Corporate Bullshitters

I read this article on LinkedIn and I so wanted to share it on my blog. So here it is.

 At 7:30 pm, three hours after the official closing time, it was finally our turn to go home. As we were about to leave the premises, my boss made a phone call to his boss. And this was our routine on almost all days: We often stayed back, and he always called his boss while leaving. Not only that but we also sometimes worked on public holidays when everyone else was enjoying with their families. After all, my immediate boss was one of the rising stars in the organization and was well-known for "going the extra miles (not just a mile)".

As a young graduate engineer, almost 30 years ago, this was my first foray into the corporate world, and little did I know that I was encountering the first specimen of what would turn out to be a special corporate species: Corporate Bullshitters or CBS in short.

CBS is that special breed of people who don’t do any solid work, but they create an undetectable illusion of superior performance and capabilities through a range of perception management strategies. And as a result, they miraculously rise in the corporate hierarchy like helium balloons.

This article is dedicating to the art of bullshitting and how it goes undetected in a typically hazy corporate environment.

Corporate population: Three-basket distribution

Over the last 30 years, I have had the privilege of working with a wide variety of people, and overall, the corporate population can be packed into three baskets:

• W-S
• S-W
• W+S
• W-S (Excellent work but not smart)

People falling in W-S basket are highly competent and do excellent work, but unfortunately, they lack the crucial ingredient required for corporate growth: Smartness. By smartness, I mean they are not fluent communicators and lack quick thinking on the feet. They may not dress as smartly as others and often project lack of self-confidence in meetings.

W-S are often overlooked for promotions, thanks to getting labeled as “not managerial or leadership" type. Being the weakest in the power pyramid, these people often take up the most difficult and challenging tasks—and get blamed first when things go wrong.

Overall, W-S form the backbone of an organization. (When they apply for leave, everyone worries about “Who will do the work?”)

Finally, on the backs of the W-S crowd, the people in the second basket (S-W) thrive.

S-W (Smart but no work)

S-W characters are incompetent and care a damn about actual work or team’s or organizational interests, and simply stay clear of any direct responsibilities. While personally not doing solid work, they relentlessly and ruthlessly delegate, and use the characters in the first basket (W-S) to get the things done. And when it comes to credit, they don't mind gobbling it all.

But S-W has one great strength, which enables them to sail smoothly: Smartness. They are master communicators and manipulators, and their body language is forceful. Projecting high self-confidence outside (even if they suffer from deep insecurities inside), they always give an impression of being a “driver" or "leader”.

S-W are often labeled as “leadership or managerial material” and enjoy steady growth in the corporate hierarchy.

W+S (Excellent work & also smart)

Few people are both great at work and smart to the optimum level. Deservedly, they rise to the very top of the corporate hierarchy. If S-W people feel shaky ever, it is in front of W+S characters.

So, which basket Corporate Bullshitters belong to? No guesses here! Obviously, CBS is the highly distilled version of the second basket (S-W) characters. I am sure you've come across a few exceptional characters in your career who are incompetent and irresponsible, but by the sheer power of their "talking talent", they end up becoming bosses of more competent people. How does it happen?

Deception of perception

Ideally, in an organization anyone not performing and contributing to the hard results should not survive, leave alone thrive. So how do CBs rise?

The answer lies in one word: Perception.

What we perceive is often not the whole reality. 

Unlike others, CBS know a little secret, which is their ticket to comfortable ride: There is performance and then there is a perception of performance. Their game plan comprises two simple steps:

Step 1: Surround yourself with the best performers and dump the real work on them.

Step 2: While work is taken care of by someone else, focus squarely on managing bosses' perceptions, which means fluent communications, forceful presence in meetings and projection of “managerial/leadership” traits.

This two-step strategy works well in typically hazy corporate environments where how you look, talk and walk often obscures what you actually do when you sit in the chair.

So can you spot a CB in the crowd?

