The emphasis problem works both ways.  Another fun aspect of the emphasis problem is the “de-emphasis” side in which a message traveling down the chain of command will become more urgent and important at each level.  In business school my organizational behavior professor gave the example of a corporate division that couldn’t figure out why they had purchased a McDonald’s franchise until someone discovered that the CEO, the week before, had said he wanted a burger for lunch.  Many times I have seen people working in a state of  panic on a task that was a response to an off-hand comment made some number of levels above.  On one assignment I actually heard a high level manager say “Geez .. I didn’t mean they should go tearing off and do that!”, realizing too late that the work was already half done and the new costs were rolling in, even though the project was never intended to be carried out in the first place.  This principle can also help cover your tracks when things go wrong as it is a systemic problem, and systemic issues and concepts are rarely well understood and even less often addressed.

Lessons learned from the emphasis/de-emphasis problem:
1. If you’re going to do something that might be personally risky, choose something that can’t be addressed at a low level.  That way, if you are found out or things go wrong, the matter is more likely to be passed upward again and again, and de-emphasized to the point that it either dies or changes into a great idea (which is much easier to report to one’s superiors).

2. Monitor the power of your words as a manager.  You can watch what goes on and use the urgency with which your offhand requests are carried out to gauge your standing in the company – increased urgency (the emphasis problem) indicates your directions are cascading down through more levels and your words are taken more seriously.  This can be a key measure of influence that you can keep to yourself, but work to optimize.

3. Manage your people’s work using your knowledge of the emphasis/de-emphasis problem.  Cultivate contacts at higher and lower levels of management, not only to help monitor your influence and the effectiveness of your strategies, but also to be able to find out just how serious a request from above or below really is.  If you find that direction from above was not actually reported to you as intended by the high level manager who originated it, you can delay putting high priority on it for your subordinates or possibly avoid it entirely by putting it on hold until either a countering direction is received from above, or you never hear of it again. 

4. Make points with upper management using this concept.  If you receive a report from below of a critical problem needing upper management intervention you can make sure it gets to the right executive with your name prominently attached.  Top management will remember you as the one who caught the problem and brought it to the right level for management attention.  Then make sure you park in a secure spot where the air is more likely to stay in your tires.  Also, a friend in upper management could come in handy if anyone finds out the death certificate that you used to justify that week-long “memorial and funeral” in Cozumel was faked, and you need a “get out of jail free” card.

Put yourself on the cutting edge of management knowhow.  While management science isn’t advanced enough yet to provide much research on the emphasis/de-emphasis problem, it is a fact of life in bureaucracies and you can learn to use it to your advantage.   Much work remains to be done, hopefully with the involvement of organizational behavior academics and social psychologists, and until research is carried out you have a free hand to use this knowledge for your own benefit.

As always, I welcome your comments.  -  Tim

Famous example of the emphasis problem:  the bucket of fertilizer (snafu principle)

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,200 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Selfless anonymity is a good thing.  Crediting the author isn’t necessary, and may not be possible.  Once you find such a document, possibly on the floor or in the output hopper of the office printer-copier, you have the option to claim it as your own, but that might not be the best course of action.  If there are flaws in it, they can be corrected, but the important point is that you can’t be blamed for errors and didn’t have to do the work to create it yourself.  Blow it up and post it conspicuously somewhere, and the business will be better organized with almost no effort or liability on your part.

Thus, Zen-like thinking can be an advantage for you, keeping your employees busy creating documents normally provided by people in a higher pay bracket – savings for your budget – and providing important tools to the business while leaving you ample time for practicing your putting game.

Please do NOT follow the advice here – it is only intended to make you laugh and think, and hopefully manage better should you find yourself in such a position.  Enjoy, and thanks for reading!  — Tim

Make your subordinates avoid you.  If you handle each interaction with a subordinate correctly they will avoid you unless they have a really critical problem with which they need your help.  One approach that works is to never let a meeting with a subordinate end without giving them an assignment.  It doesn’t have to have anything to do with the matter being discussed, and doesn’t really have to be of value.  In fact, it can be a totally redundant and worthless assignment, and they may be completely aware of this fact and possibly not even do the task you assigned.   That doesn’t matter, however, as you are instilling in subordinates a reluctance to bother you, which will free up more of your time while you fulfill your management role and keep them busy.

