from the I've-found-the-job-for-me! dept.
Aeon has an article by André Spicer, a professor of organisational behaviour at the University of London, on the reasons why firms which claim to hire the smartest people spend most of the time discouraging them from thinking.
We have spoken with hundreds of people working for engineering firms, government departments, universities, banks, the media and pharmaceutical companies. We started out thinking it is likely to be the smartest who got ahead. But we discovered this wasn't the case.
Organisations hire smart people, but then positively encourage them not to use their intelligence. Asking difficult questions or thinking in greater depth is seen as a dangerous waste. Talented employees quickly learn to use their significant intellectual gifts only in the most narrow and myopic ways.
Those who learn how to switch off their brains are rewarded.
The article covers a variety of workplace behaviours, and is based on his book (co-authored with Lund University Professor Mats Alvesson), The Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:10PM
Oh, wait! There is this googly thing I heard about on the intarweb tubes.
(Obviously off topic in relation to companies that discourage smart people from thinking.)
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:44PM
That was a required step to reach the singularity, needed to bootstrap the future Idiocracy [wikipedia.org] world
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:44PM
How about 20 years earlier [wikipedia.org]?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:34PM
and trophy employees. has anyone here read "Systemantics"?
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Wednesday September 28 2016, @07:36PM
No, but I once worked for a company called "Systematics". They acquired my employer (a good company), and flushed away most of the clients and employees.
The "target" client (that they wanted to keep) failed and was itself acquired by yet another. Bumbling all around.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Webweasel on Thursday September 29 2016, @10:17AM
Yes, very insightful book. Something everyone on soylentnews should read.
I read the 1975 print last year (There's a scan online somewhere) it taught me a lot about WHY things fail, not so much about stopping it happening.
If anything it made me a lot more apathetic to business (as an employee) as it showed me I was right about how crap the system is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics [wikipedia.org]
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:40PM
Asking difficult questions or thinking in greater depth is seen as a dangerous waste.
...
Jack. [spent] years at graduate school, [he thought ] he was a specialist in corporate governance.
This sounds more like the ranting of young inexperienced busybodies who want to stick their noses into everything but never stick around long enough to actually solve anything. Shocked and disappointed, they find out that a freshly minted diploma still does not give them keys to the executive lounge and the corner office still seems to be occupied, and they are not going to be given the reins over anything of importance any time soon.
Worse, the article is internally inconsistent:
‘Business leaders are just as fashion-conscious as teenage girls choosing jeans.’ Many companies adopt the latest management fads, no matter how unsuitable they are.
Just how is this trend likely to be reversed by bringing in a bunch of recent graduates? Where do these crazy fad ideas come from in the first place, Senior Management, or the freshly hired perky second assistant to the vice president of public relations?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:54PM
The article is internally inconsistent. It didn't blame fresh grads for all problems of the world.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday September 28 2016, @05:09PM
The rest of the article seems to outline a number of issues that I've noted exist across numerous organizations; generally that the problems start at the top and trickle down.
Intelligence can be quite the curse for people that get shock therapy for daring to use it, and if as an intelligent person, you learn that being stupid can be more rewarding than making stupid leadership look dumb.
To be honest, this whole article is like reading the Church of the SubGenius's subtext without the humor. You can only achieve slack (that is, not being so uptight about the stupid all of the time...) if you accept that everyone else is dumb and that you're smarter.. but you can't be a geninus or you'll stand out and get pulled down by the man. So, you have to be subtle, get people to do the work for you, act like a leader but just copy other people and use your brains to mentally coast.
It's not instrinsicly rewarding to approach life like that, but sometimes, it's the way to succeed and achieve material rewards. And for a lot of people, by the time they succeed, the dilbert comics aren't funny anymore. People with new ideas are a threat. It is easier to play it safe and copy the other successful leaders out there.
Ever see the movie Big? Tom Hanks as a 12 year old gets turned into Tom Hanks as an adult after making a wish at some fortune telling machine at a traveling amusement park?
