Bosship

Bosship Aptitude Evaluator

2008-03-01T12:49:00.003-05:00

I'm really tired of getting emails from Bosship wannabes telling me that they've hoarded all the office staples and now wonder if that makes them a Bosship candidate. So I've decided to produce a purely objective (meaning purely arbitrary) way of determining your Bosship aptitude.

Bosship Aptitude Evaluator

Are You Bosship Material?

Directions:
Answer each question quickly.

1. You fake a handicap permit to park closer to work.
Yes/No

2. Would you be willing to cut back on employee healthcare so the company could finance a company car for you?
Yes/No

3. You think "small talk" is a conversation about your employees.
Yes/No

4. If you are asked what the strategic direction of the company should be you answer:
a.) cutting corners
b.) cutting costs
c.) cutting employees
d.) cutting someone else's department budget
e.) all of the above

5. You own the vending machines used by employees.
Yes/No

6. If you are asked, "What do you think?" your response is:
a.) Is this a trick question?
b.) Do I have to answer now?
c.) I'm sure there's a file on that somewhere.
d.) all of the above.

7. You see a report labeled "Tomorrow's Global Economy" and:
a.) Assume it's conclusions won't be valid in 48 hours.
b.) Think it's inside information.
c.) Say you don't believe in psychics.
d.) all the above

8. You stuff the employee comment box.
Yes/No

9. You've described an employee who is going to be used as a scapegoat as a "corporate handiwipe."
Yes/No

10. You meet someone who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina and your first response is:
a.) "Is there anything I can do to help out?"
b.) "Here's the number for the Salvation Army."
c.) "So other than that�how did you like New Orleans?"

11. You describe yourself as "empathy impaired."
Yes/No

12. If there is a dirty job to do you:
a.) Take it on yourself.
b.) Take it on yourself but let everyone know what a martyr you are.
c.) Lecture employees about "empowerment," pushing decisions down to the lowest level, and refer to the job as a "career builder."

13. If employees make bad decisions you:
a.) Point out that failure is part of learning.
b.) Yell at them for screwing up.
c.) Lecture them about how "empowerment" just means bad decisions made at a faster rate, and talk about how their screw up is a real "career ender."

14. You have a framed wood engraving of Barr's Iron Law of Mediocrity on your wall.
Yes/No

15. You have a bumper sticker that reads, "Your job is paying for my car."
Yes/No

16. You think that "supplemental insurance" is buying each employee a box of band aids.
Yes/No

17. You've screwed ___ number of former friends this month in order to look better or avoid blame.

a.) 1-2
b.) 3-4
c.) Lost count

18. When an employee starts to tell you about his new baby you butt in with:
a.) "Wow that's really exciting! Tell me more! What's their name? How much do they weigh?"
b.) "How do you know it's yours?"
c.) "You know my neighbor's cats had three kittens."

19. You cut notches on the corner of your desk for every person you used to get where you are now.
Yes/No

20. Your secretary calls and says that the hospital has your mother and that she's ill and your response is:
a.) Oh my god! I'm sorry but this meeting is over. I've got to get to the hospital.
b.) Yeah, old people do that�Tell her I'll send a cab when she's ready to go home.
c.) Wait�ask her if I can have the food in her freezer.

21. You think road rage is a form of aerobic activity.
Yes/No

22. You think Xanax and vodka make a great smoothie.
Yes/No

23. You've gone to WebMD to see if you conscience can be removed.
Yes/No

24. You've been in a fight with a guy in the restroom because he was trying to take your job, only to find it was your reflection.
Yes/No

25. You are able to walk out in your department on any given day and say, "Whose the new guy?" and always get a different answer.
Yes/No

26. You have an inspirational poster on your wall that reads: "The best thing about being me is that I'm not you."
Yes/No

27. You see a happy employee and your response is:
a.) "Share the happiness!"
b.) Ignore him.
c.) "What's YOUR malfunction!"

28. When cuts in pay are made your response is:
a.) I'm sorry to have to do this. We're setting up an emergency fund.
b.) At least you still have a job.
c.) If God wanted you to be happy he wouldn't have made you an employee.

29. You believe if you think too much, you'll get a tumor.
Yes/No

30. You've admonished employees with, "You know if you'd do your job around here I could afford a nicer house!"
Yes/No

31. You believe that a 360 degree review has to happen in a round room.
Yes/No

32. "Motivation" is the sense of urgency you get before a bowel movement.
Yes/No

33. You recommended issuing tasers to managers to cut down on employee rest room use.
Yes/No

34. You're the boss who drafted the new "taser policy".
Yes/No

35. The Business Roundtable is sold at Ethan Allen stores.
Yes/No

36. You just laid an employee off whose wife is in the hospital and he starts crying. You:
a.) Give them a paper hanky and a few words of encouragement.
b.) Tell them you understand but he needs to pull themselves together.
c.) Sit back in your chair, lock your fingers behind your head and wait 5 seconds then say,

" Would you leave, the rest of use have work to do. I've got other deadbeats to get rid of�.NEXT!"

37. A young fireball comes to you with what he thinks is a brilliant idea and you�.
a.) Congratulate him on his creativity and initiative.
b.) Begrudingly grunt that the idea might have merit.
c.) Say," Look kid, if it was such a good idea don't you think I would have come up with it by now?"

38. Darth Vadr
a.) Was an evil and cruel character in Star Wars.
b.) Was one hell of an actor.
c.) Wears a T-shirt with your face on it.

39. The reason the company has meetings is:
a.) To coordinate work and make it more effective and efficient.
b.) To catch some zzz's before going to lunch.
c.) To allow you to blame others for your problems.

40. The book, "Getting To Yes" is a sex manual.
Yes/No

Answers:
1.Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. E
5. Yes
6. D
7. D
8. Yes
9. Yes
10. C
11. Yes
12. C
13. C
14. Yes
15. Yes
16. Yes
17. C
18. C
19. Yes
20. C
21. Yes
22. Yes
23. Yes
24. Yes
25. Yes
26. Yes
27. C
28. C
29. Yes
30. Yes
31. Yes
32. Yes
33. Yes
34. Yes
35. Yes
36. C
37. C
38. C
39. C
40. Yes
If you looked at the answers first, give yourself 5 pts extra. Otherwise grade yourself accordingly:
40-35- You are bosship material.
34-29�Possibly bosship material but you still have to outgrow your conscience.
28-23�You might make a good lackey or lickspittle for a real boss.
23 or less�Forget it wage slave. Your best chance at survival is to work on your whining and victim skills. Watch for the upcoming Loser's Guide.

