Skyscrapers_2.jpg (3412 bytes)  The contemporary workplace doesn't provide many safeguards against managerial foibles.

If we face the question with total honesty, how many of us are so strong and wise that we can be relied upon to resist favoring the employee who reinforces our positive perceptions about ourselves over the one who may strike us as more "difficult," but actually knows best how to get the job done? How many of us have no personal quirks or weaknesses that can be played upon? How many of us can recognize when a subordinate has a better grasp than we do of the work needing to be done?

Because we’re imperfect, we may pick somebody other than the truly best candidate for a promotion or other positive job action. When this happens, unless we’ve willfully let factors like nepotism or cronyism enter into our decision, the most common reason for error is that we don’t truly know who’s best, and we’re ultimately just guessing based on who looks that way.

And when this occurs, we’re basing internal competition within the enterprise on “image” just as surely as the terms of today’s cognitive marketplace bases external competition among companies on advertising.

We’re also introducing an opportunity for this type of preference to self-perpetuate within the enterprise.  This is because when we advance someone, that person typically gains the ability to rate or evaluate other people.  If the person being promoted tends to focus primarily on putting on a good show, it is likely that he or she will evaluate subordinates based on similar criteria.  Whoever this person picks for advancement is then likely to in turn evaluate and promote subordinates based on image, encouraging the process to keep on repeating itself in a kind of uncontrolled chain reaction.

In such an environment, the most important thing that anyone ultimately produces is perceptions.   It is the perception that one is working efficiently, on top of things, achieving results, and so forth that counts.   In other words, the ideal of meritocracy becomes virtualized.

(c) COPYRIGHT 1994   ROBERT WINTER.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.