[PLEASUREMAN]

In a recent post on the blog Ribbon Farm, the blog author Venkatesh Rao sets forth the idea that modern organizations consist of three distinct groups. Rao was inspired by this cartoon:



Rao's theory is drawn mainly from the television show The Office, which he combines with this web cartoon to produce a glib analysis of organizational pathology. His analysis shows evidence of systemitis--the simplification of complex systems into an easily illustrated model, and subsequent reification of the model. This produces superficial discussion about characteristics of the model, with less focus on areas of tension or contradiction. (Unfortunately, this is mainly the way we humans describe the world today.)

In Rao's model, sociopaths are upper management (or en route), the clueless are layers of middle management and individual contributors who attempt (but fail) to advance within the organization, and losers are those who have settled for low status, low paying positions that require little effort. (Rao calls them losers not because they are lacking in some important quality but because they settle for "a bad economic bargain"--and of course because this is the label on the cartoon.) The main difference between the clueless and the losers is that the clueless overperform in expectation of further advancement, giving them an even worse bargain than the apathetic losers. Consider the company man who puts in 60 hours a week but never moves up more than a few rungs in his career.

Rao writes of sociopaths:

Venkatesh Rao:

The sociopaths enter and exit organizations at will, at any stage, and do whatever it takes to come out on top. The contribute creativity in early stages of a organization’s life, neurotic leadership in the middle stages, and cold-bloodedness in the later stages, where they drive decisions like mergers, acquisitions and layoffs that others are too scared or too compassionate to drive.

Rao expresses admiration and perhaps envy for the sociopaths, whom he sees as dynamic creative/destructive individuals. He shows little interest in losers, describing them as more or less reactive pawns happy to coast and indifferent to their future. The group he seems most interested in are the clueless:

Venkatesh Rao:

The Clueless are the ones who lack the competence to circulate freely through the economy (unlike sociopaths and losers), and build up a perverse sense of loyalty to the firm, even when events make it abundantly clear that the firm is not loyal to them. To sustain themselves, they must be capable of fashioning elaborate delusions based on idealized notions of the firm — the perfectly pathological entities we mentioned. Unless squeezed out by forces they cannot resist, they hang on as long as possible, long after both sociopaths and losers have left (in Douglas Adams’ vicious history of our planet, humanity was founded by a spaceship full of the Clueless, sent here by scheming Sociopaths). When cast adrift in the open ocean, they are the ones most likely to be utterly destroyed.

As can be seen, Rao describes the clueless in more negative terms than he employs for his other two groups. This difference in tone is similar to that found in Paul Fussell's Class (which is largely about why Paul Fussell hates the middle class), and places the author within his system by way of which group he shows the greatest animosity toward. (The Douglas Adams reference is by now redundant; Rao's ideas seem almost entirely shaped by, and limited to, the entertainment choices of nerds.)

Rao then provides what he calls (needlessly) the Gervais principle:

Venkatesh Rao:

Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.

He explains the seeming contradiction in this principle as follows:

Venkatesh Rao:

So why is promoting over-performing losers logical? The simple reason is that if you over-perform at the loser level, it is clear that you are an idiot. You’ve already made a bad bargain, and now you’re delivering more value than you need to, making your bargain even worse. Unless you very quickly demonstrate that you know your own value by successfully negotiating more money and/or power, you are marked out as an exploitable clueless loser. At one point, Daryl, angling for a raise, learns to his astonishment that the raise he is asking for would make his salary higher than Michael’s. Michael hasn’t negotiated a better deal in 14 years. Daryl — a minimum-effort loser with strains of sociopath — doesn’t miss a step. He convinces and coaches Michael into asking for his own raise, so he can get his.

According to this theory, the clueless are able to move up the ladder but, unbenownst to them, not very far, and mainly only to the point where the organizaton can extract maximum work from them for minimum increase in pay. While the clueless believe they are on a path to ultimate achievement and high status, they are really just enthusiastic drudges.

Sociopaths determine, with what Rao describes as "intelligence and clear-eyed self-awareness", that their best strategy is up-or-out--they put little effort into distinguishing themselves at low levels, and instead prowl for an opportunity to move to a higher place in the organization.

The losers as described by Rao are behaving rationally, in that they see no likelihood for advancement and thus do the minimum work necessary. Here we see the problem that Rao has in focusing his examples on television shows and cartoons: these products exist mainly to entertain, and therefore readily dispense with verisimilitude in favor of the qualities that will endear them to their audience (mostly middle class women).