He gets a job and faces this exact thing the article focuses on, and he starts questioning the stupid, is confused about having stupid peers in his entry level job, stupid company motivational things that do nothing and don't even make sense to a rational person, and processes to complete that don't even make sense but everyone does it that way because that's how its to be done. And that'd be the start of a dystopian future movie, except as the protaganist in the movie, he's going to be a hero, and so is scripted to get his first job as a big kid at one of the few places he could ever get away with creatitivity -- a company that makes toys! He makes new toys at a toy company and becomes a sensation at work for making toys that aren't stupid and he is rewarded and promoted and its all *because* of his youthful inexperience and that the creativitiy hasn't been crushed out of him yet...
And as a result, reveals itself as the fantasy of a grown-up wishing things turned out differently, because its not realistic based on both what you said and what the article said.
Anyway I dont think the article has the answer you are looking for. I think it just presents the facts and runs away.
The solution is probably for those crazy fad ideas to get developed by a start-up filled with college graduates and drop-outs with ideas they told can't be done, when previously dealing with mind-numbing stupidity at a corporate office prior to getting rightsized. (Hiring the pretty assistant is just a means of coping with the problem, but does little to solve it...)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday September 28 2016, @05:44PM
Anyway I dont think the article has the answer you are looking for. I think it just presents the facts and runs away.
True enough, other than the fact I was not LOOKING for any answers, and surely wouldn't be looking THERE.
The article is perfect a caricature of the "smart people" it pretends to defend. They arrive in a self important whirlwind, storm in, point out perceived problems, throw bombs at everyone, offer no solutions, and stomp off when they don't get their vice presidency.
if you accept that everyone else is dumb and that you're smarter
You've arrived at the perfect definition of how this problem arises. Congrats.
Reminds me of the old story: When I was 18 I was disgusted at how dumb my dad was. When I was 28, I was amazed at how much the old guy had learned in 10 years.
But it hardly sounds like even the beginning of a solution. It might have occurred to you that the senior management is playing by the same rules, and assuming those smug cocky "smart people" are dumb until proven otherwise.
Your prescription, then, appears to be that everyone should willfully set up a system of universal disrespect.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:51PM
You're not whinging enough about how entitled and self-important millennial snowflakes feel.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday September 28 2016, @08:07PM
I didn't provide an answer--or prescription--aside from if people don't like it, start their own business. Why the hostility? That's not even quitting, that's a righteous "I'll show them!" and if they die because they actually are stupid -- the original business is not harmed, in fact, its vindicated. Safety ropes for dopes save them.
You didn't state it, but I am inferring you are suggesting that everyone has to learn the ropes. No questions there; they have to learn the job if they want to fit in. Whether they end up being any good or not is something else. Some people can conform successfully and some cannot; learning the ropes is both learning the job, the politics, the culture. My suggestion/prescription, in other words was that if you don't think you fit in the corporate suit and you don't think you can, make your own suit.
I am not sure where you got what you said about the system of universal disrespect. One of the major tenent of capitalism is about building a better mousetrap. Sometimes you get funded to do it via your benevolent employer, sometimes you need to kickstart it.
If you started it on your own, 20 years later if your risk paid off, as a successful business owner, one can assume everyone else is dumb until proven otherwise, and make extensive efforts to keep people that think they are smarter than they really are from causing a huge lawsuit because they didn't actually know better.
Small business creation sounds better to me than just accepting fate, but it's not for everyone. You may have to set up the policies you rebelled against in your youth! Such liberalism may become conservatism when enough success is involved; mostly through wisdom gained along the way, but it doesn't always happen that way. The policies weren't just made up to test people as a filter, but they probably look stupid to someone not familiar with them.
