Received 28 October 2001
This is a response from a CEO(the first CEO to directly respond to The Corporate Asylum) to my essay Re: The Hellevator
Dear Author:
At Televator, we enjoy corporate irreverence as much as the next guy. Thank you for your insightful piece. It is clear that you understand our product and market quite well. The product does not end at the content delivery point, however, but provides messaging in the event of a building/elevator emergency conditions, i.e., fire recall, seismic event, entrapment, etc. Next time you get trapped in an elevator, you may wish you had a Cabtivator to keep you company, and assist you through a difficult and sometimes traumatic event.
Also, we wanted to let you know that the bathroom stall and urinal opportunity was presented several years ago and was dismissed as inappropriate for reasons not suggested in your article.
Nevertheless, we appreciate your comments and criticisms and will of course give them their due.
Our apologies for the late response. This article did not show up on our radar screen until just recently.
Very truly yours,
Peter Fayette
President
Televator Corporation
The Inmate Responds:
Dear President,
Actually, I have been trapped in an elevator(without a Cabtivator) and found the experience to be relaxing, quiet and enjoyable.
Regards,
The Author
Received 29 October 2001
Keep up the good work!!. I enjoyed it, and I don't even live in the usa.
Best regards
Fernando
Buenos Aires, Argentina
The Inmate Responds:
Fernando,
Great to hear from you. My updates tend to be very sporadic and I am hoping to escape The Asylum in the next few months which will probably make them even more so, but rest assured that you are officially on the list.
I am always interested in how people find the site. Could you give me the details if it's not too much trouble?
Thanks,
Glen Draeger(a.k.a The Inmate)
Glen,
You asked, but you won't believe this. :-) It was by PURE CHANCE that I found your site.
Suddenly I remembered about the cartoon I used to love when I was a kid, the one with the dog, the coyote, and the sheep. But I couldn't remember its name. So I headed to google.com and entered "Sheep dog cartoon punch card"
And in the long list of results was your site, specifically the page http://www.corporateasylum.com/methodinmymadness.html
Where you say....
When I was child I remember watching a cartoon, the name of which escapes me, about a sheepdog and a wolf. Everyday they arrived at work together, chatting about families, life and the weather. They seemed like a couple of old union workers who had worked with the same company for a long time, been through good times and bad times together and who knew each other well. They always met in front of the time clock where they punched in their timecards, asked about family, commented on the weather and then as pleasantly as possible would say, "Have a nice day, George," to which the other would reply, "Yeah, you too, Joe." Then they started their jobs: the sheepdog guarding the sheep; the wolf attempting to steal them. The sheepdog always, or at least usually, won, thrashing the wolf to such a degree that his continued attempts to secure some good mutton for his family are a tribute either to his perseverance or his stupidity. At the end of the day the sheepdog and the wolf met again to punch their timecards and resume their pleasantries. In truth, they were friends, but this fact did not stop the sheepdog from doing everything in its power to thwart the wolf's intention to steal sheep.
That's how I discovered your site. After reading this single page, I loved it and started reading the rest of it. And loved it even more!. :-)
Consider me an inmate too, since I was fired back in 1997 from cable giant Cablevision/TCI for "knowing more than my boss" and showing ONE critical error in one of his decisions in front of others, I decided that the corporate bullsh*t was not for me, and I've been working with MYSELF as a boss ever since. :)
As I said, keep up the good work!.
Regards,
Fernando
PS: and yes, I'm a 27 year-old grown man who still enjoys watching classic cartoons as much as when I was a 5-10 yr old kid, specially the dog and coyote punching their cards... it kills me... :)
Received 31 August 2001
A Response to My Essay Re: On Being Weak
The attached has been in use in Europe for some years from the early '0s, perhaps before Karen's method was developed.
It is used by many junior managers to reveal the traps set for them by the less well intentioned. Many well intentioned otherwise talented managers have been sent packing because they were unable to deal with unkind politically abusive people. This method, when used properly, can level the field
Although in this case the use was not so kind.
Regards,
Charles Cawley
The Inmate Responds:
Charles,
I'm curious. How did you find my site? The article I wrote about Karen Stephenson(I'm assuming that's why you sent this to me in the first place), was not about the techniques she uses to evaluate relationships in corporations, but about her own views of work and the importance that career should(in her view) hold in a person's life. Having just been involved in a politically charged restructuring in my own small world the article you sent was interesting. I'm one who comes to work, does my job and leaves. I have few political relationships and in this situation it was apparent that I needed them. Having said that, however, I still have no desire to enter into that game. The consequences of doing so are far greater, in my view, than the consequences of not.
Thanks for sending the article.