Bullshitting: Classic symptoms

To spot Bullshitters around you, look at the “managerial” type of characters around you and ask the following questions:

Work-related symptoms

Teflon character: Who is like Teflon with nothing sticking to them? Who invariably stays clear of any direct responsibility for difficult, challenging work? (Classic CBs act like postman; any difficult stuff coming their way simply gets posted to others in the team.)

Busybody: Who stays busy with trivial stuff like attending useless meetings, touring here and there, emailing, shuffling some useless papers, etc. instead of doing solid work that requires focused attention? (CBS typically act busier than others.)

Exploiter: Who surrounds himself/herself with the best of the people available in the office--and exploits them? (CBS are like islands of incompetence in the sea of competence.)

Resource sucker: Who wants more and more resources and always remains on the lookout to corner more people into the department? (Highly insecure, CBS keep sucking organizational resources in their direction.)

Perception-related symptoms

Master communicator: Who are the most fluent communicators with answers for anything, anytime?

Confident: Who projects a dominant presence in the office?

Informant: Who excels in "keeping the boss informed"?

Chameleon: Who behaves nicely with bosses and clients, but ruthlessly with own subordinates?

Extra miler: Who does nothing solid during the normal working hours, but can't stop "going the extra mile" by staying late, working on weekends--and even plugging in from vacation?

CBS thrive until…

So is the rise of Corporate Bullshitters unstoppable in an organization? Yes, until...

Performance becomes more important than the perception of performance

Is bullshitting possible in sports or art or music? Can you hide your performance at a football match or swimming competition or stage performance? No! In all situations where a person’s individual performance is on display for everyone to see in black and white, CBS have no chance of survival. I have seen the bottom of S-W basket falling off for some CBs when they suddenly meet a boss who squarely focuses on "performance"--and is too smart to be swayed by "smart talk" alone.

To conclude, nothing much has changed since I first entered the corporate world 30 years ago: Even today, in most organizations, despite elaborate appraisal systems, the perception of performance (staying late, talking smartly, acting confident, etc.) is mistaken as performance.

In the garden you pass by every day, if someone planted a few plastic flowers along with the real ones, would you be able to spot them? From a distance, you may not be able to see the difference unless you go really close. Same is the situation in many organizations where Bullshitters mingle among real performers--and bloom. And typically, like plastic flowers, they go undetected and outlast the real flowers.

In the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (remember Sherlock Holmes?): "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact."

The reality of a person's character, competence and contribution often lie behind the smoke screen of our quick perceptions. Ignore the smoke!

Rab Rakha!!!!!

Make somebody happy today. Mind your own business!

Do you ever feel like people are judging your actions? Why do people feel the need to make others feel like crap about the decisions they make? Do you ever find yourself filled with anxiety when thinking this way? Often people become so preoccupied with the opinions of others that it limits their potential in any given situation. Whom people choose to associate with is their opinion and no one else’s business. Making people feel bad for their personal decisions is selfish and completely immature.

People who are unable to mind their own business are most likely on the inside wretched. They seek to find faults within others just to make themselves feel better. Offering insight to a friend whose present situation seems distressed can be helpful at times but there is only so much advice you can give without pushing the limits. Even if you don’t agree with what someone else is doing sometimes, you need to take a backseat and let them make their own mistakes.

“Everyone has faults and there is a fine line in helping someone get through their indiscretions and rebuking them for it. It's easier said than done for people to help each other rather than hurt, because some people might not even be aware that they are simply being a pain in the rear end versus being helpful.”

For some reason, it is common for people to pass judgment on others' relationships. Don’t like their relationship status? Just be happy it isn’t yours. If someone is happy and you simply don’t agree, do not offer your opinion if it wasn’t asked for.

Just because you don’t understand the relationship does not mean it is bad; if it works for others, let it be and stay out of it. It is as simple as that. If everyone just stopped offering their outlook on things and waited for it to be requested, there would be a whole lot less drama in this world. A relationship only involves two people, not every associate or friend these people have.