Of course, I am not recommending anyone get saved from their stupidity or to coddle anyone or to disrespect anyone. I'd rather have compliant smart people willingly working for me than unwilling people seeking to hop jobs as soon as the market improves... but to create that environment that isnt just a facade, that's the hard part...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @05:26PM
This sounds more like the ranting of young inexperienced busybodies who want to stick their noses into everything but never stick around long enough to actually solve anything. Shocked and disappointed, they find out that a freshly minted diploma still does not give them keys to the executive lounge and the corner office still seems to be occupied, and they are not going to be given the reins over anything of importance any time soon.
You don't need to stick around for 20 years to realize that you're unlikely to ever make a difference, by 5 years you should have a certain idea of that and for some companies 1 year or less is enough to understand how dysfunctional they are.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 28 2016, @09:08PM
This sounds more like the ranting of young inexperienced busybodies who want to stick their noses into everything but never stick around long enough to actually solve anything.
It also sounds like the ranting of old, experienced, activist investor Carl Icahn who buys significant stakes in companies he thinks could have their value improved with some input from a board member such as himself.
http://www.businessinsider.com/carl-icahn-at-delivering-alpha-2014-2014-7 [businessinsider.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday September 29 2016, @04:21AM
Keep reading. The problem isn't limited to the young grads coming aboard, it continues throughout a career. They were just used as an example because the experience is novel to them. More literary device than the focus of TFA. They don't appear in the story after the first act.
The actual topic is how management strives for and fails at "leadership" when the fact is that their actual role and abilities are not so exciting as that.
The solution is for the "leaders" to grow up and quit pretending they are heroic leaders of some imagined kingdom like five year olds in the sandbox. No, moving the deck chairs won't help. Changing your name and adopting the brown ring of quality as a logo won't wash the stink of the last 5 years off. Inventing new corporate rituals will not create a new meme of success.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 29 2016, @03:38PM
Where do these crazy fad ideas come from in the first place, Senior Management, or the freshly hired perky second assistant to the vice president of public relations?
In my experience, these stupid management fad ideas come from some middle-aged or older guy who used to be some crappy manager, and now has written a stupid book and is touring around the country as a highly-paid consultant, promoting his fad and helping companies implement it, and making a bunch of money in both consulting fees and also book sales (by getting the company to buy a copy of the book for every employee). It was senior management at these companies that made the decision to adopt the dumb fad.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:53PM
According to this chart [iqcomparisonsite.com] (pulled from a U of Wisconsin study), the IQ of a typical manager is somewhere around 102. Not a complete moron, but also not particularly smart. Compare that to engineers and computer folks who are sitting around 110, and professors at 115, and doctors at 120, and you can see these folks are outmatched.
When people are around those that are smarter than they are, they get defensive and downright scared. This isn't totally dumb, because smarter people can and do hoodwink dumber people. But it does mean that smarter people don't actually get promoted up the hierarchy as quickly (or at all) because their higher-ups don't feel like they are "good team players" and "trustworthy" and such. And yes, they are difficult to manage because they are smarter than their supposed superiors, and are smart enough to figure that fact out.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:37PM
Hitler had lots of supposedly smarter people working for him.
Knowing how control and manipulate people is what gets you to the top and keeps you there. Lots of smart people don't know how to do that sort of stuff, or they know but don't like to do that sort of stuff (they're more interested in other stuff).
For a similar reason I don't think those super genius AIs will end up controlling the world. Instead of Skynet taking over what is more likely to happen is you have some evil person/bunch using those AIs to control the world. After all from history, many of those people who have power don't let their genius scientists, consultants, Military Geniuses make all the decisions, so why would they let their "Skynet" do that too?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 29 2016, @01:52AM
After all from history, many of those people who have power don't let their genius scientists, consultants, Military Geniuses make all the decisions, so why would they let their "Skynet" do that too?
First, the genius scientists, etc aren't that smart or powerful. If "Skynet" turns out the same way, then you're right. PHB is on top of the world.
BUT we do have this impression that we can purposely or not make things a lot smarter and a lot more powerful than we are. I wouldn't put money on PHB in that situation.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday September 28 2016, @10:35PM
When people are around those that are smarter than they are, they get defensive and downright scared. This isn't totally dumb, because smarter people can and do hoodwink dumber people.