Glen Draeger(a.k.a The Inmate)
Dear Glen,
I was doing some work on KS & surfed across your site.
The article posted was a later one than the one referring to KS, but the search engine post referred to KS-- hence the response.
Working without dealing with those who abuse their employment, can leave colleagues exposed. Business politics is a neutral expression, It can be abused & cause disastrous consequences... equally it can solve very difficult problems in a positive humane way. When a boss is known to be highly skilled in the art as well as well intentioned
The rule I use is: If there is a way where openness & a straightforward approach can work, this must be the answer. Otherwise political solution is no solution.
But there are times when there's no choice, when circumstances no longer permit open honesty to get results without even greater damage.
When others determine the agenda, & you are cornered, the most effective method is to see how they operate & use their methods back on them, but only on them. (Eg when the boss is weak & you have been employed to clear up a problem). Onlookers will forgive you for this necessity & will be grateful for dealing with a problem that could have come their way as well as exposing the futility of being manipulative & unkind when faced with someone cute enough to teach them a lesson using the rules they had laid down.
At the risk of being a real bore, the contents of another article(see below) in the series is attached. The situation was real one at what was called the Unigate Dairy, Chadwell, Near London that used to employ 2,000 people. I was a predecessor of the manager who solved the problem & he had been advised by me on the method the article reports. If he had not used a political solution the ring would have won so leaving the place as bad as it had always been. They deliberately set things up to snare honest open people because they do not want to be managed properly, or at all.
I was a classic victim of the distaste & unwillingness to operate this way. It was no game because the stakes-- career etc-- were far higher although humour could, & did , survive alongside deliberate seriousness.
All the best,
Regards,
Charles Cawley.
Managing fraud without rocking the boat
by Charles CawleyThe question of fraud is often swept under the carpet for career reasons. Inappropriate revelations about theft and implied mismanagement by directors arising from precipitative fraud busting activities of juniors can swiftly put an end to budding career prospects.
In a recent edition of Fraud Intelligence the Information Landscape Technique was introduced as a useful tool in the fight against fraud. Responding to generated interest, a few remarks about one revealed pattern and how to deal with the situation it betrayed might be of use. The knack is to deal with fraud by use of careful management technique without wrecking your career.
There are various types of clique from the pyramid, complete with clique master, to radial, ring and molecular patterns with inter-linked rings. Different relationship orderings require handling in different ways. It is relatively easy to deal with a radial clique with one kingpin who has good links with several independent people, but it is far more difficult to finish off a ring clique.
Without the Landscape Technique these relationships often remain secret, but even with it, once you have reason to suspect, what can you do, short of funking the task as others have done, once a dreaded ring rears its ugly head? Solutions do exist; an ornate example is given below.
The problem
Imagine you have landed a new management position, but to your dismay you quickly understand why the appointment had been sold so hard to you. The pay is good, holiday entitlement excellent, but the problem is very nasty. You have been instructed to clear up the Distribution Department and in amongst the chaos you have inherited, is a ring. You find four junior managers who seem all the best of friends, and all appear to be members of their own private club. In addition you are told they have been very friendly for several years. You are between the devil and the deep blue sea. If you act, and the truth of what they have been doing over the years comes out, you risk the anger of your superiors, but by inaction you will stand accused of failing to manage. This situation is quite common in industry: an example might be of use.
This story came from the Dairy industry where weak management persisted for decades in a background of easy money created by the milk quota system. The tendency developed to duck management issues so long as acceptable profits rolled in. If the shareholders are happy, why burst a gut and risk your career to make them even richer? Junior managers grasped the opportunity to increment their salaries by fraud and theft, gambling that senior managers preferred a risk-free quiet life of non-management and non-decision taking.
The ring in question was not a forum for good friends to meet and enjoy each others company, but persisted to participate in a fraud, cover tracks and to watch and protect each others backs. The detail of the fraud need not be explained here, suffice say, it exploited a failure to use delivery notes for bottled milk consignments from the plant to the distribution depots. It was easy to slip a daily extra few pallets onto vehicles and split the proceeds between the distribution manager, the depot managers and the rounds-men. Frequent pallet drops, breakages and line stoppages served to confuse stock control efforts at the plant so making fraudulent stock returns an easy matter to expedite. The chaos that can be caused by a dropped pallet of full milk bottles has to be seen to be believed.
The fraud was substantial with a conservative stock shrinkage and loss of sales estimated close to £2 million. The new manager had an additional problem in that it appeared two of the clique members were protected, one having a daughter working as a PA to a director at head-office and another who appeared to be very close friends with the Union Convenor. Into this ghastly situation marched the new manager.
