The Waste of Talent

This is an older post, but I was reminded of it this week when I was at SuccessConnect, an event for SuccessFactors customers, and was talking with a group of HR executives about how many ways that workplace assholes cost their organizations lots of money.  In addition to the cases in this post, there has been subsequent research showing how working with assholes --- especially asshole bosses -- saps the motivation out of people. Anyhow, here is the post I wrote about the waster for talent right after the book came out.

Like any author would be, I am pleased with the success of my book. The No Asshole Rule has sold well at places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com since it first appeared about a month ago, sitting among the 12 books overall and among the top 3 non-fiction books at Amazon much of the time. It is also is doing well in book stores, especially during the last two weeks (this is clearly a book that “started” on the web and then moved other places). And it continues to receive attention from the press, notably recent stories in BusinessWeek and Newsweek and a long Associated Press story called He Wrote The Book On Jerks.

 I confess that the book is selling better than I expected given its mildly obscene title. But the part that keeps surprising me most is that –- although I received a deluge of email after writing about the no asshole rule in Harvard Business Review in 2004 and received a lot of mail before the book was published --  I am getting far more email than ever and it seems even more emotionally intense than before.

 The recent round of emails has made especially clear to me that enforcing the no asshole is not only humane, it is wise from an economic perspective – as an economist would put it, the rule leads to efficient use of human capital. I am confronted with one case after another of how pervasive nastiness drives skilled people out of their jobs and occupations, and short of that, massively undermines their performance.

 Consider these excerpts from notes that I received in just that last few days:

 A woman who wrote:

 I am a 50 year old woman who was recently propelled back into the work force simply part-time once my children left the nest.  My first experience was horrific, worked for a Dean [at a major university] who was rude, verbally abusive and made demeaning comments in front of other colleagues.  I went to HR on numerous occasions and was told Dr. Dean had been with [the school] for thirty years and had a history of not being able to keep his admins ...so, where did that leave me? I walked out one day, never returned, and simply went to HR and said goodbye… I will never forget the days with the Dean as I actually became physically ill and the bullying episodes which I could not control nor stop. 

The physician who wrote me about her experience as a surgical resident and beyond:

 We were overwhelmed with the sickest patients and unfortunately had some less than optimal outcomes, not because we didn't try our hardest, but because we were often abandoned by the attending staff.  Of course, the Friday morning morbidity and mortality statistics were not about learning from our mistakes, but seeing who could be the meanest bully to the resident physicians.  Some were crucified more than others.  One felt triumphant if one was able to escape fairly unscathed. 

 The former aerospace worker who wrote:

I once worked for an aerospace company and my immediate supervisor was a BIG asshole. She used to belittle me in front of my co-workers (all of them at once or whoever was present) by yelling loudly, abruptly snatching papers out of my hands, giving me dirty looks, interrupting me & any number of other rude behaviors. She seemed to really enjoy dressing me down whenever possible, especially in front of her favorite salesman, whose office was directly behind my cubicle. There was little in the way of my work performance to justify treating me this way. I wanted to quit many times and there were many days I would end up crying at my desk.

 And an ex-schoolteacher wrote:

 I wish I would have known about you two years ago.  I was in the middle of my seventh year of teaching elementary school and living in a nightmare.  I was being bullied, harassed, demeaned, etc., but I could not find any support in this hostile working environment. I took a leave of absence at the end of the school year, eventually quit, and landed my current job at a local university.

 We need administrative assistants, aerospace workers, doctors who are educated rather than terrorized, and of course, we need skilled schoolteachers. When organizations are serious about enforcing the rule, they not only stem the human damage, they stop wasting human capital and organizational resources. And it isn’t all bad news out there, as the book shows, and so does this note from a school principal in the Midwest:

 I just finished your book, "The No Asshole Rule" and I found it funny but factual.  In my position as a principal, I have to work with a variety of personality types and of course, the parents who also come in all varieties.   As I began this year, I told my staff [and the parents] via newsletters, conversations, etc. that poor relationships, gossip, etc., would not be tolerated.  I feel that because of this attitude, the atmosphere at my school has improved 100% (and I've heard this from teachers, parents, and students).

I appreciate all the emails that people send me, the sad ones, funny ones, and everything else. But I would especially appreciate ideas about good things that leaders and organizations can do to build civilized workplaces, as I believe that is one of the most powerful solutions to the problem. What practices do you use – or are thinking about using – to screen out, reform, and chase out demeaning people?  Thanks.

Comments

[Archie Bunker]

I'm 57 and in all my years of working, I've only had one good manager. He was from Taiwan and they have a very different management style, which Americans should learn from. He was always respectful, he moved people around into different positions in the department so he could see what position better suited us and so we understood everyone's job. He always recognized an employee who did a great job by calling everyone in the dept together to congratulate that person and he would make the person turn around so he could pat them on the back. If you made a mistake, he didn't criticize you in front of everyone. He called you in his office and talked (not yelled or belittled) you about what you. What is needed is management training in college for everyone. America seems to use a fear-based management style which will never get good results -- EVER.

[dblwyo]

An excellent column and obviously provoking some response. And a direction to investigate that seems as worthwhile as any to pursue - there's a fundamental question here of do dark minions really do the company any good or is the damage they cause profound ? More importantly can it be analyzed ?

I'm not sure that Dark Minions actually do make money at all for themselves or their company. Rather it's a question of the measurement and management systems not capturing the damage they do. One could take that top-down or bottom-up.

For the latter consider - if an asshole is abusing their team then more and more of their effort (as ALL your stories show) goes into avoiding him/her and diverting their effort into other directions. And that generalizes to a company-wide basis - can't tell you for example the number of folks at well-known large companies who've told me how bad things are (IBM comes to mind - potentially disastrous). If after several rounds of over-work, bad measurement, etc. etc. the bulk of the employees keep reducing their efforts while the watch their backs and look for alternatives you get an original 80% effort reduced by, say, 20%, at several rounds of stupidity. Well .8 x . 8 x .8 X .8 is 40% or so. In other words one gets 1/2 the effort from skilled employees that one is ostensibly paying for.

It doesn't take many iterations for this to destroy a company's capabilities. Yet because people are treated as fungible commodities instead of (uniquely) appreciating assets they're grossly mis-managed.

Turn it around - good service is a major requisite of good competitive position yet employee abuse causes them to spend less and less on attending to customers and you get the external death spiral going. For one perspective on how that played out and is "measurable' at Home Depot see if this makes sense: http://llinlithgow.com/bizzX/2007/02/cheap_at_the_price_nardelli_ho.html . My best first pass at translating the impact of dark minions into market cap impact. Made up of course but still an approach.

Now it occurs to me that I was extraordinarily fortunate to work at places like Fedex and IBM when it was hard but fair. Since then I've seen lots of the kinda of stuff you write about and clearly your book and blog has touched a huge nerve. Here's the RUB - it doesn't make economic sense for a company to abuse it's employees. Either topdown or bottom up.

Thoughts or reactions ? By the way, since your latest entry seems to have gone that way consider the 'spiritual' dimension. When people are viewed as ITs that's no way to treat an animal. When they are somebodies (a Thou) they are treated with the respect they earn.