Bosship Speech

2008-01-08T00:10:00.000-05:00

Recently I was asked to give a speech about Bosship to a group of Bosship candidates. Here is a transcript of the speech:

I look around the room today and I see a lot of people with shining futures behind them. If you don't believe me look to your right and left�.Okay now realize that 2 out of 3 people have a terminally low self concept and if they didn't they do now. Two thirds of you are pretty hopeless. You're never going to amount to anything. Now the remaining 1/3rd with a high self concept? You're deluded. You woke up one day and thought you could be somebody. The organization doesn't need that type of novelty. You'll make a lot of fuss and bother about "fighting for an ideal," "servant leadership," "being more creative," or "saving the company money" as if it was really going to change something. That's the trouble with motivation�.its just as addictive and mind altering as crack, but it has more collateral damage. You're trying to shore up your ego with the notion that you "can make a difference" when you're just being different in the same way as the other 2/3rds. Congratulations, you've found a unique way to express your insecurity. Stop wasting your time thinking. Stop trying to come up with "new" strategies. First of all no one asked you to think and second its probably just going to get you in trouble. All that crap you hear about "showing initiative" all sounds good, but it's really a terribly bad idea if you want to get ahead. Why run risks when you could just accept what you're told? Let some eager beaver idealist with no future play pointman. Someone's got to take the first hit. You can use his body for cover. There's nothing more dangerous than introducing change that threatens the way an organization does things. Who the hell do you think you are?! Get over yourself! You don't matter in the larger scheme of things. Avoid change, hunker down and conform and you'll get a paycheck every 2 weeks. There are perks for embracing SOP. Organizations love you until you are an exception to the rules. Then you're just a malfunction the system can live without. So if you like that paycheck, health benefits, vacations, etc. stop thinking and make a more concerted effort to make the system happy.

Now profits�A lot of you have been told to be concerned about profits. If you've been permanently damaged by the MBA experience you've read tons of case studies about profitable companies. Before moving on lets understand what we're talking about. "Profit" consists of sales-product costs-labor costs-taxes/interest, and since labor is the bulk of costs the surest way to increase profits is to get fewer people to do more work so you'll earn more out of proportion to your contribution. It's about leveraging your employees to do more for less while you buy a beach house in the Hamptons with the money you saved by not providing health insurance. It's turning the employee pension fund into a college education for your kid by "converting" it to some private ownership plan run by Flibinite Investments in Ogallah, N.D. Profits are good. It's how you go about getting them that gets you in trouble. What is a bosship candidate to do in the context of industrial turmoil, technological change, outsourcing and offshoring. Simple�cut corners and take the shortest available route to profitability while doing the least amount of work. Shareholders are concerned about whether you made this quarters projections and secondarily how you did it. Remember you can justify just about anything in the name of shareholder value, short of killing the CEO�and you can probably get away with that if it results in an extraordinary dividend.

Now whenever you make a profit someone (usually a politician who doesn't own stock) will accuse you of being greedy. Well as St. Gordon Gecko said, "Greed is good." If you notice it's always poor people that whine about greed. "It's evil to have what I'm too lazy to earn so you must be evil for having it. Oh�and by the way the government should take it away from you and give it to me." Poor people are just competing with you using the government. They'll go out and vote once a year for whatever political pimp is willing to show them a good time on your dime. Poor people are just like you except they have a whole lot less and whine about it to Lou Dobbs while they collect unemployment, welfare and their earned income credit. Just remember what St. Jay Gould said, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."

That reminds me. A lot of you aren't delegating blame very effectively. You know how I know that? Look at how many of you are here today! There should be about half as many here! The rest of you should have already been used as a corporate wet nap to clean up somebody else's negative outcome. The road to corporate success lies on the career corpses of your fellow workers. If you're still listening to this part of the speech then someone else has already probably come up with a way to throw you under the train.

That brings me to the next subject. The List. You need to have one if you don't already. This is basically for underlings because anyone at your level or higher knows how the game is played. You need to be walking around and periodically announcing, "Okay Jones, you're on THE LIST!" preferably when the person hasn't done anything wrong. This will create distancing behavior on the part of other employees as if Jones was recognized as having Bird Flu. Making The List should seem entirely arbitrary, and in fact it may will maybe. The point is The List maintains high levels of anxiety and employee friction. You can use any loss in productivity to axe some people and add to your income. A particularly effective method combines The List with management du jour buzz phrases like, "Jones! You're not a team player. You're on The List!" Of course this places everyone else on the "team". This is an excellent tool for building a group of lickspittles, lackeys, and flunkies.

Many of you will never earn out of proportion to you actual work because you fail to embrace Barr's Iron Law of Mediocrity�(People will only work hard enough not to get fired.) That's because you still have a little bit of conscience left. You still have a sliver of belief that people can be motivated and can learn to get something intrinsic and ennobling out of work. The real problem is in some way shape or form you are letting your employee's work have meaning! The whole point of work is for the employee to realize the futility of individual effort. They're not supposed to be getting anything out of work! They shouldn't be getting better at what they do! In fact the more disconnected and unrelated their activities are, the more soulless work becomes for them. If your employees aren't alienated, you're not doing your job. They depend on you to keep work pointless! Do your job and make them do your job! When you earn the "Dante's Inferno Award" from Bosship.com and can proudly put "Abandon all hope all ye who enter here" above your department you'll have successfully reduced each employee's work to a set of purposeless output and them to ciphers. They'll stop wasting time and resources trying to do better rather than just doing what they're told. When I walk into a business and see a lot of slack bovine expressions on employees that have lost all sense of self, other than that which prevents them from committing suicide (on company time) I know someone truly understands, "The Law." Work on you demotivators. When some employee comes up with an idea point out, "If it was such a good idea I would have already come up with it. Now quit wasting company time thinking and do your job!" or "Let's have an intelligent conversation�.I'll talk."

Which is what I've been doing for the past few minutes. Other than being paid to speak I look around and see it was a total waste of my time. I'm reminded of the time I gave a "motivational" speech to a group who was trying to build their self esteem. When I asked for questions somebody raised his hand. I pointed and said, "Yeah let's hear from the short dumpy guy in the back with the ill fitting suit that his mother bought for him at Sears." I don't know why I mention that now other than this guy in the front row reminds me of him�except you have really bad dandruff too. Thanks for paying me for nothing. If you happen to see me outside, don't come up to ask questions or talk to me. You'd probably bore me to death. Besides I'll call security.