Were Rao to interview a cross-section of organization losers, I suspect he would find that most of them aren't actually happy, they have simply become passive out of a sense of futility and subordination. Their position in the hierarchy is the least secure because they are the most likely victims of outsourcing and layoffs--the clueless succeed in becoming, if not indispensible, then less dispensible.

Rao's Gervais principle is, paradoxically, inconsistent with the British version of The Office, in which office manager David Brent is essentially a lazy, do-nothing boaster who is self-absorbed almost to the point of sociopathy and who only cares about his own personal success. Nothing could be further from the depiction of the clueless organization man that Rao writes about. Moreover, Brent's rival Neil is not a sociopath but an earnest and capable manager meant to be seen as Brent's "good" counterpart in the organization, a manager who has the respect of his subordinates.

In a second post on the subject, Rao discusses the various forms of communication among the three groups, but already he has overreached his ability to explain and understand organizational life except with the simplest of caricatures. His discussion of powertalk, posturetalk, etc. is completely unilluminating of the central concept, and builds to no observational payoff. Shorter Rao: Sociopaths scheme and search for signs of advantage or weakness, the clueless posture, everyone humors the clueless. Once again, Rao is succumbing to reification of his labels, treating them almost as Platonic forms. His observations are as a result rather basic and limited.

Rao appears uninterested in why organizations behave this way, what makes people sociopaths or clueless, and whether this behavior is truly enduring or merely a product of contemporary office culture (or other forces). His blog post did predictably strike a chord with nerds--apparently it was linked from Slashdot--resulting in responses like the following representative sample:

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I realize that “data” is not the plural of “anecdote” but I am moved to comment here because this brilliant article entirely explains my career trajectory. As a younger man I was an over-performing, well-liked loser who was promoted into the ranks of the clueless. Eventually I realized I had made a colossally bad bargain and left my organization to become a contented minimum-effort loser in an organization small enough that sociopathy is pointless–there are no promotions to be had. My nascent ambition held in check by a ceiling that’s pressing down on my head, my economic concerns relieved by achieving a 30% raise when I switched jobs, I find meaning and satisfaction in life through my family, friends and hobbies.

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A breath of fresh air… your theory is – in places – too good to be false. Will buy The Office to see if they are as congruent as your commentary. If so, they deserve cult status.
As to your construct, it is so intellectually appealing, you should consider making it into an alternative management theory.

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beautiful work. Ive never watched The Office, but have lived it. As a happy tech-industry slacker-loser of long standing (15 years with a company that ive been with since i was one of three employees), and a long time interested observer-from-the-sidelines – your writings here bring a big smile to my dial. I am on my way out of tech (via the creative-artistic route, funded by the Bargain – with both myself and the sociopaths fully aware of this and acting in a symbiotic fashion) and watching this stuff unfold is better than TV

[The revealing way that nerds talk about themselves is prominently on display here.]

For the passive, whose careers have gone nowhere due to poor judgement and character flaws (inadequate study, clouded self-appraisal, emotional immaturity), Rao's theory gives them the license to embrace their inadequacy and passivity. Suddenly they are no longer unpromotable drudges, they are winners at an imaginary game of resource management where their low salary is divided by minimal work effort. Meanwhile, those who have advanced ahead of them or who deny them the raises and promotion that is their due are characterized as posturing simpletons who "care too much" and who have foolishly misplaced their loyalty with a corporation run by (admirable) sociopaths.

(As an aside, nerds are quite enamored of sociopaths. One commenter wrote: "This is a fantastic example of realist analysis without injecting a value judgement." Of course social analysis without a value dimension is characterized mostly by its shallowness.)

In reality, much of the behavior Rao discusses (and simplifies) is merely the familiar product of scale. He comes close to realizing this when he notes early on that organizations are "intrinsically pathological constructs"; however he fails to reflect on whether this pathology is connected to social scale, regarding both the organization and society as a whole (he talks very briefly about life cycle). He pays no attention to the etiology of organizational pathology and very little to the influence of groups on each other (and of course most people are not Platonic forms--their behavior can change with their environment). That he does not regard these individuals as acted upon or influenced by organizational pathology appears to be a side effect of an over-reliance on game theory, which posits rigid strategies and influences theorists to define people as uncomplicated machines.

