of my father's generation used to swear by it. But in recent times the Peter Principle is just an occasional brooch that adorns the lapel of a managerial suit. And worse, it is often misused and abused out of context. The number of young students from premier business schools who confess with alacrity their non-cognition of Peter's work finally galvanized me into writing this piece .
The Peter Principle spotlights the fact that every organization feels the overpowering compulsion to promote a person from one level in the hierarchy to the next higher level. The danger of this predilection is that often this is from a level of competence to a level of incompetence. Thus, a competent mechanic is promoted to become an incompetent foreman, a competent foreman is made into an incompetent superintendent, a competent teacher is made into an incompetent vice-principal and a competent soldier is promoted to become an incompetent Field Marshal. In all these cases, the employees had been promoted to a position that they were incompetent to fill. Or, in other words, they have been promoted from a position of competence to a position of incompetence.
Over a period of time, the organization tends to be filled with employees who are incompetent to operate their positions. In such a situation, one may well ask how does the work get done? Peter answers, "Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." This explains how large bureaucracies and large public utilities turn out work in an even tenor. This is probably due to the fact that at the base of the pyramidal structure of the hierarchy there exists a large workforce who, by virtue of their intelligence and education, is still functioning at levels where they are superior to their job or in other words competent. This notwithstanding, organizations regularly indulge in over promotion. This results in a number of situations often catastrophic to organizational fortunes, but comic as a managerial spectacle.
Peter sums up such promotions as pseudo promotions; the `lateral arabesque' is nothing but a pseudo promotion consisting of a new title and an office in a remote part of the building. Peter cites the example of a competent office manager who, after promotion, found himself at the same salary working as coordinator of inter-departmental communications, supervising the filing of second copies of inter-office memos. The other pseudo promotion is the `free-floating apex', which is nothing but a point in an organization where there is no organization below the promoted employee. He has nothing to do and nobody to supervise. The concept of `percussive sublimation' is also similar wherein an incompetent manager is kicked upstairs to get him out of the way.
The moot question "Who defines competence" is answered by Peter: "His superior in the hierarchy determines the competence of an employee. If the superior is on the level of competence, he will evaluate his subordinate based on his output such as his productivity or his achievement of whatever goals he has been set." But a superior who has reached his level of incompetence is likely to evaluate on the basis of his inputs such as promptness, neatness, and courtesy to his superiors, internal paper work, conformity to rules and so on. Peter says that in such a situation, internal consistency is valued more highly than efficient service. This Peter calls as the `Peter's Inversion'. Sadly the `inverts' have the ability to procure more promotions in an organization.
Hierarchical exfoliation
Peter states that in any organization the distribution of super competent, competent, incompetent and super incompetent people occurs in the pattern of a bell curve, with super incompetent and super competent people being on the fringes of the curve , and the large majority of the competent people occurring on either side of the median. Super competence, Peter points out, is more hazardous than incompetence since super competence disrupts the hierarchy. Peter cites the example of E. Beaver, a probationary primary school teacher who put into practice what she had learnt in college about accommodating the individual differences of her pupils. As a consequence, the brighter among the pupils finished the three years' work in one year. Since she had disrupted the hierarchy, her contract was terminated. The process of an exfoliation of the extremes namely the super incompetence and the super competent, Peter calls `hierarchical exfoliation'. In the chapter `Follower and Leaders', Peter points out the hierarchiological fallacies. He cites the example of the mother of George Washington who, when asked how her son was so accomplished as a General, answered: "I taught him to obey." Peter asks how the ability to lead depends on the ability to follow, as though the ability to float depends on the ability to sink. Peter has classified incompetence into three categories: Physical incompetence where a man who had been promoted beyond his physical capabilities; social incompetence where a man is promoted to a step which is beyond his social capability; and emotional incompetence where a person is promoted to a level which is beyond his emotional capacity. Despite being incompetent, a number of candidates find themselves promoted to higher echelons in the hierarchy. This results in their suffering from symptoms which are generally associated with success. These are peptic ulcer, alcoholism, high blood pressure, skipped heartbeat and many more. Those who suffer from these, Peter describes as those who have reached the final placement syndrome (FPS). Peter lists one sign of FPS - `abnormal tabulology', which is an unusual and highly significant arrangement of his desk such as:
Phonophilia: In this, the incompetent manager masks his incompetence by keeping an array on telephones and communication devices with flashing lights, hot lines and so on.
Papyrophobia: The papyrophobe swears by a clean desk and keeps papers strictly out as each sheet reminds him of the work he is unable to do.
Papyromania: The exact opposite of the papyrophobe, he clutters his desk with papers and tries to give an impression that he has too much to do.
Fileophilia: An obsession with record keeping and filing in the correct manner as this keeps him from tackling the burning situation that needs to be addressed.