Bosship Tutorial #4: Reengineering Reality Part 2

2007-12-13T00:35:00.000-05:00

In exploring techniques of prevarication, I'll use Touchstone's "7 lies" from Shakespeare's, As You Like It as an outline.
1.) Retort courteous � Tell someone they are wrong, when you know they aren't, but do it in a courteous way so they doubt themselves. This will buy you time to build a consistent reality (alibi) and makes you appear correct by your air of assertiveness and lack of concern. Psychologically we tend to believe an assertion rather than an explanation. Your nonchalant response makes you look restrained and cool while the other person looks confused as he rechecks his facts. "Maybe you'd like more time to collect your facts." If the person really has you nailed and insists on his point then make him out the bad guy for daring to bring up such "distasteful subjects at an obviously inappropriate time."
2.) Reply churlish � This allows you to devalue someone's opinion and downplay allegations by dismissing the other person's "dubious information." Seize the moral high ground and attack the "underhanded" way your opponent got his information. Convince any listeners that the information had to come via despicable means no matter how damning the evidence. In this way you get the listeners to forget the message by concentrating on that "blackguard" and the devious ways he got his information. "I won't dignify such a base and tawdry allegation nor insult my colleagues with a response." (Memorize this one!)
3.) The quip modest but devastating � This is the always handy non sequitor bit of sarcasm to distract people from the utter truth of an accusation. "I really never minded the little things�but isn't that what your wife said about you at the Christmas party?" A straight of entertainment at the expense of someone else always trumps a full house of truth. "Yes there is nothing worse than a half truth�unless it comes from a half wit."
4.) Reproof valiant � This is stonewalling. No matter how compelling the proof you deny the accusation and anything associated with the proof. This keeps the bothersome facts away from you and the burden of proof on the other person. It's essential that you keep the momentum by not letting them have time to pick at your evidence.
5.) Reproof Freudian � No matter what they say its further evidence of how bad they are, and how innocent you are.
You: "These photos of me having sex with Ms. Y in my office are just a further example of how low minded Joe Stevens is."
Joe: "But you're naked and obviously having sex with Ms. Y!"
You: "Yes Joe and I'm shocked�shocked to see you stooping so low as to be a perverted little peeping tom getting his voyeuristic thrills by collecting grainy little pictures of consenting adults (no pause). This is just a further example of Joe's high handedness and low morals; the ranting of a repressed and perverted man obviously in need of psychiatric counseling."
Joe: "But you're having sex with Ms. Y�she's on your desk�.!"
You: "That's so typical of you Joe, to concentrate and emphasize the intimate details of such a personal act. Just a further example of the direction of someone caught up in his own sexual compulsions�"
Joe: "But it's against policy to have sex with employees!"
You: "Joe-Joe-Joe it's always sex with you isn't it? You just can't get over all those repressed feelings you've had ever since your mother dressed you up like a little girl and spanked you."
Joe: "That's not true!"
You: Come on now Joe. Your denying it just makes it all the more obvious. You know the first step toward healing is to admit you have this compulsive problem."
You can see why this is my personal favorite.
6.) Countercheck � Everything your accuser says is a lie, forcing the burden of proof back on him. "I can't believe you keep insulting everyone and me with such bold faced lies." If he comes back with more arguments continue to be appalled by the volume of his lies. "Geez Bob! Is there no end to your lies? How much longer are you going to continue to burden everyone with this crap!" It's always a good touch to bring in the other listeners so that it sounds like the accuser is after them too. This places them on your side.
7.) Circumstantial Lie also known as a "Michael Moore or the Al Gore" � Lie by omission. Leave out a vital part of the information. "It's a well known that my department has out-produced every other department." You leave out the part about your costs being 10 times the other departments, totally negating any gains. In the circumstantial lie, one simplistic example suffices to explain all interactions regardless of their complexity.
8.) Direct lies � Lie by adding information. This addition makes others look like they are hiding something; that they're the liar. "It's interesting Joe that you left out the fact that Ms. Y and I are engaged�" (Don't worry you can reengineer a relevant truth to Ms. Y later.)
9.) Interpretive lie also known as "Doing a Clinton" � Agree to all of the facts but deny their meaning by interpreting them differently. "That's certainly me and Ms. Y on the desk but I can hardly say that we are, as Joe so colorfully put, having "sex."
10.) Lie as truth also known as the "National Security Lie" -- Point out that your position is actually the truth and your accuser has only made it out to be a lie. In other words seeing the truth requires not only a sharper mind, which you audience obviously has and the accuser doesn't. You also suggest his "truth" is based on incomplete information or faulty analysis.
11.) Status lie � You condemn lying as providing false information to a person entitled to the truth. But, you have no obligations to provide truthful information to people not entitled to it, i.e., the truth is above the other person's pay grade.
12.) The "Good" Lie -- A lie told to protect a higher good that most dullards can't begin to grasp. "You can't handle the truth!"
13.) Numeric lying � Reduce the situation to a number or arrange the numbers to support your version of reality. Accountants do this all the time on annual reports and use teeny tiny footnotes to hide the fact. You can do the same. If you lose two employees one year and five employees the next year, point out that your departments poor performance is a result of a 150% increase in lost employees!

Now keep in mind these are the building blocks for constructing reality. The list is not all inclusive and you can certainly do combinations like a Countercheck with a Freudian Reproof. Your own unique experiences can be used to create all kinds of reality for the consumption of those involved. Remember, there's no since of confusing people with a levels of truth they can't handle yet.

Tyrant Tip: 101

2007-06-13T00:55:00.004-05:00

Objectify people as much as possible.
Let's face it if it wasn't for Barr's Iron Law of Mediocrity (People will work just hard enough not to get fired) most of your employees would be worth more to you for the chemicals you could extract from their bodies. Studying best practices from tyrants we find an important lesson: Treat people like the statistics that they are. I know all the management speak put out about "rallying the troops" and "fulfilling the corporate mission" but that's the dog and pony show for the purchasing public. The bottom line is that it is much easier to drive cattle than waste time dealing with individual personalities. If you treat people like the means to an end that they are its much easier to use them that way. Referring to "that guy in the 4th cubicle" is far more bossship-like than cluttering your mind and wasting brain cells remembering useless information about him like his name and (groan) his spouse and the endless tribe of children he's spawned because he was too lazy to go to the drugstore.

