Is Your Boss an Asshole? Update On Guy's Post

Guy Kawasaki, as usual, has provoked a compelling mix of weird, silly, thoughtful, hostile, absurd, and revealing comments. His post yesterday on Is Your Boss an Asshole? was followed by 31 comments. As almost aways happen when the term "Asshole Boss" comes up, there was discussion about Steve Jobs (and some argument that he isn't an asshole, which is rare).  I use Jobs as the poster boy for my chapter on "The Virtues of Assholes" (e.g., To this point, just a few weeks ago, I mentioned my book at a meeting in the Stanford engineering school that had a lot of Silicon Valley insiders, and without prompting, several of them chimed-in --"so did you mention Jobs?" Afterwards, one of them came up to me and commented that he had been at a lot of meetings with Jobs, and saw him demean a lot of people, and made some of them cry. The problem -- and fascinating thing about Jobs -- was, as this insider commented was "He was almost always right."

There were also comments from  some pretty well known names in high-tech, including an extremely thoughtful one from John Lilly, COO of Mozilla, which brings us the Firefox browser. I've known John almost a decade now, and seen him in action -- he is one of the smartest people I know. And I was a bit shocked to see T.J. Rogers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor chimed in too (He is known as a mighty tough boss himself -- although that isn't the same as being an asshole), who added 'Al McGuire had a quote that went something like "A team usually can stand one ass, but not two because they'll breed." '  Not bad, and a funny way of saying that asshole poisoning is a contagious disease that you get from and give to others, as I emphasize.

The most discouraging comment  -- and one of the most careful and well-crafted -- came from "Jon." It is pretty long so I won't print all of it, but consider three items that he adds to Guy's list, based on what he endured from his former asshole boss:

12. Uses his title to intimidate and bully others. Lacking the general ability to win over minds by offering a compelling viewpoint, the asshole resorts to intimidation and bullying tactics in order to kill ideas or discussions that threaten his 'vision'. Anyone who challenges an idea or product feature 'owned' by him might be accused of insubordination or have to deal with an angry come back. Another favored tactic of the asshole 'visionary' is to keep all discussions focused on peripheral topics that avoid addressing why the main 'vision' is failing.

16. Is too arrogant or threatened to learn from others. Seeing all around him or her as potential adversaries and competitors, the asshole carefully avoids opportunities to let others lead in ways that would grow the company or dramatically improve the product. For the asshole, keeping his or her image intact as the singular visionary and talent in the company is paramount. Any threat to the asshole's image or total control is not tolerated.

17. Loves to fire. The asshole typically sees himself as a great victim at the hands of others who lack the talent or vision to work with him. When progress is sidetracked by a problem, there's always a remedy that's so fulfilling that it compensates for any lost time- a good firing. When firing, the asshole likes to help the exiting party understand that there's absolutely no chance of ever working at the company again. It's also important for the firee to understand how much the asshole has suffered over the course of their working relationship.

I also want to thank Guy for ideas and for creating a place where some mighty interesting conversation is happening, and of course, for the ARSE test.

Comments

[Al Sacco]

Howdy,

My name is Al Sacco and I'm a writer with CIO.com. We recently assembled a handy guide to boss relations, and I thought I'd share with you and your readers. Though aimed mostly at the IT exec, the guide also includes valuable insights for non-tech staffers, including articles on how to tell your boss you're overworked, how to read his facial expressions--or anyone else's--and a piece on how to tell you're about to get fired.

http://www.cio.com/specialreports/bossandyou/index.html

[Peter Blackmore]

In my consultantcy practice I'm constantly running into a**holes in the ranks of management. What is very troubling, however, is that the incidence of assholes in management is growing at an alarming rate. In recent years I have been struggling to find a solution - or at least an explanation - to dealing with assholes.

The book "Antipatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Project in Crisis" (1998, Wiley) took a stab at the issue. Antipatterns are negative patterns of behaviour that result in failure. The failure could be software failure, project failure, organizational failure.
Management antipatterns "...describe how software projects are impaired by people issues, processes, resources, and external relationships." A personality type central to the management antipattern is that of the "Corncob": a difficult
person who causes problems through destructive behaviour throughout the enterprise. The authors ascribe avarice, pride, and narrow-mindedness as root causes of the Corncob's behaviour.
The trail of psychological and organizational destruction Corncobs leave in their wake is incredible; the amount of money wasted staggering. To characterize Corncob behaviour as "negative" seems ridiculous understatement; these people are sociopaths.

"Antipatterns" is one of a very few books that attempts to categorize and describe sociopathic behaviour in an organization, and to propose solutions. I have read many recent books in the popular press on conflict resolution, facilitation, negotiation, etc., but in these books there is always an underlying assumption that negative or destructive behaviour is unintentional, a result of stress, time pressure, or some other factor or mix of factors. Despite what these books assume, my personal experience is that there are people out there, in management positions, who are arrogant, duplicitous, selfish, manipulative, petty, narrow-minded, obsessively controlling - all the negative traits - and perhaps pardoxically combine these traits with a level of ignorance, irrationality, and incompetence that is truly incomprehensible. The personality traits of the Corncob appear inate, and cannot be ascribed to work-related factors.

What I find completely bewildering, however, is the fact that the majority of senior management cannot seem to recognize this destructive behaviour, often because they put themselves in the position of being supplied information by the Corncob him- or herself.
An extreme example, here in Canada, was the Radwanski affair. George Radwanski, former Privacy Commissioner, was eventually fired and charged after what was described as a "Reign of Terror" at Canada's Privacy Commission. His treatment of staff was both shocking and appalling. Amazingly, it took the combined courage of individual whistleblowers, an investigation by Canada's Auditor General, and a public mutiny by the entire staff to force senior public servants and legislators to step in an put a stop to it.
The willful blindness and reluctance to act on the part of senior management is the most troubling aspect of the Corncob phenomenon.

In an effort to understand this phenomenon I looked to the study of organizational behaviour and the practice of Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychology. I have admittedly only begun to look at these disciplines, but thus far I have been very disappointed to discover that I/O psychcology's major focus was on workers; the behaviour of management, and the consequences to the organization and its people, appear to be largely ignored. The underlying
assumption appears to be that management are rational and competent; it must be the negative behaviour of the workers that lead to sub-optimal performance. I would welcome comment from I/O psychologists to correct my perception, if it is indeed erroneous.

My own working hypothesis is that a major factor contributing to the growing number of assholes in the ranks of management is that many managers have been incapable of making the shift from an industrial-era hierarchical, command-and-control business model to the flatter, open, and collaborative model demanded by the knowledge economy. Many of today's managers cut their teeth in the 80s and early 90s, when the information age was in full swing but the mindsets of the industrial era still held sway. Today, with the relentless advance of information technology and the impact of gobalization, industrial-era management mindset is rapidly becoming obsolete and is so misaligned with the new economy that it is, in fact, both counter-productive and destructive.
The above hypothesis, however, looks at an external factor contributing to asshole behaviour. I suspect that our western culture is breeding assholes, but I haven't reflected on this sufficiently to form a theory.

Overall, it is very saddening to see good people trapped in disfunctional organizations that are heavily influenced by Corncobs. The common advice is: "If you don't like it, find another job." Given the preponderance of assholes, this
advice is both simplistic and unrealistic. People know that their odds of finding a position with an organization free of some degree of sociopathic management is perhaps 40- or 50-to-1. "Better the devil you know..."

[question]

The description of assholes seems similar to that of a sociopath. Is there an appreciable difference?