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dispatches from the new world of work

Passion or Indifference ... You Choose

Below is an excerpt from Bob Sutton's article "Nasty People" on the CIO Insight website. I'd suggest you read the whole column and also watch the video of Sutton's P.O.V.:

A woman from England, for example, lamented, "I endeavor to lead by positive example, raise issues to the powers that be and provide constructive help to the people who work under me on how to deal with the jerks in our midst. The problem in my organization, however, is that jerkdom is so institutionalized and rewarded I can't see any way out." My answer was that if senior management is unwilling to change, and some kind of internal political action is impossible, her options were to keep treating the symptoms in herself and others—or perhaps best of all, to look for another job.

As I think about it now, I would also add that, although thousands of books offer breathless prose about the virtues of having deep commitment to, and passion about, your workplace, there are times when self-preservation requires the opposite response. There are times when the answer is indifference, when the wisest course is to go through the motions, learn not to care, and just get through the day until something changes on your job, or something better comes along. Yes, it is better if you have the power to change a bad situation, or leave it. But we all face bad situations we must endure; none of us have complete power. Indeed, I am starting to believe that, as a management professor, part of my job is to teach people when indifference is more useful than passion.

My colleague Chris Nel recently posted a blog "Purpose beyond Profit," which addresses the idea that people in large corporations too often aren't inspired and have no sense of purpose.

Unfortunately, to compound this problem, there are also complete jerks for managers who suck the absolute life out of their workforce to the point where they've created a bunch of worker drones just trying to survive their day. Forget sense of purpose ... what about sense of self?

I'm amazed at the number of incredibly well-intentioned people I talk to (some friends, some strangers) who "like what they do" but are disheartened by the lack of inspiration they feel at work. There are others who have simply given up. It's sad, really. A close friend of mine was completely frustrated in her job and all the changes that had recently occurred there. When she went to her boss to discuss her frustration, her boss' response was simply, "If you can't handle your job, I'll find someone who can." Needless to say, after several pounds of weight gain, fights with her husband, and days spent at home lying on her couch crying, she requested to move into a different role. Fortunately, she was given that opportunity, and now she's just biting the bit until her husband's business grows to the point where she can "retire."

My opinion has always been that we promote people into "leadership" positions who aren't prepared to take on the role of directing the lives and livelihood of others. Promoting the best engineer, the best salesperson, or the best programmer doesn't make for the best manager/leader. Newly appointed leaders are still so stuck in the ways of the individual contributer, that they don't have the time or wherewithal to lead. When are we going to stop using selection processes that were designed during the industrial era? Why does one have to excel in his/her job before he can become a leader? It's not the same job!

Darci Riesenhuber posted this on 04/09/07.

Comments

Bingo! Jerks don't even have to be jerks necessarily to make a work environment toxic. I recently had a friend who sat in a division meeting where his senior director told everyone that the executive team considered them "a necessary evil." How's that for de-motivational life sucking leadership? The scary thing was the apparent response from the audience - indifference. It was as if they all knew this to be the case and didn't care.

And you're absolutely right about leadership being a different kind of skill from engineering or sales. Most of the true leaders I know are really good at it, know their limitations and trust the people who are experts at engineering, sales, marketing or whatever to help guide their decision making. They are generally not jerks - driven tyrants at times - but very good at motivating everyone around them to be better.

Posted by Andrew Hayden at April 9, 2007 11:46 AM

Yes, we promote people who are good at whatever individual contributor skill they've mastered. In most companies we don't check for even the basic requirements for leadership.

We don't check to see if the person can make decisions. It's essential that leaders do that. Many promoted people can't

We don't check to see if they like helping others succeed. It's an absolutely critical skill for someone responible for a group.

We don't check to see if they are willing to confront others on performance and behavior issues. This, too, is critical because management is a job of "controlled confrontation."

Posted by Wally Bock at April 9, 2007 1:05 PM

It's a big, big economy. If you're current employer is a jerk, find one that isn't.

Almost no one reading this blog is a wage-slave, we're all to one degree or another (no pun intended) trained professionals, some in manglement, some in the front lines, but we're all talented people who want to do better.

So find some place where excellence is demanded and exuberance for life is rewarded.