The cubicle is an excellent tool for objectification. Cubicles are really sensory deprivation chambers that allow you to limit interaction among the inmates. They provide sufficient amounts of isolation so they work against stuff like creativity. People who are objectified develop (for you) a healthy sense of alienation and depression. They stop trying to "be" somebody and just accept that their total meaning and purpose in life is determined by someone more important (you). You may even notice that they develop a slack bovine like expression. This means they are reaching a level of apathy conducive to useful manipulation. Good past tyrants provided just enough subsistence to make themselves and the organization indispensable to the individual cog. Worker/cogs get so tied up with just existing that they aren't going to develop any ambition to go elsewhere. The cubicle becomes their world. The cubicle's confines are easy for the worker/cog to understand and don't provide any challenges. The cubicle provides a nice secure level of objectification and anonymity. They can be king of their little cubicle. They can belong to a democracy of zeroes...where its virtuous to be zero. The workers are relieved of the need to make choices instead they are happy just to accept conclusions. Over time your workers begin to take on this objectified role and even strive to be "happy cogs" by doing things like competing to be more cog-like (whoever invented "employee of the month" deserves a bosship award).

Objectifying people is liberating. It's honest. You don't have to lie and say other people are important or "special" when they are redundant, boring, and consuming oxygen higher life forms could be using. Simple, direct, honest, and efficient, that�s objectification for you!

Bosship Tutorial #3: Reengineering Reality Part 1

2007-06-05T10:50:00.000-05:00

Since only 2-5% of the population is capable of natural prevarication; the rest of you Bosship candidates desperately need this tutorial to develop this key leadership skill. "Lie" is such a harsh word loaded with all kind of useless ethical baggage. Really what you are doing is prevaricating. What is prevarication? It's reengineering reality; to tailor reality to fit people's limited brain capacities and unlimited desires.

Now there is a lot of societal noise about business and ethics and telling the "truth" in business. Bosship transcends the usual standards of morality by realizing that most if not all people are trying to escape reality (e.g., just look at how much time employees spend watching mindless TV, playing video games and reading blog sites) or at most experience it only as tourists (e.g., the news). Bosship candidates accept the fact that people can't deal with reality beyond their pay grade. When the Bosship candidate prevaricates he is being generous�he doesn't want to burden people with more reality than they can handle. As boss, it is your obligation to tailor make reality to the capacities of the individual's you're dealing with. Laying too much reality on an ill equipped person is like teaching a pig to sing. (You waste your time and bore the pig.) Prevarication is not "bad" like your nanny told you, but a revelatory, almost prophetic gift for dramatic fiction. Like great authors and artists your prevarications are the great lies through which truth is told; you're artistically reengineering reality.

Before I get into the various forms of canard let me list some best practices to consider when applying your brush to the artistic reengineering of reality:

1. Prevaricate when needed --- Prevaricate whenever the full burden of the truth is beyond the capacities of most people. It's your job as boss to enlighten workers much like a Zen master�only to their capacity. Reality is on a need to know basis. Workers only need to know enough to do your work and make you look good. Why distract them with something like "downsizing" when you can reduce their confusion by telling them that "management is realigning its priorities?" They can't do anything about it anyway and it could negatively affect the amount of work they produce and make you look bad. Adults know there is no Santa but they play along with children until the children can handle the stark reality. Employees can handle the stark reality on their last day of work at quitting time.

2. Reengineer reality within shades of what is probable and possible; provide hope�Saying that the sun is changing the climate is unbelievable even though true, after all the sun is 93 million miles away and out of your control. It is much more believable that human exhalation, car farting and driving cars is changing the climate because it is more immediate and you can live with the delusion that now you are �"in control of your destiny." Telling workers at a job review that they are "in control" of their future and having them create job goals to achieve keeps them from getting depressed over the reality that their accomplishments have anything to do with their continued employment�or lack thereof. But hey, when they are in the unemployment line they can always look back to their attempts to "maximize optimal outcomes" when they were in charge of the budget for staples and paperclips.

3. Inhabit your prevarications with detailed quotes and sources --- You can become the authority about just about anything if you have enough sources and footnotes. Make references to obscure or out of print journals that could only be found by a week long search of the Library of Congress. Better still simply create facts out of thin air and have them repeated through your lackey system. A prevarication repeated enough times takes on a mythic reality of its own. It you get the word out that "everyone knows that marketing is due for a housecleaning" eventually people in marketing will live down to the estimate and your bosses will appreciate the opportunity to "save costs." Just remember "Barr's Law of Confirming Large Numbers"-- If you point at a cow paddy and call it chocolate mousse, loud enough and long enough eventually someone will return with a spoon and say, "I guess a million flies can't be wrong."

4. Good canards are good stories---The best prevarications are entertaining, detailed, possible and repeatable. Good canards distance people from the oppressive parts of reality that they are ill equipped to deal with. When your canards are repeatable they make you a resource; a "go to" person. A good bosship canard is like a puppet show entertaining a child in pain from a toothache. They forget the toothache by becoming involved in the story. Reality TV and CNN are great examples. By becoming involved in watching "American Idol" the adult employee is able to forget how talentless he is and how dull and pointless his life and work are. Be entertaining and tell people what they want to hear. Eventually they'll be blindsided by cruel and relentless facts that will knock them out of their delusional world. But in the mean time you might as well squeeze every ounce of productivity out of their soporific complacency. In the mean time tell them how "essential" they are to the team and build up their sense of self importance.

5. Speak with implication; add innuendo---Frame the parts of reality with contextual cues and suggestions that leave people inferring the type of reality you've intended. Spice it up with innuendo phrases that gets them to finish the picture for you For example, "Fred's department hasn't done that bad a job; it's not like someone's going to get a pink slip this week." Innuendo is great because it offers excellent leverage. The listener does all the work for you. It's like getting twice the sex for half the foreplay.

6. Prevaricate from humility--- Canards that come from or make you look superior generate a suspect reality. Remember people trust lies that appear to put them in control. Reengineering reality is a public service. Prevarication can make you look good by indirectly making others look bad. It's the old problem of improving the neighborhood. You could build a better house than everyone else�.but then you'd put yourself out and be out of pocket a lot to money, not to mention everyone benefits at your expense�.easier to just tear down some surrounding houses. If the company is performing poorly and you can massage your numbers to look mediocre in comparison don't point out the canard directly. Instead talk about the need for more "team work" or some other management speak and then pass out a comparative department graph displaying the company's poor performance with your high numbers tucked neatly in the report so that others will discover the comparison. When people discover a prevaricated truth on their own they are more likely to believe their judgment about it.

7. Emotions need to match the scope and size of the reengineered reality and make it come alive---If your canard is small don�t' build it big by over-acting. At the same time a good canard about a relatively insignificant issue can increase your leverage in the zero-sum game of Bosship. Put simply, there's a time to pound the table with your shoe and point out how your enemies are undermining profitability and other times when you've lost the company money that you stare blankly, smile sweetly and say, "I've never really minded the little things" or "These aren't the droids you're looking for�you can go about your business."

