The Rule of Crappy People:
The very definition of law of crappy people is: Bad managers, always hire very bad employees because they are threatened by talent. As a matter of fact, the rationale behind the rule of crappy people is people always benchmark against those who are less qualified and less competent from them. Conversely, the claim seems quite straightforward and bold, but can’t be supported by any peer reviewed journal. There is evidence that people always hire people who are like them and similar to me effect works within the firms, so a moderate influence is there that C class managers hire the C class people, but yeah, we can say that the law of crappy systems trumps the law of crappy people. In fact, talent will only work for your company, if you recruit the talent that fits your culture; for that your culture ought to be systemized for talent. As Bob Sutton from Stanford Business School stated, “superstars are overrated while systems are underrated.
Several years back, I was once invited by my friend for a demo lecture as a visiting faculty member at one of the Institutes of Business Management (for the sake of anonymity we refer to this university as IBM) at Korangi Creek, Karachi. Notwithstanding, I resisted the invitation for a demo in the first place, just because of having more than a decade of university teaching experience and having credentials like Chartered MCIPD, UK and SPHR, HRCI, USA, however, I accepted his plea later on and went for a demonstration. In a lecture, instead of the same old boring text books, I referred several practical books like “Reinventing Performance Management” (Goodall), “The Infinite Game” (Sinek), “Love + Work” (Buckinghum), “Leadership BS” (Pfeffer), “Radical Leap” & “Radical Edge” (Farber), “The No Asshole Rule” (Sutton), “Return on Courage” (Bryan), “Kiss theory Goodbye” (Prosen), “The Friction Project”, “The Knowing Doing Gap” and other practical manuals from Harvard and Stanford. Moreover, I used some topic’s stories from the famous movies like “Greyhound”, “Oceans 13”, and the Clint Eastwood’s classical “The good, the bad, and the ugly” to convince the audience my point of view on leadership and management.
Sure, I was discussing theories and wanted to shout out loud that what is really going on in the corporate world at this particular point of time and what is happening basically in the top tiers’ cubicles. Ironically, during the demo lecture, I felt as though I am an alien and nobody seemed interested in a lecture, perhaps, they wanted to listen to the same old textbook theories of management and leadership. In fact, one of the veterans (an old man) asked me a good question and I was enriched and exhilarated that at least someone was listening to me but he did not seem to have a relevant stake in that institute, perhaps a retired/contractual employee.
You may call me dense, you may call me iconoclastic but the response from the entire audience was very intimidating or biased instead and it appeared as though, perhaps, they had already decided not to select me. Subsequently, after a day, I came to know that I was not selected and the reason was “your frequency did not match with ours.” Later on, I shared this whole scenario from one of my mentors who used to teach at IBA, Karachi……. he said that institute seeks connections/strong reference in the first place while hiring than your competencies and attributes. And yeah, that’s funny; later on, I came to know that my 24 aged student, having no experience of teaching just had a university undergraduate degree, got the course there as a visiting faculty through some top elite’s recommendation.
I believe an outsider or external recruiters should be more objective significantly in the face of this partiality. It is said that the best horses lose when they compare with the slower ones and win against better rivals. The absence of challenge degrades the best of the best. Some of the academic institutes in Pakistan claim pervasively that we hire for knowledge and intelligence, yet, another indigenous term used by corporations to rationalize its big picture. This brings me to a rant about these intimidating or façade idiocracy in organizations. In fact, the aforementioned institute hires employees/faculty on the basis of connections, political maneuvering, and sucking up and thereby leading the institute to skunk work. Jerome Alexander called these top tiers as 160 Degree Deviators. The reason that they are not called 180 Degree Deviators is that the author gives 20 degrees credit for doing the right thing within the firm. The thrust of my rants on these institutes has always been aimed at those who destroy morals and create cynicism and malaise. I must recall the quote here from the famous character of Star Wars movie, “Darth Vader”, “Bullies are always threatened by talent.”
Michael J. Sandel stated in his book, “The Tyranny of Merit”, “Bureaucracy and power struggles within the firms banish all sense of gift or grace. It diminishes our capacity to see ourselves as sharing a common fate. It leaves little room for the solidarity that can arise when we reflect on the contingency of our talents and fortunes. This is what makes merit a kind of tyranny, or unjust rule.”
The lesson I got from this dysfunctional pretense of that particular business institute is something is radically wrong with mind-set that is being used at work. In fact, every act is a political act within the organization. Every act tries to reinforce and redistribute power. People use an overly rational approach that implies more logic and objectivity than what actually exists. What takes place is far more personal, far more subjective, and far more power oriented than most popular theories lead one to expect. People see you as a person rather than your competency and talent. It’s difficult to be objective in a subjective world. Organizations grow large, bureaucratic processes and the best politicians choke out the creativity from the firm that hinders the new talent to crop up. The enlightened management principles and the rhetoric of hiring on merit seem completely credibility crushing. Ironically, some of the academic institutes in Pakistan don’t construe meritocracy on human capital and don’t provide the same opportunity to all.
Malcolm Gladwell in his profound book “Outliers” asserted that the “self-made man is a myth and what truly lies behind the success of the many people in their domain, which is often a serious of lucky events, hidden triumphs, relationship building, political maneuvering, appeasing, and other external factors. Stanford Business School professor, Jeffrey Pfeffer once stated that “some systems are so badly designed that when smart people with a good track record join them, it seems as if a “brain vacuum” is applied. This is what happens to several faculty and deans within the academic institutes of Pakistan. I still believe that people matter. The very best organizations have both smart and well-designed systems. Google seems to qualify and so does Cisco.