Use meetings and an “open door” policy to your advantage.  Every manager, including you, says he or she has an open door policy, and that employees can come in and talk at any time.  That is no matter, however, as you can say that and still keep your office door closed.  Schedule yourself into enough meetings that people won’t expect you to be in your office.   If possible, set things up so nobody will be able to tell if you’re there or not.  Attending meetings will maintain your visibility with your superiors, especially if they are in attendance, and give the appearance you are a hard-working, contributing member of the management team.  Taking your laptop to meetings (equipped with a privacy screen, of course) will further impress your superiors and peers with what a hard worker you are even as you write in your blog.  Meanwhile, your closed office door will discourage interruptions by making subordinates think you are attending an important meeting even when you’re there.  Better yet, your meeting-filled calendar will discourage people from trying to schedule meetings with you and you will avoid wasting time on employees’ paltry concerns.

Avoid getting into details.  As a middle manager your function is to protect your superiors from details or anything that might be construed as “getting their hands dirty”.  Since you want to be promoted as quickly as possible, you need to emulate the management behavior of your bosses.  Getting involved in the details of daily work has some big liabilities, including the possible need to do real work.  If you stay above the details you can not only avoid work, but more easily blame others when things go wrong.  If business disaster strikes you can appear to be a member of management, and separate from the workers who caused the problem or allowed it to occur.  By “keeping your hands clean” you will appear to be management material at the same time that you avoid the personal liability of being associated with problems or having to do actual work.  Not providing meaningful help to subordinates who have issues will also discourage them from approaching you, and that will save time you can devote to your putting game.

Use snide banter to further discourage subordinates from bothering you.  One very sophisticated approach to discouraging employee interaction is to throw a negative comment into any casual conversation.  For example, you are waiting outside a meeting room for the next meeting to begin and talking with a couple of your subordinates about where the nearest post office is.  One subordinate says “there’s a post office just two blocks over and you can walk there and back in 20 minutes.”  This is a great opportunity for a response like “I hope you didn’t find that out on company time.”  It will not only put a stop to the conversation, but those subordinates will feel less comfortable talking with you in the future.  This means more discretionary time for you and, besides, the people you need to like you are your superiors, not your subordinates.  Business is not a popularity contest!

Be creative.  As you put these ideas into practice, always be alert for any opportunity to extend them.  Improvise new and creative ways to avoid real work while discouraging people from bothering you.  Know your organization well so you can quickly shunt any issues off either by delegating them to a subordinate or shifting responsibility to another department.  As you continually practice and refine these and similar techniques you will build a long and comfortable career in management as well as a great blog, a lot of friends on social networking websites, and/or serious putting skill.

copyright 1998, 2008, Timothy F. Prosser, This line must be included in all copies

Some bosses avoid giving evaluations, fearing employees will expect kudos and raises. This is not very effective, though, since most organizations have standard policies defining regular performance evaluations and sometimes even tie specific pay increases to performance metrics.  A boss who never gets around to evaluating employees or otherwise avoids this chore will find that the practice eventually catches up with them, either in their own evaluations with their bosses or as employees see they are not following company policy.  This article describes how to follow policy or otherwise provide regular evaluations while keeping your labor costs low and controlled.

Your best employees may be your best targets. It is easy to find fault, give poor evaluations, and provide no raises to your worst or mediocre employees.  Your best employees, however, are probably paid the most, so giving them small or no raises saves you more on a per capita basis.  While your best employees may have the most opportunities to leave for a competitor, you can view employee evaluations as a cat-and-mouse game in which you simultaneously keep them under your control, avoid increasing your costs much (if at all), and actually decrease the probability they will leave the firm.  It does require preparation and careful actions throughout the year, however.  One effective technique that is that of periodically setting them up for failure.

Setting employees up for failure provides benefits. Challenging your best employees – those who will expect raises the most, and will be most likely to jump ship for better opportunities elsewhere – can be a great thing.  You can put them in situations where you will get their best efforts, they will solve your toughest business problems, and in which a little push from you, working behind the scenes, can put them on the brink of failure.  Their loss of self esteem will decrease their sense of value and lessen the chance they will think they can leave for a better job elsewhere.  Certainly they will feel stress, but stress is one of the greatest motivators, and in many cases is almost as powerful as fear.