8. Stick to your story--- There's nothing more inartistic than to watch some Bosship wannabe back down and change their story to make up for a poorly designed prevarication! Even if people are demanding your head and begging you to confess, stick to your story. Repetition without variation is the bitch goddess of prevarication. People either give up out of exasperation, become confused and return to their sudoku puzzles, or shrug it off and move on. The bottom line is that a good prevarication outlasts most attempts to prove it wrong. People just don't have the staying power and they forget quickly.

9. Compartmentalize and deny--- Good prevarications should be made up of a series of partial truths any portion of which can be denied. This allows you to cut your losses�usually by letting some poor yutz pay the check by having to take the blame. However that isn't always the case. For example, someone points out you promised new health insurance and nothing has happened. Point out that you indeed did promise and you've kept your word, because keeping your word and maintaining the trust of others is very important to an effective team. Now about the health insurance, let's examine the meaning of health�Blah blah blah�and insurance�blah blah blah. That it's important to spread risk equitably but proportionally yet not in a counter negative way that would injure the long term profitability of the company�after all what good is having health insurance if the company can't afford to employ you? By breaking things down into points you can always "define down" a person's statement to the smallest and most unrelated denominators. Most people will get bored or confused. In either case, they will either lose interest or just hear the part about how you kept your word and how you talked about new health insurance. If things turn aggressive deny the accuser's version�one part at a time. This is the "I've never had sex with that woman" technique, or what I call "Didn't-say-that-wasn't-there." This leads into the next best practice.

10. All prevarications should generate doubt and confusion in the listener (or accuser) and then do the same with the facts---Tell simple canards in a complex way and complex canards in a simple way. Most people don't want to have to think and will do just about anything to avoid it. So leverage this human frailty and make it easy for them to just go along. Alternatively make your prevarication hard enough to keep track of by giving it as many parts or subparts that people don't want to task their brain with figuring it all out. At their best people can usually remember 7-9 bits of information. So you are going to need to plan on at least a 10 unit prevarication. If inconsistencies are pointed out just quiz them about an obscure portion. When they can't remember just say, "Geez, you're not ever paying attention!"This is also called the "Who's-on-first?" technique.

In part two of this tutorial I'll show you some very important prevarication techniques�

Bosship Tip 103: Overcoming PND (Productivity Necessity Disorder)

2007-05-12T02:04:00.000-05:00

I was about to post the next Bosship Tutorial when I was "tagged" by my friend Don The Idea Guy. Now Don is a good friend�you know the type�the person you really like regardless of that ONE PROBLEM. Don has a disorder which many Bosship candidates suffer from in silence�.its PND�Productivity Necessity Disorder�the reoccurring need to be personally productive and creative. Don's a great guy but he's the local "corporate idiot". He just never got the memo that outlined that all organizations exist to survive, that work is a zero-sum game, that people will do just enough not to get fired, and that individual effort is essentially futile.

Even though I'm really writing this Bosship Tip for Don's sake you Bosship candidates should pay attention. It's no shame to have periodic creative urges. This is perfectly normal. It's when start putting a higher priority on finding new ways to do things rather than just putting in your time and collecting a paycheck, that you know you just might have PND. There's a couple of ways to deal with PND:
1.) Stick your fingers in your ears and say,"Nah,nah,nah, but we've always done it this way, nah,nah,nah." Repeat this mantra until the urge to create has passed. Creativity is sort of like gas. If you wait long enough it passes. Treat ideas like you would fear�just keep packing them down inside in a nice little corner of your psyche. This is why they invented happy hour and prescription drugs.
2.) If the first one doesn't work the first step is to admit your problem. Go to www.dontheideaguy.com and go to "Join the group"�Just stand up and say "Hi, my name is (blank) and I have PND." You'll find yourself in the company of other PND sufferers. To be quite honest most cases of PND that I've seen are terminal�so Don's site is really a hospice site. If you're really a hopeless narcassitic person who is solely addicted to your own personal creative expression...and you want to join a productivity cult(secret handshake and all), you can find a REAL darkside at Ben Yoskovitz...the productivity perverts meet there to share and and collect their secrets about productivity...sort of a porn site for the hyper productive...you'll find a whole collection of secrets to "motivate" and "inspire" you....It's enough to make the true Bosship practitioner or candidate sick to their stomach.

Keep this Bosship tip list in front of you and review it after you've repeated your mantra:

Productivity is for losers�Keep in mind that the whole concept of "productivity" is a chimera created to keep workers who have been raised on "self esteem" pabulum and who have been nurtured on TV sitcoms to believe that they can make a difference�that they are "special." Productivity concepts are designed to make workers feel they are "contributing" and can "make a difference." They are a psychic narcotic given to the lower pay grades by Bosship practitioners so that they will do your work. Who cares if you give them a little gold star or some hunk of corporate crap from Successories as long as they are doing your work and you are getting the rewards? Of course this can be over done. The last thing the organization needs is some fireball who woke up one day and thought he could be somebody. The organization's prime directive is to exist to survive. Productivity concepts provide workers with the illusion that the individual can effect change when in reality no organization is going to really do this (e.g. the "suggestion box"). All change must be kept within the confines of mediocrity.

"Productivity" is mental alchemy -- All the management level stuff on productivity is smoke and mirrors used to convince shareholders that the disproportionate amount of pay management receives is justified. This has spawned a whole cottage industry of rent-a-gurus on productivity and creativity who promise to increase productivity through all kinds of mental alchemy; they promise to turn a base metal (one of your workers) into a precious one (creative person)�Right. Just what an organization needs�Let's empower the shallow end of the gene pool so that they make more bad decisions at a faster rate! Fortunately the laws of human nature prevent such a change as much as the laws of chemistry prevent you from changing water into oil.

Use "productivity" to your advantage�If the cerebrally challenged still want to believe they "count" you might as well use this delusion to your advantage. Remember "productivity" can be used like a narcotic to get employees to do your work so you can inherit the praise and pay. Remember one of the key principles of Bosship is to get paid out of proportion to your level of production. So being the local junky dealer for an employee's "productivity fix" is a great way to max his work load while you do relatively little work. A handful of "attaboys" and cheap movie tickets can repay you in thousands of dollars in additional income.