And if you can't, go start your own gig. I've got 2 multi-million dollar ideas that just need someone with time, drive, and managment skills (I lack credentials in the latter) to make work (wanna crush Google? Ask Me How). A friend of mine has a really cool idea that will solve a HUGE problem in India, China, and parts of the US, but needs to get an organization and funding together.

All it takes is vision and hard work. Yeah, you lose the health insurance for a while, yeah, you take risks, but who wants to die in a well preserved body? You gotta wear that thing out.

As to promoting talented workers into manglement:

In the military, especially the Marine Corps they start training leaders in boot camp, literally from the second breath the DI takes. We were taught about the battle for (IIRC) Mexico City (the halls of Montezuma) that at one point the highest ranking Marines left in the fight were a Corporal and a Leuitant. They assumed leadership and carried on the fight.

Now, the Business world often looks at the Military and learns the wrong lessons, Business is not war. In war you need to crush your opponent, destroy his ability and/or will to fight (destroying the will is enough). In business destroying your "opposition" is a sure way to ruin your market.

Military logistics is not about efficiency, but about effectiveness--it is better to waste 1/2 your supplies to make sure that the guys on the sharp end have the beans, bullets, bandages, boots , bombs, blankets and buildings they need. In business this would be INSANE.

But leadership? Start the day you hire that kid into the mailroom. Make the informal hierarchy deep and the formal one shallow, when a new guy comes in, assign him a mentor to "lead" his integration into the company and up the chain. This way everyone except people on the very bottom are managers and leaders. Those who have "it" will be obvious, and those who can learn "it" will make themselves apparent.

As will those who are better at purely technical roles.

Posted by Petro at April 9, 2007 2:35 PM

One other thing:

When you start training leaders/managers from the very beginning you wind up with three kinds of...

Lemme rephrase that, you wind up with 3 continuims, and everyone will fall somewhere on those lines, you have "leadership", "job-specific" and a "plays well with others" lines, and you only want people in leadership roles that are high on the leadership line, but you still have to have some real, tangible way to promote and recognize those with real non-leadership skills.

Yeah, it should go without saying, but I'm in an organization right now that "honors" us with silly little pieces of paper, and has absolutely soured all the older employees because we were completely overloaded with work, so they handed new and interesting tasks to the new people who weren't as loaded. Needless to say they're about to lose 50-60 percent of their "old timers", which means people there before last June.

Posted by Petro at April 9, 2007 2:52 PM

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.â€ --George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman: The Revolutionists' Handbook.

I never did buy Bob Sutton's "be realistic" act. Now I see exactly why.

Of course "Life's a bitch and then you die." But last week I reported on two experiences that make a mockery of Sutton's "Great God of Endured Indifference" routine. AGAINST ALLLLL ODDDDs, and after 72 years (1848-1920) of brutal & demeaning struggle, women won the right to vote. And at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health I bathed in the stories of alum who ... AGAINST ALL ODDS ... AND MOCKING "REASONABLE" EXPECTATIONS ... AND BELITTLED BY PYGMYS ... had saved millions of theretofore un-cared-about lives. Muhammad Yunus won a Nobel Peace prize for his microlending miracles--powered by women in a strict Muslim (Bangladesh) society.

Get the hell out of an "impossible" situation? Sometimes it's the only answer. (Been there, done that--McKinsey, circa 1981.) "Practice indifference"? Bullshit. Bullshit. And ... BULLSHIT. Speaking as an about-to-be-65-year-old, LIFE IS TOO BLOODY SHORT TO SPEND ONE DAMN MOMENT OF INDIFFERENCE!!!! (And you'd better believe I've worked for my full share of certified nincompoops.)

Posted by tom peters at April 9, 2007 4:14 PM

"Get the hell out of an "impossible" situation? Sometimes it's the only answer."

Another perspective is that sometimes you've got competing ideas of execellence, for one crew "best practices" is the ideal, to perform execute on the processes that everyone else has decided are "best" way to do something. Others may take the position that everyone else has...let's just say a full diaper, and that the way to excel is to re-write the best practices manual.

It's easy to decide what to do when faced with right v.s. wrong.