If you are not friends with a person and he or she does not personally know you, then do not make the mistake of letting his or her opinions and attitudes persuade you. These types of people thrive for attention and live for chaos. They tend to lead boring lives and have no excitement in their own, so they act in this manner to create something out of nothing. They seek to fill the gap in their lives by discussing the lives of others by judging them ruthlessly so that they can feel better about their own miserable existences.

“What I choose to do with my life is my choice and not yours, and what choices I decide to make is mine and mine only, and who I associate myself with is my decision and it's none of your business.”

People are too quick to judge other people’s shortcomings but are reluctant to look internally and evaluate their own. Some people just have nothing better to do than to gossip about others. They just seek to cause trouble because they thrive on drama. These people need to get a reality check and realize that this is an immature way to go about life.

If any situation doesn't involve you, instead of getting in the middle or putting your two cents in, you should mind your own business. If a situation concerns you or you have experienced something of a similar nature, then it's time to stand up and to talk.

There are people in your life that will always have your best interest at heart, so it is important to value those opinions. However, often there are people in your life that seem to be on your side, but when push comes to shove, they will judge you harder than your worst critic. These people are detrimental and will relish in your shortcomings while continuously pointing them out every chance they have.

“Worry about your character and not your reputation, because your character is who you are and your reputation is only what people think of you.” If you are happy with who you are as a person, other people’s opinions should not even faze you. Everyone has their own battles to fight and insecurities to face and these challenges would be a lot easier to overcome if other people weren’t forcing their unwarranted opinions onto them.

Why is this such a difficult concept for people to grasp? Shouldn’t this be common sense? Even if people care, most of them are ill-equipped to give advice based on another person's needs and typically want to feel as if someone is listening to them. Giving advice is usually about the ego of the advice-giver, not the feelings of the person being given the advice.

Let the refining and improving your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.”The best way to tackle nosy people is to ignore them and to let them say what they say and keep moving on with your life. This will hopefully set them right. Try not to lose your temper for such people, as some do it unknowingly and some do it knowingly to irritate you. It is, unfortunately, the way of life, you will come across many people like this, it's better to keep your mind cool and to respond to those whom you feel are important to you so that they may talk sense to you and about you.

Rab Rakha!!!!!

Common Sense

Common sense isn’t so common you hear people say it all the time, and they’re right. You might think that when a person does something differently than you that they're ignorant, rude, weird, unskilled, or just plain ‘old dumb but what’s common for me, can be a complete mystery to you, and what’s typical for you, might be incredibly unusual, bizarre or even foreign to me.

No two of us are the same we all have a different way of doing things. We all have different priorities. We all have different biases that flavor the very nature and attitude of how we tend to all of the things within our lives. It’s only through sharing common experiences with common lessons, and in sharing a common intellect with a common emotional intelligence, that we can all share a common sense and that’s incredibly rare, if not altogether impossible.

When we believe someone lacks common sense, it’s usually out of anger from them not doing something exactly as we would have done it ourselves.  thinking this way, we reveal that we expect everyone to think, look, and behave exactly as we do but that’s insane. In fact, we lack compassion for their circumstances, and we lack an understanding of the differences between us.

What we really lack, however, is control of the situation and that makes us mad we get angry when we want to control something, but we can’t. We all have little hiccups in our thinking that sometimes distract us this is common. we all get so lost in thought sometimes, that it inadvertently puts us on auto-pilot and causes us to overlook the obvious and we end up doing stupid things. when it happens to us, at that moment, the thing wasn’t obvious all that was obvious to us was the drama we were struggling with inside our heads.

This is our common sense this is our shared human experience and it happens to all of us. We're not all mindful of the same things, in the exact moment or to the same regard, as everyone around us that would be like a city populated by nothing but identical and thoughtless clones. Only by having zero expectations will we be able to experience true empathy and compassion for our fellow man or woman, judgment-free.