More interesting is the idea that as organizations increase in size and complexity they intensify both sociopathic behavior and passivity (sometimes in the same person) due to their changing reward systems. (In theory, reward systems could be altered to ameliorate the effects of scale-driven pathology.) That is to say, once sociopathic behavior becomes prevalent, it begins to reshape the reward systems, designing them mainly for the benefit of the most influential sociopaths. This results in behavior increasingly divorced from the stated goals of the business and strikingly similar to that observed in John B. Calhoun's rat experiments.

It is unlikely that these organizations are actually started by sociopaths--even by its loosest definition, sociopathy is defined by a drive to manipulate others, and therefore we would expect sociopaths to be drawn to large organizations which give sociopathic behavior sufficient camouflage and opportunity, not to small organizations and especially not to those organizations where the reward systems do not tilt in the sociopath's favor (for example, in a company of 30 people there are relatively few subordinates whose work the sociopath may profit from).

Were Rao to acknowledge this he would of course require an additional group in his organizational taxonomy, which also does not include roles such as secretarial staff where advancement is not really a concern, and which therefore exist completely outside his model. For that matter, there really is no place in Rao's model for anyone who finds fulfillment in his work. Perhaps this is because Rao thinks the modern organization makes such fulfillment impossible, but there is little curiosity expressed as to why such a change has occurred.

Nor does his taxonomy fit older business practices whereby employees enjoyed longer careers and greater recognition and benefits for roles Rao describes here as "clueless". Doubtless this is because he believes that such business practices are now obsolete, however the fact of their obsolescence is far more meaningful than the taxonomic minutiae which Rao descends into (and for which his readers have an endless appetite). His analysis of things like "powertalk" for example is almost purely masturbatory.

What his denigration of the clueless fails to appreciate is that their behavior is normal within a healthy organization--in a healthy organization, as opposed to an organization run by sociopaths and employing passive failures, hard work and loyalty are recognized and promoted (in healthy societies, these are nearly universal values). Problems in healthy organizations may begin when hierarchy limits prospects for advancement, or only allows for advancement by creating middle layers whose work is inessential and therefore subject to manipulation by sociopaths.

Rao also appears to confuse "clueless" (in the sense he uses it) with "incompetent", but only because the television show he draws his examples from features an incompetent manager. There is nothing in his taxonomy that requires or implies that the clueless are generally incompetent. Also, according to his terminology anyone who is successful is by definition a "sociopath", apart from whether they in fact demonstrate any of the qualities associated with that pathology.

In short, Venkatesh Rao probably watches too much television. His focus causes him to miss the more important fact that sociopathic behavior shapes modern large organizations, and he fails to explain why that sociopathy is successful.

[Stupid]

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For the passive, whose careers have gone nowhere due to poor judgement and character flaws (inadequate study, clouded self-appraisal, emotional immaturity), Rao's theory gives them the license to embrace their inadequacy and passivity. Suddenly they are no longer unpromotable drudges, they are winners at an imaginary game of resource management where their low salary is divided by minimal work effort.

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For the passive, whose careers have gone nowhere due to poor judgement and character flaws (inadequate study, clouded self-appraisal, emotional immaturity), X's theory gives them the license to embrace their inadequacy and passivity. Suddenly they are no longer unpromotable drudges; they are winners at an imaginary game of resource management where their low salary is added to family, neighborhood, nation, humanity, nature, God.

The principles of your logic cannot be distinguished from those of a sociopath. Actually, I'm just giving you a hard time; I understand your basic principles. (If loser, then low salary (more or less) does not equal If low salary, then loser).


Does Paul Frussell's middle class still exist? Has it been divided between his proles and his upper-middle class (who are described as being JOHN ANDERSON suppoters for goodness' sake)?

This post has been edited by PLEASUREMAN: 08 May 2010 - 03:21 PM
Reason for edit: fixed quotes, use bbcode, html isn't allowed

[PLEASUREMAN]

One of the points I was making there is that it is a perverse outcome to take no pride at all in one's work, to work only and specifically in the manner of a machine, where one does exactly what one is told to do, no more and no less. The "losers" that Rao writes about have only succeeded in turning themselves into a kind of corporate appliance, underscoring their lack of humanity and their dispensibility. After all one can be indifferent about replacing one machine with another, or just throwing it away.

What is also perverse is that both Rao and the losers he describes (some of whom come forward in his comments) feel that within their limited choices this passive-aggressive behavior is the optimal outcome. While this is possible in purely work vs. salary terms (possible but unlikely), it fails to account for the dehumanizing aspect of spending each workday behaving in this manner. Repeated dulling of one's mind for eight hours a day will have an effect, there is no avoiding it.