"I know�Let's Have a Meeting!" �Just like an old "Andy Hardy" movie, there's no problem that can't be solved by putting on a show! The corporate meeting is of course the ultimate dog and pony show. Nothing productive ever gets done at a meeting�which means it's an ideal Bosship tool. It's productive for you as boss, because you can off load all your work on employees by the "delegation game." The way the delegation game is played is you set unrealistic productivity goals based on a relative ignorance of the product, the client, employee skills, and the real amount of time needed to accomplish the task. Now you've fulfilled your part of the job when you've shoveled all your work onto the employee�You've "delegated" and shown a real skill for management. This really scores points with your superiors who were permanently brain damaged by the MBA experience. Now it's the workers turn to play. Remember Bosship Principle #7: Barr's Iron Law of Mediocrity�Workers will do just enough not to get fired." (This is why the guru's mental alchemy can't work.) The employee knows how the organization works. His big mistake was that he didn't work hard enough at not being noticed. Since he screwed that up, he has to cut a fine line; produce enough that out of self interest you keep him around. The organization has a stake here too. It isn't going to risk change by encouraging high levels of employee creativity or productivity�that might jeopardize the corporate prime directive; exist to survive. Now whatever the worker produces can either be claimed as your own or if he's really pumped the puppy, you deny any knowledge of his activity---you delegate blame. This is another highly praised bosship skill. Actually this really isn't much of a game, but it is fun because as boss you always win.

Increase Worker Productivity Through Fear and Intimidation �Oldies but goodies! Sometimes appealing to a worker's since of self interest isn't enough. There's inevitably someone that just doesn't want to carry your load while you get paid outrageously for it. This type will often try to stir up other appropriately submissive and complacent employees. It's time to sit this bozo down and let him know you are the unforgiving demigod of his work universe. Here are some starters:
"Jim�look I can understand you think this is unfair. I can live with that�Have you ever thought about barber college?"
"Boy I bet little Tina would be scarred for life if you lost your health insurance and she had to walk around with those buck teeth."
"Pete I've been thinking about making some personnel cutbacks in your department�management is realigning its priorities�and I'm trying to decide if you're one of them."

Just remember, "productivity" hurts�.let employees earn your paycheck for you.

Bosship� Tutorial #2: Turning Negotiations into Nogotiations

2007-01-26T00:26:00.002-05:00

When three management weenies wrote Getting to Yes over 30 years ago, management underwent a crippling retrograde intellectual under capitalization. Be honest "Win-Win" sounds so soft and cuddly you want to take it home and adopt it, but when it comes to trying to negotiate with someone it blows like Moby Dick. Win-Win is for idiots on the face track to an office right next to the janitor's washroom. In win- win negotiations each side is suppose to get a little bit of what they want. That just means that no one gets all that they want which means we're be back at it again next week. Who has time for that? Geez! You could be doing something important like scraping barnacles off the bottom of your yacht, polishing your new graphites, or sitting around watching your cells multiply. Be serious. Does anyone with a pulse negotiate to their disadvantage?

Now the Bosship� take on win-win is that the other side gets something�they get what you don't want. Nogotiations is not about give and take. It's about telling the other side what they'll accept and making them thank you for it. All right it lowers their standards of living�they have to use food stamps to get groceries now�they're still living right?

In Getting to Yes, Ury, Fisher, and Patton, took 200 pages to tell you the rules for negotiations. Well I'm going to take about 2 inches to give you the keys for Nogotiations:

1.) Know what you want.
2.) NO! what they want.

Here are a few tips on handling Nogotiations:
Show you're superior: Always meet at your office. Make sure that their chair is always uncomfortable and lower than yours. It's always a good idea to schedule the negotiation to begin at one time and then let them come in at another time�usually 30 minutes later. If they don't wait, they must not be interested. Employees will almost always wait because they really don't have any other alternative. When you finally do let them in don't apologize for the wait, just tell them that you had something important to do, i.e., they aren't. Refer to the other person by name as if you were scolding a small child. Use the diminutive of their name. If they are James call them Jimmy. If they get exasperated and correct you just respond with, "whatever." If they get bent about this just say, "Gee I thought we were here to negotiate a deal, I didn't realize you were so hung up on your childhood�"
Be sympathetic and act like you're listening: People feel stupidly comfortable when they think you care. This can be used to your advantage. You can establish your superiority by listening to their position or offer and then responding with something like, "You poor bastard," or "I'm glad I'm not you."
Interrupt with non sequitors: This lets a person know that they and their position are not only not important but not even mildly entertaining enough to keep your attention. My favorite is to stare intently at the person like you are really listening and then say, "My neighbor's cat had three kittens."
Redirect: Everything they say is used by you to support what you want. "Yes you're outright denial of my wage cut is additional confirmation of its correctness and necessity. I'm glad you can see the wisdom of living with less." Keep doing this no matter how illogical the statement. No matter what they say confirms what you want. For a little extra spin make sure you end all your sentences with an upward inflection and all their proposals and suggestions with a downward inflections. After while they'll either get so mad that you can easily get what you want or they'll simply give up.
Let them know up front that this is a Nogotiation: Have only "one best offer" that's preferably at least 10% less than whatever you are currently paying now. Start the negotiation with, "Oh here's that wage increase you wanted," for example. Never refer to what you're presenting as an offer! You're not "offering" anything. You are telling them what they are going to get. Discussion is not part of that. Let them know that what you are presenting has a time limit�you'll let them think about for about 30 seconds.
No means No: If the person responds as if it's a negotiation don't be squeamish. Get a strange look on your face as if to say, "What planet are you from," and say "No," then pick up the next piece of work and move on. If they stand there waiting for a response, pause and then look up and say, "Was there something else?" Another fun response is to say, "NO!...and you know why!" When they protest that they don't you can start bringing up their work record or mention that you're glad they came in because they reminded you about making cutbacks in their work category. More about this when we talk about employee reviews. Another good response is, "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't keep ignoring this request?" After they are all talked out respond with, "I'm still waiting."
Remember it's all about you: Hey, they're trying to get what they want why shouldn't you? Here are some practice responses for you to play with and work up on your own:

Look at the person intently and interrupt with, "I still haven't heard the part where I get what I want."
Pretend to pick lint off your clothes or repeatedly straighten an article of clothing while they're talking then interrupt with, "I'm sorry I lost interest when you started talking about what you want."
Some people will get offended. That's fine, reduce their positions to ad hominem arguments with comments like, "You really don't deal with rejection well do you?" or "What is it about 'no' you find so upsetting?" or "I'm not being rude, I'm being direct about what I want. A rude person would have laughed at you after they said 'no' and then asked you if you felt more comfortable in your favorite Kmart clothes."
Some people will accuse you of not "negotiating in good faith." Respond with, "Oh! Who told you we were negotiating?"

Just remember the two keys to negotiating above and you'll do fine. Everything else is just an excuse for management guru's to write books so you will hire them to do what I told you how to do in two sentences. Everything else�filler. Make every negotiation a nogotiation!