It's harder when faced with clear easy right v.s. hard murky right.

But in the end cutting a new path is always better because you learn more. A hard failure is better than an easy success--you learn more.

Posted by Billy Oblivion at April 9, 2007 4:40 PM

Thanks for your comments, everyone. Tom, I knew the idea of indifference would light your fire. I, personally, would rather die than be indifferent - it's the same thing really. I left a company full of jerks to join the tompeters! Company and pursue my passion. It was a leap of faith and there was no safety net to catch me if I failed.

My favorite bumber sticker reads: "mean people suck". Unfortunately they exist in our world, hold positions of power, and are often difficult to ignore. But, then of course, I guess the idea is not to ignore them, but use them as fuel to drive us to the life we want. Jerks are the reason behind most great success stories, even if only to spite them. Even Bob Sutton argues that having 1 jerk in the workplace is advantageous because they teach everyone else how NOT to behave. I guess jerks are our "necessary evil" huh, Andrew?

Petro, I like your 3 continuums and agree that people should be developed as leaders regardless of their position or title. Only good can come of it, right? I often joke that people don't get "invited" to attend management/training courses until they've already been promoted into the position. Seems a bit backwards to me. If one has the ambition to acquire the skills why not reward them with the opportunity to do so. I hate to recount all of the "required" management courses I have taught where even the managers had no desire to be there. How inspiring...(yawn).

Wally, thanks for your comments, as well. You're right on!

Posted by Darci at April 9, 2007 6:32 PM

"... and pursue my passion. It was a leap of faith and there was no safety net to catch me if I failed."

Darci, here's the way I look at it. We all "fail" in the end. "Fail" as in die. (I am not talking religion here--we may indeed go to a betterr world, but we will not be on this one.) So if, to quote an old joke, 'we might as well go for it boys, none of us is going to get out alive": Well, then, to me the only ... TRUE FAILURE ... is a failure to ... Engage Fully, 100% of the time.

(My casual reading of Aristotle is that., for instance, "happiness" is complete engagement; "leisure" is an opportunity to grow in new ways; etc.)

Posted by tom peters at April 10, 2007 5:58 AM

My read of Bob Sutton is that he is arguing for short-term indifference to get you through untenable situations (specifically: those that involve dealing with an insufferable jerk of a boss) while you figure out how to get yourself to a better place, not "indifference as a way of life." I worked for a brief while - in a company where I was passionate about working and did not want to leave - for a truly terrible manager: condescending, demeaning, duplicitous, haughty, dishonest, and demanding of make-work. I tried everything I could think of to make the situation better, but,in the end, the only tactic that worked was allowing myself to check out. I did my job, but stopped letting my manager (and the company) emotionally consume me. I slowly and methodically worked out a path to get out from under her, and was gratified when her incompetence caught up with her and she was laid off.For me, short term indifference was a coping strategy that worked quite well. Of course, in the long run (of what is, as you say, a too short life), we all need and want to be passionate about at least some aspects of our worklife.

Posted by Maureen Rogers at April 10, 2007 9:29 AM

Darci, I'm not disagreeing that jerks can be a necessary evil. I've worked with and for quite a few over the years. A brilliant jerk with drive and focus who is a jerk in order to make things better can be a positive in an organization (a bit of a pain in the ass to work with, since there are usually better ways to accomplish the same thing).

My beef is with the jerks who are idiots. Small-minded people who form an opinion on limited information, insulate themselves from any new ideas and become petulant when confronted with new or different ones. These are the people who drive great people out of organizations, de-motivate their fellow employees and generally get "promoted out" by their managers just to get rid of them. Apparently it's easier than firing them - which baffles me.

As for indifference - when the organization loses its sense of urgency and loses its ability to be angered by being called a "necessary evil" then it is time to leave. Needless to say, the other day my friend asked me to review his resume. He may be a bit indifferent about his current job, but he is passionate about his career.

Posted by Andrew Hayden at April 10, 2007 10:03 AM

Maureen, your situation resonates with me. I have learned that what goes around comes around and jerks usually have "their day in court" so-to-speak. Thanks for your post.