Tabulatory gigantism: A yen to have the largest desk in the office.
The psychological manifestations of FPS are self pity; denigration of the present and glorification of the past - Peter calls this the `Auld Lang Syne syndrome'; irrational prejudice similar to Julius Caesar's abhorrence of the "lean and hungry" looking Cassio or Napoleon's preference for men with long noses; rigor cartis which is an obsession with flow charts and pie charts; and compulsive alternation which is the inability to read a report and instead ask a brief of an executive summary from the subordinate. "Look I have no time to wade through all this garbage. Tell me about this in your own words and briefly," writes Peter. An extreme form of FPS is the `cachinatory inertia' in which the subject is more interested in telling jokes than getting on with the business.
I am sure that everyone sees something of himself in Peter's creative descriptions of the managerial maladies. Every young manager should make it a point to get hold of the Peter Principle and read it over and over again. If not anything, it is a safe bet for an afternoon of rib tickling laughter and a lingering sense of subtle edification.
by Rick Brenner
After the boss commits even a few enormous blunders, some of us conclude that he or she is just incompetent. We begin to worry whether our careers are safe, whether the company is safe, or whether to start looking for another job. Beyond worrying, what else can we do?Let's say, hypothetically, that your latest project has just crashed in flames because your boss forgot to sign off on the extension for the 15 contractors who were staffing it, and they got reassigned. You can get them back in three weeks, but you'll never meet the deadline now. You've just about had it, and you've decided that your boss is totally incompetent.
All you really know is that your boss's performance has been pretty dismal. Incompetence is just one possible explanation. For instance, your boss might be distracted by problems at home - a sick parent or child, a death, a troubled marriage, substance abuse or identity theft, to name just a few possibilities.
As subordinates, we rarely have enough data to support any diagnosis of the causes of our bosses' poor performance. Without such data, attributing the cause of the problem to someone's character or lack of talent could be an example of a common mistake called the Fundamental Attribution Error.
|
|
|
Poor leadership surrounds us, it's a fact of life and they seemingly find a way to keep their jobs. They are more focused on their personal needs and not of the professional needs of those below them. They have a hard time developing their employees because they lack the proper management techniques to do so. A leader is someone who you would follow to a place you would not go alone. Leadership is about action not status.
However, the question is, how do we know when we are dealing with these flaw ridden individuals. A lot of the time, a poor manager can make the perception that he/she is busy and organized. I have developed a small guideline that can help pinpoint these leaders.
Incompetent Leaders will:
1. Delegate work rather than balance work loads. This allows all attention to be diverted from them in case of failure. It may seem to them that are managing their people but in actuality they are creating work imbalances within the group. It can create unnecessary overtime for some and under utilization of others. A good manager is aware of the skill sets of all the people below them and should allocate work accordingly while trying to enhance the skills of everyone to be even more productive.
2. Reduce all answers to Yes or No rather than explaining their reasoning. This is an example of a crisis manager who can not think farther than a few hours ahead. A yes/no manager finds it a waste of time to find the real answer through intellectual thought. They are already thinking about the next crisis.
3. Not separate personal life from professional life. They will bring their personal problem to work. Working for these types of managers can be very dramatic. They are unable to separate their emotional imbalances while trying to manage people. They are less focused and will not give you the attention and direction you need for success.
4. Manage crisis. If you are a company that has crisis managers, then you can say goodbye to innovation and progression. Proactive thinking is critical to the success of any company. If you are not finding ways to stop or reduce the amount of crisis that has to be managed, then your competition will pass you by. Leaders have to think out of the box and make change.
5. Create an environment where mistakes are unacceptable. Being held accountable for wrong decisions is a fear for them. Making mistakes only helps you become a better person, manager, etc. I use the analogy of a basketball player that has no fouls. If they are not going for the ball and taking chances with their opponent, then they are trying hard enough. Take a chance and don't be scared.
6. Humiliate or reprimand an employee within a group. This is a clear and visible sign of a poor leader. A good leader takes employee problems away from a group setting to a more private setting. If you have a boss that does this, it is time for a visit to human resources.
7. Not stand behind subordinates when they fail. Never leave your people to hang out to dry. Always back them up, right, wrong, or indifferent. If an employee tries their best in a situation and they fail to come through. They should be commended on their effort and not punished for the failure
8. Encourage hard workers not smart workers. I am not impressed with hard workers. A hard worker is usually defined by hours. Smart workers are the ones that I hire and embrace. Smart workers understand the concept of time management and multi-tasking. Poor leaders miss this connection. Smart workers are methodical in their thinking and can generally be successful because of their abilities management projects and time. Hard workers may take twice as long to do the work. It is important to assign work accordingly to the skills and personalities
9. Judge people on hours not performance. This is similar to #8. Again, I am not impressed with overtime junkies. They have lost all perspective on a healthy family/balance. Bad managers will promote the employees that work the most hours and not look at the smart ones who work less……….meaning have better time management. Stop watching the lock.