Considering that on average, an engineering manager will not be as smart as the people they hire, wouldn't they better off primarily selecting employees based on their propensity to not use smarts to take advantage of those of lesser intelligence or capability -- their 'integrity' first, and their talent second?
Of course, that would be a *smart* move on the part of the manager, and if they were that smart, they wouldn't be as easy to take advantage of, so they could hire based on talent first.
I think I just confused myself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @06:46AM
According to this chart (pulled from a U of Wisconsin study), the IQ of a typical manager is somewhere around 102. Not a complete moron, but also not particularly smart.
First you speak of IQ, and then you mention something about intelligence; there is no good evidence that they are the same thing.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Wednesday September 28 2016, @05:12PM
Isn't the explanation the usual desire of the opposite or the anti? Orgs that spend a lot of time spinning wheels about diversity only hire white men into positions of power, orgs with serious ethical problems at high levels make the low level employees sit thru ethics online training. "We value diversity" means "... with the exception of race and gender and with the exception of hiring and promotion, but otherwise, sure, we like ethnic food in the cafeteria instead of endless wonder bread as far as the eye can see".
The other aspect is primate dominance. Lets ignore all the fuzzy math IQ whatever and say for the sake of argument they only hire dudes shorter than 6 feet as policy. Because they're astronauts who need to fit in capsules or WTF it don't matter. Now say you're a PITA style of boss who just likes to hear himself complain, who thinks he is paid on the basis of his complaining. Well, logically, you'll rant on and on about how all those lazy bastards are too short and if they worked a little harder and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps they'd be taller than 6 feet and in todays business climate people need to be taller than 6 feet and all you short little munchkins suck and endless jokes about short dwarves and if they outsourced or H1B'd the whole department they could find people taller than 6 ft or WTF. I mean if you're that personality of a boss and that predetermined and designed spectrum of employee, you're going to rant about shortness not rant about mormonism or drug use or hair color. If you're trying to set up a group for failure because you like complaining about failure to show them who's in charge, unless you're a complete idiot you'll stay on task.
(Score: 2, Funny) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:47PM
need to be taller than 6 feet and all you short little munchkins suck and endless jokes about short dwarves and if they outsourced or H1B'd the whole department they could find people taller than 6 ft or WTF.
Sounds a lot like online dating. /!tallerthan6foot
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday September 28 2016, @07:47PM
A better analogy would be deciding you want to write a story about how online dating doesn't work, so you go to a dwarf dating site and troll that online dating sucks because everyone who does it is short.
Its a typical management authority and responsibility thing. Lets say you want to exert dominance by yelling at people, if you have the authority to make sure the employees are all 100 IQ then its pretty safe to yell at them for not being overly smart.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:12PM
Alternative Hypothesis: Everyone thinks they're smarter than everyone else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:50PM
I know you are, but what am I?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:19PM
You can say that again! Managers don't like criticism, period. Most don't want to hear the ugly truth, even if you try your darnest to package it nicely. They want to hear fluffy soft lies, and learn "organically" (i.e. the hard way). I've bit my tongue on so many "I told you that would happen" moments that my tongue looks like the moon.
The work-place SHOULD BE a competition of ideas discussed openly and honestly, not a padded pre-school for egos. But, it's the second in the vast majority of organizations. If you try to take the padding down, you are fired. My brother, in a different field, came to the same conclusion.
I don't know what policies or procedures could be put in place to solve that, but if any company can solve it, they'd kick the competition's ass hard and fast. Where is the Steve Jobs of organizational inventions? Experiment!
My org even sent employees to "shut up and live with it" classes. I'm not kidding. They showed videos of people painting nice art with brushes in their mouth because they had no arms. The message was: "be grateful for what you have and stop complaining because some people don't even have arms and still get work done." The metaphor was that missing arms are the same as having sadistic clueless bosses. Sometimes arm-loss feels the better choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @07:05PM
OK.