Putting employees in a state of perceived failure provides a number of opportunities. Once an employee has been put in a state of relative crisis, in which they may not be able to achieve the goals you set for them, you have opportunities.  You can “ride in on your white horse” and save them, often with facts you carefully withheld from them, or you can arrange  for others to do so.  Then you can keep record of their near-failure to use in their next performance evaluation, in which you can withhold a raise until improvement is demonstrated on their part. Avoid commitments, especially written agreements, in doing this, however.  You need to keep the employee in a state of doubt and uncertainty, and give them nothing concrete to resent or hold against you later.

Have others do the preparatory work for you. If you set up other employees to rescue them, you can use the same strategy on them so they, too, will feel they have let you or the firm down and not performed to expectations. You can also manipulate other employees to contribute to the “star’s” problems, keeping you out of the picture entirely or until you are ready to be involved.  As long as the work is getting done and customers are served and satisfied you are on the right track.

A so-called “collaborative” management style doesn’t prevent using effective evaluations to control cost. A manager whose style is collaborative actually has more detailed knowledge of the operation and the people involved, and can use that knowledge to set up scenarios for the near-failure of particular employees.  You can maintain your friendly demeanor while carefully managing the expectations of your employees so they won’t expect raises.

The most effective managers make employee manipulation an art. With practice you can put the organization into a state of repetitive crisis that will drive everyone to put in extra hours (without pay, of course) and create a stream of excellent results that will create optimal profits or raises and promotions for you.

This method does require you quietly maintain a “me vs. them” mindset. You must keep in mind at all times that you are not your employees, that you are better and smarter than they are, and that you need to be careful not to expose this attitude to them in your overt comments or actions.  You can be “one of the guys” to a great extent and still manipulate your employees into providing superior business performance while keeping your labor costs low and under control, but you will need to avoid any appearance or perception of the arrogance and superiority you must naturally feel.  You are the boss, and a boss is the boss because they are smarter than the “grunts”, or employees.  Keep your inherent smugness to yourself and express it only when in the company of other bosses who think similarly, and completely out of range of perception by your (or their) inferiors.  Be careful not to be recorded when allowing yourself to enjoy your feeling of superiority, and save writing about your techniques and personal business victories.   You can write about yourself and your methods in your memoirs after you retire.

The following cartoon shows a failed application of the above concept. Be sure to scramble the list of adjectives before you apply them, and don’t “over-apply”.  It only takes a few subtly-disparaging words to turn an employee evaluation to your advantage.

Cartoon by Scott Adams, written material outside the cartoon copyright 2010, Timothy F. Prosser, This line must be included in all copies.

“Scram-box” is a euphemism for the latest access pads used in building security systems. A small box on the wall displays a scrambled array of numbers after a security badge is swiped across it, and the employee must input a pin code and press the correct unmarked button to unlock the door.  For entertainment you can have the boxes set at a height where virtually every employee will have to bend down at an awkward angle to see the numbers.  Make sure there is nothing nearby on which one can set what one is carrying while accessing the scram-box.  You can also place the scram-boxes close enough to the doors that someone coming through the door from the other side will inevitably hit the person trying to see into the pad, which is especially entertaining if the door is in a main path to the cafeteria and you can watch people dropping their food as they whacked with the door.

Try both audio AND video monitoring for even greater benefits. Audio monitoring is a powerful tool few companies use, or at least reveal to their employees, but it could be just right for you.  Watching people on video is an old and very effective technique for controlling them, but the addition of audio is every more inexpensive and easy, and can be much more powerful.  You can hide microphones in office areas in ceiling tiles, plastic potted plants, and in the video camera domes themselves.  Certainly it adds a lot more data to survey, but the ability to hear the complainers, whiners, and malcontents among your employees, especially when they might be saying something about you, is invaluable.

Computer security is important, too. It may slow your computers and networks down considerably to implement all the different key-loggers, constant-on virus scanners, and other similar software, but you will have every key stroke and URL on file.  Your IT (information technology) people may become a bit overloaded with the compaints about slow performance on your hot new computers, but they’ll live.  It isn’t necessary to hire a security expert who really knows what they’re doing, either, as all the information you could ever want is right there on the web.  Of course, you’ll have to allow someone actual web access to get to it, but that’s easy, and your employees won’t feel frustrated at the long “hour glasses” they get to watch every few minutes when they try to retrieve a file or email, they’ll just feel grateful that you care.  Your new security regime may cost each employee an eighth of their time on the job in wasted time, and a few malcontents may get frustrated and complain, but most of them won’t be smart enough to know the difference.

