Have you ever wondered what with all the management theories that have come out in the past 50 years, why none of them seem to work? Let's face it with all the theories of management floating around out there why do organizations still ask the same old questions, face the same old problems and still get no really different, results?

You've tried Quality Circles, TQM, Six Sigma, even "Servant" Leadership and still despite all this innovation on your part, the organization by and large hasn't changed. Now if you're a good little MBA you'll go beat yourself up for not reading the latest Harvard Business Review and finding out the new management secret du jour, which will peter out, probably like your career, in a few years. That's because you haven't discovered the real underlying basis for organizational survival...... Bosship™!

After many years of being an employee, then an investor I realized that all those trees and soy beans sacrificed for print about "leadership" is for public consumption. "Leadership" is not only an American business fetish but it's a booming industry. You can go out and hire a leadership guru for 25K and up and he'll spew a bunch of unrelated platitudes at you for an hour, day, or week (or if he's really lucky he'll be on retainer) all designed to have you burn some company time while doing some navel gazing to see if "you're worthy to be followed; and humble enough to lead." Horse hockey!

Well I've heard this type of tripe for too long. Hey, if American business wants to have a management theory fetish, why not one that REALLY fits the reality of the work place? The problem with most management theories and "leadership" in particular, is they are based on the silly unrealistic notion that organizations exist to serve others. When anyone who has/is working for an organization understands that this is not the truth. So in keeping with the desire to have a business fetish, that works, I've developed a more realistic version of the organization called Bosship™. Bosship™ is based on the following principles that universally apply to all organizations:

1.) Organizations exist to survive. People in organizations only get enough done to justify that end. Get off your high horse. How much time did you spend shopping on the company internet, or taking personal calls today? Do you think anyone else is any better? The organization embraces security over decisiveness and change. The system works as long as you're not an exception to it. While outwardly decisiveness and change are regarded as virtues they are only accepted to the extent that management can appear to be doing something. "Leadership" requires enormous responsibility, creativity, hard work, decisiveness, and achievement. All that makes a leader great, is what every organization trumpets as their goal which they verbally support and defend, but in practice shun, because such people are "boat-rockers". The ideal leader's actions threaten the security and existence of the organization. No matter what they say, organizations only like change when it comes from the coffee machine.

2.) Bosship™ realizes that the object of the exercise is to get paid out of proportion to your level of production. Good bosship recognizes that employees exist to do the boss's work so that he can inherit the praise and pay. Having many people to do your work is a great example of "leverage". Bosship is all about maximizing employees workload while justifying your position by apparently "organizing" "planning" "reporting" etc. and other euphemisms for doing relatively little real productive work.

3.)Bosship™ recognizes work is a zero-sum game. Bosship realizes that work is all about gaining at someone else's expense. Let's face it. You're either boss, or you're little people.

4.) Bosship™ understands that hierarchies exist to give the boss meaning and purpose. All the blather about "flat" organizations is a load of beaver biscuits. Every organization has its hierarchy. A person exercising good Bosship™ seeks to build his share of budget from the organization (keeping in mind principle 3). The more budget you justify having, the more power and control you have, and the higher up the hierarchy you'll be. Everyone below you exists for you. Everyone above you is to be placated and manipulated until you kiss up enough to ascend to a higher level or you are able to make them look more incompetent than they already are. This has nothing to do with business acumen (park your diploma on the wall, and imagine what you could be doing with all the money you wasted on it).and everything to do with narcissistic self aggrandizement. A person practicing the principles of good Bosship™ always seeks to inflate his ego and take every opportunity to blow up their self importance. In a zero-sum game, you either blow your own trumpet at every opportunity or you're headed for the mail-room (assuming your company still has one.)