[Murdoch]

While I think that the corporate environment can reward some kinds of sociopathic behaviour, the instances of genuine sociopaths in the workforce is pretty rare. The reality in almost every working environment is that it often isn't enough to simply be a good, hard worker. To get promoted, you have to foster personal loyalties and make connections. It actually makes good sense to give preference to people that you know or have worked with before, because even in the most isolated, non social career, you need to be able to work and get along well with your coworkers. This is a critical soft skill and it is very hard to ascertain if a stranger has it in a formal interview process.

If you're unwilling or unable to engage in this social behaviour it's probably more comforting to think of the people above you as evil sociopaths or well meaning morons rather than acknowledging that you personally are lacking a critical skill necessary to advance your career.

[PLEASUREMAN]

I don't know how many people are strictly diagnosable as sociopaths, but I suspect that complexity, diversity, and increased competition for resources are creating more of them than you think. The symptoms of sociopathy include grandiosity, superficial charm, dishonesty, narcissistic focus, lack of empathy or remorse, and manipulation of others--all behaviors that seem to be on the upswing. You could make a case that a pure sociopath would have trouble advancing because of attendant behavior problems; classic sociopaths often seem "off" to normal people because their emotional problems give them away.

But looking at sociopathy more as a behavior spectrum, I think what we are talking about here are "high functioning sociopaths". Their sociopathy is perhaps more clearly influenced by resource competition in a crowded, threatening world, so their emotional disconnect is less extreme. And yet it is still there--the easy appeal to unethical behavior, the rather thin rationalizations for one's aggression, the lack of concern or interest in the impact of one's behavior on others, and the dominating goal of personal advancement above all else--these are clearly related to sociopathy; perhaps we might term them "sociotypal" behaviors instead of "sociopathic".

And in fact what generally marks out the "clueless" in Rao's model is a lack of this sociopathic conduct. You don't have to live in the corporate world long before someone approaches you and hints that you need to learn to "play the game" and do certain political things to get ahead. And of course this is correct. Those that will succeed tend to be those who are particularly good at being political: they are focused on advancement instead of their work, and they have fewer ethical and emotional restraints. How could this not help?

Whether or not there are more sociopaths (or "sociotypals") today than in the past, it is highly likely that current business environments tend to concentrate sociopathic and borderline individuals into positions of authority, which over time changes the very nature of this authority (it is why outsourcing trends are inevitable). The "skill" that the clueless lack in Rao's scenario is the skill of being a low-empathy, politically-oriented individual. It's actually somewhat heartening that there are still a large number of those people left, even though it means more people to suffer under the regime of those who are basically mentally defective (if you regard emotion and empathy as important human traits).

Is this analysis just sour grapes, as you suggest? Well I'm self-employed, so I lie outside Rao's hierarchy, but from years in the corporate workplace I'm familiar with the types under discussion. There is a characteristic hollowness as you rise through the ranks in a large organization, and an atmosphere of entitlement based on membership in the managerial class. It's quite common for them to assert that those who haven't reached their level are somehow lacking--"they don't network well", etc. But remember, the managerial class is in the position of being responsible for rewarding and judging its own behavior. This results in circular proofs of its own status--because I receive exceptional rewards, I must be an exceptional person (no one devalues the role of luck quite so much as a highly rewarded business executive--despite their often undistinguished life achievements).

One of the marks of a sociopath is a desire to justify their behavior by asserting that those they behave aggressively toward deserve it--consider this exchange from The Spanish Prisoner:

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Jimmy Dell: I think you'll find that if what you've done for them is as valuable as you say it is, if they are indebted to you morally but not legally, my experience is they will give you nothing, and they will begin to act cruelly toward you.
Joe Ross: Why?
Jimmy Dell: To suppress their guilt.

Every now and then a politician who has spent decades becoming polished does something that opens the door on the horror within. This happened with John Edwards, who as revealed by one of his aides emerged as a comically imperious, narcissistic, amoral individual, quite in contrast to his public image as an upstanding husband, father, and defender of the weak. No doubt John Edwards knew how to "network well", and all the other techniques vital to a career as a professional sociopath. Personally, I don't feel that I am lacking as a human being because I haven't followed his path in life. Quite the contrary.

Don't lose sight of the point that overscale is making the problem of the sociopathic managerial class greatly worse.