10. Act differently in front of their leaders. This is an indication of low self-confidence. They have doubts about their own ability to lead and they will act like little children when authority is present. A confident person acts the same around everyone. Remember, have respect for them, but also have self-respect.
|
|
|
Incompetent managers often make their subordinates' lives quite miserable and more senior managers are often too slow in recognising the symptoms. Lower down the pecking order, it is more transparent - as the incompetent manager is, surprisingly, willing to let down their guard.
Incompetence is something that is not picked up by conventional selection procedures and it is certainly not visible at an interview. So what can you do to ensure that you do not recruit the incompetent?
Well, the first thing is to put some rigour into your selection procedures. I am often astounded by the fact that, with monotonous frequency, new employers rehire so many people who have frankly failed in most of the roles they have assumed.
This has puzzled me for some time. Maybe the incompetent are attracted to fellow incompetents? This was my first take on the subject (and one I think still holds water!)
But then the penny dropped. The sole thing about my sample is that once, or possibly even twice, the incompetent person had worked for a very well known employer. They had then traded on this throughout their career.
This is in some ways a replaying of the well known 'halo effect' - the phenomenon where, because there appears to be one excellent thing about a person, everything else is equally excellent! Wish this were true!
Research by eminent psychologists has identified seven themes associated with managers who fail. These include:
The inability to delegate or prioritise Adopting a reactive rather than proactive stance at work Being poor at maintaining relationships and networks Being poor at building teams Demonstrating poor judgement Being slow to learn new things And they tend to have an overriding personality defect, which is often manifested by an individual being insensitive, arrogant, cold, aloof and generally only 'out for number one'. They are also poor performers, tending not to reach set objectives ever. They also tend to betray people with regularity.
Geoffrey King is a Director of Cambridge Recruitment Consultants. Contact him on [email protected]
Google matched content |
[Dec 02, 2019] The cost of militarism cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame Published on www.theamericanconservative.com
A surprisingly large number of people claim to have worked for a manager who was clearly incompetent. Some people even believe, that in certain sectors, the incompetent outnumber the competent.This book looks at when, why and how managers become incompetent and what to do about it. It does so with both science and humour by reviewing what we know about competences, about personality theory and about various salient psychiatric disorders.
So many management books are unrealistically optimistic. They portray management as a simple task once one has absorbed the magic silver bullet message of the book. But managing people is, and will remain difficult as any manager knows. Management is about ability and skills, attitude and values, knowledge and understanding, but also about personality and mental stability.
This text investigates normal and abnormal incompetence. The former is where people have a poor fit between themselves (personality and ability) and the job. Through post selection, inadequate training, changes in the job or unwise promotion misfits occur which leads to incompetence.
The longest chapter in the book looks at abnormal incompetence and what are called personality disorders. Well-known psychiatric disorders are described in detail and how to spot these in managers. Thus, the paranoid or sociopathic, narcissistic or passive-aggressive types are described in everyday language as well as how to deal with them. More importantly, the book considers how the pathologically incompetent managers influence organizations and groups to fulfil their often bizarre needs and wishes. The final section of the book attempts to help the reader correctly diagnose incompetence. It also offers various possible cures: the emphasis is that cure follows correct diagnoses. Some cures for incompetence actually accentuate it.
The book is both serious and funny. The incompetent manager is no laughing matter for those managed by them. But the sort of thing some incompetent managers believe and do can be, at least for the onlooker, very funny indeed.
Part I - Incompetence at Work.
Chapter 1 Military and Management Incompetence.
Chapter 2 The Nature of Incompetence.
Chapter 3 Paradoxical Incompetence and Management Madness.
Chapter 4 The Concept of Competence.
Part II - The Causes of Incompetence.
Chapter 5 The Causes of Incompetencies: Personality Traits.
Chapter 6 Pathological Incompetence.
Chapter 7 Teams and Team Managers.
Part III - Curing the Problem.
Chapter 8 Possible Cures of Management Incompetence.
References.
Urban Dictionary Pointy Haired Boss
A sociopathic boss that is also the most inept, stupid human being alive.
Refer's to Dilbert's boss, but also by association to all other mindbogglingly
stupid bosses lacking foresight, technical knowledge, leadership skills,
morality or tact."I'll get next weekend off, but I'll have to work on the PHB."
"My new job's ok, except there's a classic Pointy Haired Boss in my department."
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
Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.
FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
|
|
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site |
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.
Last modified: June, 03, 2021