Bosship� Tip: 102

2007-01-10T12:08:00.000-05:00

Looking for an easy way to express your Bosship�? Turn down the water pressure on all the water fountains so that the water barely arches out of the fountain. This may initially sound childish but let's look at the important ramifications of such a simple move. First of all the company will save on water and electricity costs since after some point employees will give up trying to get a drink of water and you can eventually have the fountains removed. You'll become an 'innovative cost cutter!' Secondly, you'll cut down on skylarking around the water fountain which saves on company cost via wasted work time. Thirdly, there is the secondary gain from not having employees wasting time on restroom breaks. That's a '2fer' for the water fountain! Finally, you turn fulfilling a basic bodily need into a humiliating and degrading act as the employee must try to wedge their head down and work their tongue like a dog after the smallest morsel of liquid satisfaction.

The same theory can be applied to other sources of water. If you have water bottles delivered just cut back on the number of times the bottle is replaced. This leaves employees slowly learning either to conserve water or getting into squabbles over someone else's use. If employees start bringing in their own water then make it company policy not to allow individual water containers. After all who's to say what is in a water container? You can pose this as a security precaution or as a way to protect 'important electronic equipment.' I personally prefer the latter because it lets the employee know that inanimate objects rank higher than his most basic biological need. Having a 'water policy' also provides you with another item to tick off on an employee's rap sheet, so you have yet another excuse to dismiss them at a moments notice. 'Joe, I'm going to have to let you go. Among other things you've broken the company's policy about personal water bottles and jeopardized the security of valuable equipment�oh and other employees.'

This is a great exercise for you in Bosship� by learning that even the smallest things can be used to diminish emplyoee self esteem. It reminds the employee that something as basic as water is under your control and its availability is a luxury. Other Bosship� proponents visiting your office will quickly recognize that you are savvy in the ways of Bosship�.

Bosship� Tutorial #1 : Do you have what it takes to be Boss?

2006-12-24T04:09:00.001-05:00

The principles of Bosship� should be developed by the use of bosship traits. The Bosship� candidate needs to evaluate himself by using the bosship traits to determine his strengths and weaknesses as well as determine his aptitude for being Boss. Let's face it not everyone is cut out to be Boss... some people were born to be human ciphers.

You need a good understanding of human psychology. With a knowledge of character flaws and the frailties humans experience in group behavior, you can determine the best way to deal with a situation and manipulate it and the people involved to your advantage. With most people, it's important that you appear to be "caring" when you stick it to them. Make people believe they are important and needed -- The-Boss-that-cares-for-others" -- this is true whether it's "increasing shareholder value" or being a "socially responsible corporate citizen." It's important to always act like you care and are empathetic no matter how much you don't give a damn. This will always give you the moral high ground when dealing with people. You can always claim to be "serving others." The "leadership" types are true-believers in the "servant-caring" schtick. They actually believe they are helping people "build a meaningful life" while they underpay them and pump industrial waste into their neighborhood's water supply. Bosship� eliminates the moral brainwash and doublethink, but makes great use of the tools that support the disproportionate compensation you receive relative to any real work. But don't get me wrong. Good bosship is sincere. Hell even Stalin was sincere.

This brings up another important trait of Bosship� to measure yourself against. Are you making a thorough study of great tyrants of the past so you can get ahead? Start with ancient Greek tyrants and work you way up to the modern time. Don't skip over the Middle Ages and go right for the "Big 3;" Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. There is a lot that can be learned from Psisatratus of Athens, Caesar of Rome, and don't forget the lesser known eastern potentates. Ask yourself, "Do I find myself saying, "What would Machiavelli do?" I know some of you maybe saying, "Hey I don't have time for this, I know how to be a heartless bastard all by myself!" This is dangerous ground for the Bosship� candidate because he takes a natural aptitude and proclivity for narcissism, selfishness, greed, and lack of conscience for fully developed Bosship�. Having a natural talent for tyranny is a good start but the aspiring bosship candidate needs to develop and build those natural qualities if he is ever to become an artist of getting ahead at the expense of others.

Now it's important that you don't consider your tyrant studies to be in the same league as self improvement. Self improvement is great -- it's something you want to encourage others to waste time on while you make money, steal budget, and jockey for position in the corporate hierarchy by schmoozing with their boss. While they're at some "caring and sharing" seminar where they create Hallmark sounding mission statements, work on their group hugs, and building teams by doing rope walks, you're back at the office removing their safety net and feathering your nest.

This brings up another bosship trait -- conscience. If you still have one, you need to get rid of it. There's nothing that will drag a good Bosship� candidate down like the weight of a conscience. Acting like you care is great Bosship� policy but actually giving a rats behind gets you needlessly bogged down in the insignificant lives of employees, clients, and the public. It's important to act like you care about, say employee benefits, for example but lets be real. There's only x number of dollars available, are you really going to take less so that some sniveling employee whose kid has terminal acne can have more health insurance? Substituting empathy for actual caring allows you to look like you care but without the expense. Empathy is cheap. It doesn't cost anything to "feel someone's pain" when you aren't going to have to foot the bill for it. It's all fine and good to appear empathetic and even make some token publicity gesture that physically expresses it if it helps build your rep in the hierarchy. Just remember that when the pie gets smaller the table manners change. So drop a few pounds off your soul and lose the conscience. Oh you may have annoying pangs of regret from time to time, but that's why they make high grade pharmaceuticals, and double malt whiskey.

Here's a starter list to help you further develop the techniques of Bosship� :

Memorize and apply the Principles of Bosship�. These are your 10 Commandments.
Make an honest evaluation of yourself. Do you still feel bad when you fire people? Do you really have the level of self absorbed, self serving narcissism needed to be Boss? Do you still look at employees as people? Do you still think style and substance are two different things? Do you really work at denigrating others to your advantage or are you just being satisfied with a "bad boy" image?
Seek the honest opinion of others regarding your strengths and weaknesses. This will make you aware of your soft spots. It will also let you make up an enemies list for future reference, so you'll know who needs a "career malfunction."
Learn by studying the causes for success or failure of other great tyrants and apply the lessons to your situation. It's certainly true that "hand grenades don't leave fingerprints" but if the collateral damage also takes out the guy who was going to promote you, you need to find a more subtle response more specific to your situation. Maybe some malicious gossip that leads to depression and suicide would be more appropriate.
Develop a genuine interest in people. Acquire an intimate understanding of their habits and turn them into weaknesses and character flaws in the eyes of others. Does Frank, a possible competitor for a promotion, like to play golf a lot? Great. Make a point of mentioning how much time he spends golfing when you're talking to his boss about a problem with a program he's running -- of course you're there working hard to make things right.