Security can enhance your personal position, prestige, and importance on the job, too. When employees know that you are the one in control, that you can see every time they move their mice, hear everything they say (if you even let them know you can do this) and can watch their every move in the office, they will not forget that you are the boss.  In addition, you can google them individually and check out their private lives on-line, look at their facebook and myspace profiles, etc., and then casually mention something so they know you are checking them out.  They will be flattered that you took an interest in them, and the thought that you might be thinking of promoting them will motivate them to work harder and put in more hours.   The psychological side of your security regime will be extremely low cost, so even if it doesn’t work well in all cases, you will still come out ahead.  Their knowledge that you can browse the internet at work while they can’t, too, will emphasize your authority in their minds, never a bad thing.  In fact, that’s almost as good as having your name broadly labeling your parking space, the one nearest the door so no one can miss it coming or going.

Having an elaborate and pervasive security regime will improve communications with employees. Since you will still be focused on saving money, as always, you can let the inevitable flaws in the system continue for months or years, and use the issues as reason to send frequent emails to the employees.  For instance, if your system automatically unlocks doors as people approach them even though there is a scan-pad on the wall next to them, you can issue frequent emails insisting employees scan their badges to get through the doors, even though they physically don’t have to. Communications the other direction will be greatly enhanced by your ability to eavesdrop on the offices and hallways, too.

A good security system can enable swift, low cost staff reductions when needed. If you need to reduce staff or get rid of an employee who complains too much about your wasteful security systems, you can catch them on camera going through automatically unlocking doors without scanning their badge, which is easiest at the doors one can’t get through easily while carrying anything.  You can also watch the parking lots to see if an employee parks in the wrong area or space.  Even better, you might record someone mentioning something questionable in the office that you can use against them.  It’s amazing what people will reveal when they think nobody is listening.

In short, security systems are powerful tools, not just for protecting your intellectual property, but for controlling your workforce.  While the latest security systems may cost a pretty penny, they have all of the benefits outlined above, and more.  So even if your employees aren’t actually working with anything of particular value, in a proprietary sense, you can make them feel like they are – a powerful morale booster – and the enhancements to your power and authority are almost too high to measure.  Just don’t go overboard and monitor your own workspace, as your systems might record something that could become a liability to you.  Know your safe areas and use them effectively, so that you can speak to an employee off the record and, even if they sue you and subpoena your security files, there won’t be anything incriminating there and the case will be their word against yours.  Security can work for you and enhance your power because, after all, you’re the boss and they’re not.

copyright 1998, 2008, Timothy F. Prosser, This line must be included in all copies

First, choose the certification you want carefully. ISO9000 certification (link), for example, is well recognized, has many established and accredited auditors.  This certification has been around since the 1980′s, and there has been plenty of time for many companies to figure out how to not just get around it, but to appear to be embracing it and thereby reap the benefits at lowest possible cost.  In this case achieving low cost means changing your existing ways of doing business as little as possible.

Many smart companies hire a specialist – someone with experience leading a certification effort – to help them get certified.  The good supply of experienced ISO coordinators will make it easy to find one who can slide you smoothly into an ISO certification that will not only enhance your market position and make you look like a truly modern business leader, but also  do it at a good price.  Such a person can be an expert point of contact in dealings with the certifying and auditing organizations.  They will know which auditing organizations are going to be most hungry for fees, and which are least likely to find anything that would block certification.

Preparation is key, but need not be expensive. Your hired expert can assemble a binder of appropriate reference materials to show the auditors.  Such a binder will include basic business documents like an organization chart, a list of key records and documents used in the business, and some procedures for creating, approving, and storing them.  It is possible you may need to document a few company procedures to flesh in the binder, but, in the end, it can be made substantial enough to impress a well-chosen auditor with how organized and under control your company is, and will be enough to get you that prized certification.