Live the weight of expectation from your shoulders rid yourself of the burden of constantly comparing your behavior’s to others and assuming they’ll act identically to you. Allow yourself to be free from the silly frustration of trying to attach your happiness onto how other people live their lives. The only thing that’s common about our sense, is that it’s different for each of us.

Let go of your expectations be free.

Rab Rakha!!!!!

Nosy Indian Aunties with Antennas

 “Married for three years? Why don’t you have children yet?”

“You are still single? Why didn’t you marry?”

“What’s your husband’s salary? “Are you happy with your husband? What time does he get home?”

“What is your salary?”

Sometimes I feel that we have no concept of what it means to mind our own business. During any family function, various aunties ask the most personal questions without batting an eyelid and to add salt to injury, offer advice, comments, and solutions that would put psychologists, pediatricians, gynecologists and marriage counselors to shame. Many times, these opinions result from genuine concern and sympathy but there are occasions when women poke their noses into other people’ s affairs out of sheer malice, spite, and thirst for gossip.

One of my dearest friends is a mother to a lovely daughter. For the past 6 years, one question that gets asked of her every time she is in a family gathering is “Do you have only one daughter? Why didn’t you have more children?” I wonder what makes people think that they have any right to ask such personal questions? And this is usually followed by “My daughter had four children within 5 years of her marriage. God has given her a complete family.’ So having daughters is not equal to having a “family” in their opinion?

A mother of two daughters gets to hear, “Oh two daughters. Now you should really try for a son.” As if trying for a son involves some secret recipe that is known only to a blessed few. One unmarried friend gets to hear, “You are still single? Why aren’t you married yet?” Married friends get asked, “How do you get along with your mother-in-law? Is she possessive about her son?’

One of my friends decided to delay having children after she got married to complete her education. “Everyone would ask her, “Why aren’t you having children? Is there a problem? Have you consulted a doctor?” she recalls with a laugh. “It was so hard to attend social functions as it seemed that I had become the focus of everyone’s attention, in fact almost an obsession just because I was childless for three years.”

Mothers-in-law get asked, “What time does your bahu get up? How many times a week does she go to her parents’ house? Does she help in household work?”

As a society, we seem to have a penchant for poking our noses into affairs of everyone around us. We ask the most private and personal questions and are offended if a person tries to maintain his dignity or privacy. We seem to thrive on gossip, with women being its most expert practitioners and ironically its most vulnerable target.

“You look tired.” “You seem dark.” “Have you gained weight?” “Didn’t you wear this dress in last week’s party too?” The comments that are made and opinions that are aired are usually aimed to make the other person feel inferior and embarrassed.

Isn’t it time we stopped interfering in matters that have absolutely nothing to do with us. We never realize how much we can hurt people with our seemingly innocent remarks and questions.

Perhaps an unmarried girl has taken responsibility for her aged parents or younger siblings and has not found a life partner who is willing to share her problems. Unless we are able to genuinely help her, maybe we could refrain from making her realize that she is growing older and there are no “rishtas” for old spinsters in our society. She does not need to hear” Umer nikal gaye to rishta nahin milay ga.”

A whiff of a broken marriage or engagement can send these aunties in a state of tizzy. They can’t rest unless they get to know all the details of how, when why, what and kya hua and kaise hogaya. And all the details are whispered from one ear to another with lots of “mirch masala” till the story resembles an 800 episode long Indian soap.

A wise person once said, “To be busy minding other people’s business, is to leave one’s personal business unattended to. While you are too busy minding other people’s business, who is busy minding yours?”

Making personal remarks or asking intrusive questions are not healthy for relationships. If someone asks you for help, advice or opinion feel free to air your ideas, otherwise, it would be better for us to stop interfering into things that are no concerns of ours.

Rab Rakha!!!!!