Posted by Darci at April 10, 2007 12:27 PM

"people in large corporations too often aren't inspired and have no sense of purpose"...true, but this is also true of smaller businesses and also in non-profits and government. Indeed, when you say: "we promote people into "leadership" positions who aren't prepared to take on the role of directing the lives and livelihood of others," I think this is more common in smaller organizations than in larger ones. It is often in the fairly small business (200 employees or less) where the founder/CEO holds much decision-making close to the vest and appoints managers largely for their technical/bunctional skills without adequate consideration for other factors.

Posted by david foster at April 10, 2007 5:05 PM

I completely agree that life is too short to waste on indifference ... but I also believe in picking your battles. If you work for a jerk, don't waste your (physical and emotional) energy butting heads with him/her; ask yourself "What do I want to accomplish, and how can I accomplish it without involving the jerk?"

Case in point: I used to work for a bully who constantly verbally abused me about my work ethic and the quality of my work -- while taking credit for it with her higher-ups, and trying to ensure that I got no credit at all. I didn't confront her, which would have only made the situation worse. I lay low (so that I didn't appear to be a threat), but took advantage of every opportunity to demonstrate that I was the one doing all the good work ... and eventually justice prevailed.

In The Monk and the Riddle, Randy Komisar makes what I think is an important distinction between "passion" and "drive" (i.e., one's work ethic and desire to succeed). Sometimes it's easy to confuse the two, and, for example, stay in a "can't win" situation because you can't bear to "be a quitter." When the pain of beating your head against a brick wall becomes too great, it's often useful to back off and ask yourself "What do I REALLY want?" -- and if your drive is leading you into behaviors that sap your passion, change those behaviors (or get the h*ll out).

Posted by Paula at April 11, 2007 4:48 PM

It's the thin line between what I can change and cannot change. Reminds me of two quotes:

"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference." -AA Prayer

"True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information." - Winston Churchill

And I would add to that last one that true genius is a gut feeling - not triggered by social pressure - when it comes to evaluate the wisdom to know the difference.

Kind regards,
Luc.
http://reply-mc.blogspot.com/

Posted by Luc Galoppin at April 17, 2007 4:05 AM

I am late to the party here, but am a bit amused by all this excitement about indifference. Maureen has it right, which isn't a surprise as she has read my book. I make it very clear that if people are in a bad asshole filled situation, they should get out. But it is also very clear to me that many many people in the world feel trapped with assholes that they can't escape from. Tenured professors and their deans. Partners in law firms and their assistants (who read blogs). Surgical residents and nurses who work with nasty doctors. There are millions of people in good jobs -- and hundreds of millions in bad jobs -- who are trapped in bad situations for at least awhile, and the fantasy that just about everyone can and should up and leave is simply empirically wrong (Indeed, I bet like me, Tom even has an asshole client now and then, and he doesn't figure that out until it is too late, so he goes ahead and gives the speech, and doesn't allow it to get to him -- but then doesn't work for them again..indifference is a good way to protect your mental health in that situation). As I have written in a lot of venues now, it is great if you can be in a place where you can be passionate, but sometimes in this imperfect world, indifference helps in the short-term. And it even helps in the long-term, it is impossible for any us to feel deeply passionate about everything, the result ironically will be a numbness that makes it impossible to feel strongly about everything. So indifference about things that don't matter much to you can help you save your passion for what does matter. As such, I believe that learning not to care and what not to care about an essential survival skill -- and indifference has many virtues. Indeed, I am passionate about the virtues of indifference!

Posted by Bob Sutton at April 21, 2007 8:06 PM

Indifference...abounds. Gallup have proven this, and so has the Conference Board. We are witnessing an epidemic of indifference. Yet, there are islands of excellence. The key is to focus on these islands, grow them and make the whole thing viral. As Tolstoy stated 'All happy families resemble each other, whereas each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' Indifferent cultures are indifferent in their own ways...resulting in too many different problems to solve. Focus on those that are succeeding, and help them grow their influence.

Posted by Brian Ward at April 22, 2007 1:02 AM

Hi Darci,
Great blog! After reading your blog written last April, I had a thought that might be not only a great tool for business, but a great marketing tool for your company. Interested?
Frank

Posted by frank renner at January 7, 2008 4:32 PM