5.) People who exhibit excellent Bosship™ skills are able to maintain a fine balance of culpable deniability/recognition and optimal fragmentation of the work force. The essence of good bosship is the delegation of blame. That's what employees are for. The first thing a plumber learns is that gravity always pulls crap downhill. This is true in any organization as well. Bosses only have bad outcomes because employees have screwed up. For some unknown reason, the employee has misunderstood, didn't follow vague SOP's, or were "insubordinate" (a term used whenever employees think for themselves and show initiative which you can't get credit for). Bosship always maintains a culpable deniability. Good bosses know that when faced with a bad outcome they transmit blame by denying direct association and knowledge of the project in question. Your lack of knowledge is not your fault, but the result of "people going off the plantation".

On the flip side, if things happen to work out well, good bosship positions you to claim the recognition for your employee's labors. After all, aren't you the boss? Aren't these people working for you, underneath your superior guidance? Aren't they part of your team? On the basis of these types of random success, you grab for more share of the organization's budget and employees and thus improve your position in the hierarchy.

How does a good boss maintain the levels of employee performance that are high enough to justify your position but not so high a level as to motivate the employee to start thinking for himself. First of all stay away from "motivation" in all but its appearances. Management guru's and motivational speakers are great because they allow you a new level of obfuscation via management buzz words, without having to make any real changes. Good bosship eschews the use of fear as a motivator. Fear by definition is something you can avoid. You can escape the fear of falling by staying away from high places. The excellent bosship candidate manipulates dread and hope. Unlike fear, dread is inescapable, like death. Dread is the relentless anxiety the employee gets when he knows that he can't escape the situation and so he surrenders to the inevitable -- sometimes called "Borg" thinking; resistance is futile. Dread constantly hovers in the background. "Is it my turn to catch the blame? Will I have a job tomorrow?" These anxieties work for you like an illegal alien -- 24/7 and no benefits. These thoughts constantly float in the background. In the foreground lurks, fleeting glimpses of hope, much like the brief view Sisyphus had just before the rock he pushed would roll back down the hill again. Excellent bosship lets in just enough hope to allow the employee to think he makes a difference or has a chance at a real career, so that he produces enough work to justify the boss's job.

Now if the boss had only dread and hope to work with eventually workers would unite against him. Hence the concept of work as being a zero-sum game must be interjected into the workplace in a way the optimally fragments the workforce and constantly keeps them at odds with one another. The development of rumors, the pitting of one employee against another, the arbitrary elevation and/or demotion of apparent favorites in the form of a lackey system all have to be carefully orchestrated through good bosship to create sufficient levels of distrust to keep employees at each others throats instead of yours. The creation of an LLS (lackeys, lickspittles, and sycophants) system is a useful tool in the creation of just enough production to justify your job and presents you with ready made fall guys when blame needs to be downloaded.

Of course all of the above means that work needs to be dull, boring, threatening, and dispiriting to the individual. The last thing you as a boss needs is some employee who wakes up one day and things he can be somebody. Show me an organization consuming low levels of prozac, zoloft, lunesta, aspirin, steroids for IBS, and a lack of addictive habits and I'll show you an organization that has lost its sense of bosship!

6.) Workers exist to give meaning to the boss. This is pretty self evident from the nature of the hierarchical structure in an organization. Don't make the mistake of personifying your employees. Employees are tools, cogs in your self advancement machine. Tools aren't people. Some people say that this makes the boss a heartless tyrant. (That's a bad thing?) Yeah, but it works. And don't become friends with an employee, that's another type of trouble. As the man said, "If you want a friend; get a dog."

7.) Workers will do just enough not to get fired. This is also known as Barr's "Iron Law of Mediocrity". Employees that understand how the organization works know that the best they can hope for is not to be noticed and produce just enough that the boss out of self interest, will keep them around. This explains why only about half or less of a work day consists of any real work. You can pay lip service to "improving" or "optimizing" but the Iron Law of Mediocrity means that an organization isn't going to risk change by encouraging high levels of employee creativity or production. The Iron Law of Mediocrity helps bind the entire bosship theory together and brings us back again to the first principle...organizations exist to survive.