Passing audits is easier than ever with a bit of strategic planning. Since an auditor’s or appraiser’s job is to find discrepancies, you can make his or her job easier by creating a few well-placed issues to be documented.  A “red herring” may be achieved by a measure as simple as putting a product or component on the wrong shelf in the shipping or manufacturing area, or not labeling a few shelves in one of these areas.  The resulting audit finding can be easily resolved by labeling the shelves, demonstrating that the offending articles are properly stored, and training the people working in the area in how to answer if auditors ask them about such things.  Distributing some binders of procedures to appropriate work areas and instructing workers to consult the binder if an auditor asks them a question is a good idea, and fairly low cost.  Putting copies of the procedures on the company intranet and printing the link on the quality policy copy posted at every desk will complete the preparation and be even cheaper.  Be sure to book the auditors rooms at the best hotel around, and take them out for meals during the audit (only in the best gourmet restaurants, of course) to discuss their findings in private.

During the audit, have your coordinator guide the auditors to not only monitor where they are going, what they are seeing, and whom they are speaking with, but to subtly steer or distract them at strategic times to help you pass the audit.  Make sure all employees are on the alert and know to point out the quality policy posted above their desks, identify the website and/or binder where company procedures are held, and point out the coordinator or tell how to contact him or her.  It might even be possible to make the quality policy constantly available to every employee through the use of tattoos.  It’s also a good idea to subtly suggest that any employee who causes a finding will be docked a day’s pay, for example.  That will ensure the peons are on their toes.

When the audit is over you will review the final list of findings with the auditors.  This your opportunity to express your mea culpas, minimize the severity of the findings (you’re prepared if you created them in the first place), and help the auditors feel like they did their jobs.  At worst you’ll have a short list of issue to fix.  When the auditors check back in 30 days you will have those all cleared up, and soon you’ll be joining that elite crowd of companies who achieved major quality certifications (and can brag about it).

Luckily for you, quality certifications are widely misunderstood. In the end, quality standards like ISO9001 only mean that you know what kind of “stuff” you make and sell, and that you can make stuff of the same quality level on an ongoing basis.  They do NOT mean that any customer knows what quality of stuff they are getting from you, but they create the impression that your products are better than those of competitors who are not certified – a decided marketing advantage, which is what quality certification is all about anyway.

CMMI is the latest fad in quality certifications. CMMI stands for Capability Maturity Model Integration (link), and this is a certification first developed for the software industry. It is attained in levels from 2 to 5, with 5 being the highest level attainable.  While it is intended to go beyond ISO9000 by adding a requirement that process improvement processes be part of the total set of procedures used in your business, it will undoubtedly soon follow ISO9000 as a marketing advantage that is easy to obtain at low cost.  Similar methods to those suggested above for ISO9000 certification can work, but this newer certification may not have as many available auditing organizations, and it may be harder to find auditors who will give you an easy pass for their fees.

The bottom line: Your company, too, can be certified to impressive-sounding quality standards just like many other successful companies, and with minimal cost and trouble.  With an experienced coordinator in your employ you will soon be able to capitalize on a hot business fad and still keep an edge on your golf game as your company grows.  In addition, once you have that nice certification logo on your marketing materials you can dump the coordinator and assign their responsibilities to one of your less expensive overloaded employees – an easy win.

copyright 1998, 2008, Timothy F. Prosser, This line must be included in all copies

One way to support your contention that you can read BS is to cultivate connections deeper in the organization (or in supplier organizations) that can keep you informed about what’s really going on. This information can be used to confront subordinates or peers, preferably in large review meetings where they feel most vulnerable, and put them on the spot, thus bolstering your power. A few connections in key places can give the smart manager real advantages in the organization, just be careful not to get into a situation where you would have to disclose a source, as not only will that hurt the effectiveness of the source, but it could intimidate other sources into withholding information from you and could make you look bad.

Another way to spot B.S. is to watch the faces of a manager’s direct reports as he goes through his presentation. A subordinate shaking his or her head or otherwise “flinching” may tell you that what you are being told is somehow false or misleading, and give you a clue as to what to question to keep the presenter out of their comfort zone and at a disadvantage. Top management always likes a tough questioner, too, so keep the pressure on and keep asking questions to keep the presenter just barely able to proceed without breaking down.

Being tough on B.S. is very positive when it comes to bolstering your image with upper management or the board of directors. When it comes to the area you manage, you may not know much, but you can certainly look like you do by focusing on spotting and questioning the B.S., and if you are tough enough about it you will have the respect (or at least fear, which is nearly as good) of your subordinates, your peers, and your superiors.

copyright 1998, 2008, Timothy F. Prosser, This line must be included in all copies

As always, I welcome your comments.