Bosship� is not tied down by the restrictions of "leadership." Leaders feel they have to be able to do the job before they can lead. The Bosship� candidate knows he can lead because -- well he's Boss (and it's good to be Boss). People who feel they have to demonstrate their ability are obviously insecure -- they may lead, you know like the way a sheep leads a flock, but they'll never be Boss.. Oh yeah, people say they respect competence and skill but they respond viscerally to acts of raw naked power that instill fear and dread. People are more agreeable when they are worried whether the shadow of your displeasure will fall across their puny existence and reduce their once prosperous lives to the rubble and despair of poverty and homelessness. How can competence and skill match that for getting someone's attention and compliance? Why waste time reading a lot of books about better business practices when all you have to do is wonder out loud if you couldn't better finance your new summer home by outsourcing someone's job, or by putting a "hypothetical question" to an employee about where he'd get health care for his family after his unemployment ran out? But developing fear and dread is another tutorial.

2006-12-11T15:17:00.000-05:00

2006-12-11T15:06:00.000-05:00

Bosship� Tip: 101

2006-12-09T21:06:00.000-05:00

It happens to the best bosship� candidates. Instead of thinking about yourself your mind drifts and you start thinking about others -- then BOOM!...you forget what it was you were trying to avoid doing yourself, and who you were going to palm off a responsibility to. Altruism can be very unsettling. You need to get back in the "bosship zone. The fastest way to do that is to just find someone and yell at them. Whenever you capriciously place blame you'll inevitably find yourself in the bosship sweet spot. Everything slows down and it feels like you are yelling in slow motion. All your problems suddenly belong to someone else. Other people sink to their proper places of insignificance as your ego inflates and expands. You are once again the master of your world; the indomitable petty tyrant of your universe. Repeat to yourself, "It's good to be boss. It's good to be boss."

My First Day At Work -- A Bosship� Bedtime Story

2006-12-01T22:02:00.000-05:00

Some readers have seen the blog and said to me, "wow, you must be really warped to see management that way." So let me get this right -- I'm weird but it's okay that the boss lays you off and uses the money he saves as an incentive bonus for himself. No that's not strange…that's good Bosship�! Now there is nothing that good bosship� types like more than a good business story. Bosship� types love to use and be told stories for several reasons:

It reminds them of milk, cookies, and "blanky" time.
It makes them think they are being "wise" by understanding simple allegories.
They are used by consultants when dealing with management clients for the simple reason that when you talk to management like adults they don't listen.
Bosses use stories under the guise of "simplifying" the complex. By dumbing down a topic to the "See-Dick-Work" level, the bosship proponent has an opportunity to imply that everyone else needs a childish explanation, and so is behind the power curve, while he is ahead. When in reality this is the only level that he can express or understand the concepts he is using.

Now to my story which is absolutely true except where it isn't.

My First Day At Work

I remember my first great bosship experience. It was my first day at work. I hadn't found the men's room yet when I heard -- "Barr!" in a voice harsh enough to boil the hide off an elephant. The rest of the room fell silent as everyone stared at me. "Barr, whoever the hell you are get your ass in my office -- Now!" I immediately ran into the Boss's office. Behind the desk sat a balding pretentious man who looked like he'd slept in his clothes. If I had looked that ratty I'd have been sent home, but for the Boss, he needed that "all nighter" look to impress his boss by looking like he was working hard. The office walls were covered with awards from next level bosses, things like "Neatest Desk" as well as various sporting trophies dating back to the 6th grade. In the middle of this collision of personal vanity was a photo titled "Company Softball Champions 2005" that was populated mostly with the Boss in the foreground hugging a gaudy trophy about five feet tall. In the background were a lot of tired and hot people whose grimace-for-smile expressions looked more like Egyptian slaves at the end of a pyramid project than the "Winning Team" that was stamped on the trophy. A quick glance to a corner of the room found the trophy covered in dust, old files, and the Boss's jacket. The Boss never looked up from his copy of Yachting magazine which he was thoroughly engrossed in. Without looking up he barked, "Sit!" like I was the pet spaniel who had just did potty on the Bukhara. He harrumphed as he turned a few more pages then looked up with a quizzical expression. "Who the hell are you?" he asked.
"Barr, sir" I answered.
"Shit! I thought I made it clear to Jones down in personnel that I wanted a babe; someone easy on the eyes. Last time that bastard gets any OSU tickets from me!" He kicked back from his desk and weakly threw up his hands. "Oh well ...you're here... so I guess you'll have to do. You been through orientation?" He queried.
"Yes, sir, I have." I said proudly.
"Good, 'cause I don't have time to handhold some wet nosed kid. If you've got any questions about your job ask someone out there. Now look here Bark..."
"That's Barr sir." I corrected.
"Whatever... everyone on my team works hard, puts in a lot of extra hours, and they always make me look good...That's the whole idea of a team... to look out for each other..." he said as he brushed some dust off his Manager of the Year Award before he continued, "Just like football -- you played football, right Bark?"
"No-o-o sir," my wary voice trailing the answer out.
"You a pansy or something? Great I don't get a babe and Jones sends me a poofder too. Anyway it's just like football. I call the plays and quarterback the team. It's real important that we all play off the same sheet of music or otherwise the sails don't hit the wind when they're suppose to and the cups half empty instead of being ...you follow?" He fired.
"I think so sir," I replied, my head still swimming from the plethora of mixed metaphors.
"You're not too quick on the up chuck are you Bark. Hey let's get something straight from the getgo. I'm sure that you were All American Joe College Magna Summa Cum and all that but this is the real world. Get any ideas of glory out of your mind. You're not here to "reinvent the corporation" or come up with some crack brained idea that's going to save or make the company 50 million. You're a corporate grunt... a cog in the machine. You know what happens to cogs that make noise in the machine…don't you? They get thrown out and replaced. Leave the thinking to people like me or you're going to have problems. You following this?!" he stated in a hard tone.
"Yes sir." I grimaced, wondering if I already looked like one of the "Team" in the softball picture behind the boss's head.
"Now here" he shoved a pile of documents in my hand, "do what you're supposed to do with these and work it in with ... Smith... I think that's his name... yeah Smith... the tall guy ...depressed expression, cheap suit. I'll want the results soon -- And don't screw it up! Remember you're on 90 day probation here." He wagged his finger at me and spoke to me like a spaniel again, "Now go be a good little cog." and then with an unexpected thunderclap, "And don't make any noise that will piss me off or I'll ship your ass out in a heartbeat. There are lots of homeless people that want your job! Now scram!" And so I had my first experience of Bosship�.

Bosship� Principles

2006-11-06T23:07:00.000-05:00

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.