So you know the problem: "Managers don't like criticism"
But you can't help yourself running into it again and again.
Hmm.
Can't imagine why.
"Your" the smart guy, figure it out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:38PM
He already has, but can't do anything about it. You clearly are NOT the smart guy as you apparently couldn't figure that out from his post. (And clearly don't know the difference between "your" and "you're").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:44PM
I had a boss who didn't like to hear about problems unless there's also a solution. Didn't like negativity either. So now I tell him about a lot less.
I also had a boss who'd ask for time estimates on doing stuff and then add more stuff for me to do while expecting me to maintain deadlines based on the previous estimates. So I started padding my estimates by a lot more. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt and that he would do some managing based on the truth but since he didn't I had to manage him instead ;).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @10:20PM
>> I had a boss who didn't like to hear about problems unless there's also a solution. Didn't like negativity either. So now I tell him about a lot less.
Win.
Win.
Win.
Put yourself in his/her position, now you don't have to listen to that little shit complaining all the time.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday September 28 2016, @10:29PM
And that sounds like the worst way to manage. A boss' entire job is to make sure the employees have what they need and to help them solve problems when they occur. If a boss is happy not knowing anything, then they are a parasite that should be dropped from the org post haste.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday September 29 2016, @09:53AM
Doesn't this imply that he is actually encouraging you to solve problems - to think outside the box - and present him with the problem and solution? You are not describing a boss who denies that there is a problem, but one who is acknowledging that things are not perfect and is willing to listen to your suggestions as to how they might be fixed. I would have no complaints with a boss like this, providing he didn't try to take all the glory for himself.
If all you do is raise a list of problems then you are doing nothing constructive to advance the team or company. You will get the promotion and pay to match your performance. If you can also solve problems you are significantly more valuable to the company which should, all things being equal, reward you appropriately.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @10:47AM
The first step to solving a problem is knowing there is one.
Problems are often immediate, solutions take time.
Not all problems can be solved with the available resources, if at all.
A manager who doesn't know that there are problems, isn't going to plan for needing to solve them.
Trying to prevent the company from blindly going forward with a failure of a product launch, or risking a major security breach, is not "nothing constructive".
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday September 29 2016, @11:11AM
If the solution to the problem is obvious, then it doesn't need stating. The fact that you can identify problems before they have an impact is also worth rewarding, particularly if you can do so in sufficient time to avoid that problem ever occurring at all.
'The solution is that we need to get together to find out why x is occurring' is better than saying nothing at all. However, if all a worker does is complain about what is wrong then he/she will get what they deserve.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:45PM
I do not do this job because I like the people I work with or even the work in particular. I do it because it pays well. If you want to pay me to surf the net and blow smoke up the suits asses then fine . If you want to pay me to actually solve your problems then fine. Dont care, its your money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @03:03AM
This.
It has taken me years to learn and accept this.
"Just do it"
Never actually tell anyone though. Conversations like this one depress people:
"What do you do?"
"What my manager tells me to do"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Thursday September 29 2016, @10:49AM
There's a desire for actually doing something useful that is deeply rooted in human nature. It's the self-perceived measure of success in life. Take that away and you take part of the soul away. It's like solving the itching hand problem by cutting away the hand.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 29 2016, @03:40PM
That's why I don't worry too much about doing useful stuff at work, and make time to do useful stuff at home instead.
(Score: 2) by gringer on Wednesday September 28 2016, @11:42PM
Sometimes, following industry best practice can result in worse outcomes.
Well, yes. Industry best practise is not necessarily the same as research-supported best practise. While research is frequently wrong, group think is frequently wronger, and research (that excludes group think) is rarely consistently wrong.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday September 29 2016, @08:37AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @07:00PM
The McDonald's Principle: Consistent suckage is better than inconsistent suckage, even if inconsistency sometimes results in a tasty meal.