Although he had sufficient information to act within the law and dismiss them all, he knew any such act would have led to his swift departure either by union or head-office action. As industry justice would have it, more likely than not, the clique members would then have had their dismissals swiftly rescinded. The temptation to promote one and not the rest would not have worked, that would have been too obvious to these time-served thieves. They would have shared out the money, laughed at his pathetic effort to drive a wedge between them and then pulled the levers at their disposal to remove this pathetic attempt of a manager for trying to get them to toe the line.
The solution
The beleaguered manager chose a simple and ornate solution. He first noticed that the clique had a golden rule, never branch or sneak on your mates. A cloak of secrecy is nearly always essential for fraud and theft. Information theft through suppression is perhaps the most common device used by fraudsters. Internal clique discipline and intimidation of uninvolved peers normally run concurrently. In this case the gang of four had made full use of these techniques.
The aim was always to ensure the manager could not stop them from their lucrative activity by depriving him of the necessary information to make directed use of his authority. For these fraudsters the ideal boss would be one who just held onto their job and left them alone to get on with their profitable syphonage. The key was to make it look as if one of the four had broken the golden rule and turned informer.
The least competent member of the clique was detailed to help the new senior manager and hold his hand at weekly plant meetings. It was explained this was for training purposes as well as to help the new boss learn the ropes, and would entail extra work to write up the proceeds for the distribution departments records. There was no pay rise, no signs of status, and only the opportunity to report back to his colleagues. Come the first meeting, he shied off sick. However he attended the following two weeks. The excluded three began to get serious doubts. Most of us know or can guess what it feels like to be excluded from meetings. Had he done a deal to sell his partners in crime down the river to secure his job? Could they afford even the possibility this could have happened? At this stage the beleaguered manager, following a set plan, took two days off.
On the evening of the first night a security guard was tipped off to check the incompetents car. It appeared he had been caught stealing stock with a case of company property in the boot. The fellow was dismissed on the spot and could not inform on the real goings on of the ring- after all, who listens to someone seemingly caught in the act? The clique was beginning to lose its grip.
The rest of the workforce was highly amused. For years they had been intimidated by the corrupt four. And here, after only a few weeks, they seemed to be turning on themselves like sharks tearing at one another crazed by the scent of blood. Natural Justice, as in he had it coming, is often most pleasing to a workforce. If they suspect this was caused by careful work of a manager, but they cannot work out how he did it, overnight he will garner serious respect. People started telling the manager more about what was going on and so his information status rocketed, giving him all he needed to use his authority in a practical directed manner.
Senior managers were equally delighted because they were dreading the day that the truth might come out, revealing their years of spinelessness and inability to snuff out the fraud when they could and should have done so. But no mention of this embarrassment came out with the departure of the miscreant. Here was a manager who was not only managing but was protecting their reputation to boot. Ring members felt even closer in the aftermath of such a dramatic display of clique discipline. They surmised the new manager was obviously weak and a bit of a fool to think he could successfully use a crawler to spy for him. The stage was set for another assault because they remained convinced the new manager had been taught a lesson for trying to use such a simple trick.
Cliques normally require at least three people to operate effectively so another member had to be removed or neutralised. Here it is worth noting the nature of status. A status sign indicates how much an individual is thought to be worth listening to. The chosen method was simple. All three had company cars due for renewal. A deal was struck with the lease company to provide three identical cars but one with the extra of a sunroof. The word was put out that supply problems caused this irregularity and the rogue sunroof had come free of charge from the supplier to clinch the order.
A status sign is an indication of how much someone is listened to: the sunroof car was allocated to the clique member targetted for transfer or dismissal. The unstated implication was, of course, that he also had turned into a management spy. Status manipulation is a potent and very effective method of splitting up cliques. Of course the ideal is not dismissal, and in this case the individual was transferred to another site without the remaining clique members taking action against the manager. With only two remaining, the fraud collapsed.
Conclusion
All too often fraud is tolerated because the cost to an individual's career can be too great to be seen to be taking action to stop it. Loss of face on the part of superiors and worse, potentially difficult questions from shareholders or fund managers is a nightmare for directors. The last thing they want is to appear incompetent or even worse, to seem less able to solve problems than junior staff who foolishly leap in and do the honest thing bringing some scandal out into the open. Time-served directors do not take kindly towards such people. They consider them whistle-blowers choosing to treat them in an honoured tradition of ingratitude. Monstrous injustice is often the only reward for those seeking to protect shareholder interests ahead of the career priorities of directors and senior managers.
The detection of fraud is one thing, but almost as important is the management skill required to deal with fraud without drawing the fire of frightened directors onto the fraud buster. However, as with the information Landscape technique, system can come to the rescue. The way this nasty ring was broken apart is one example of a series of systematic approaches available to root out fraud without a manager being made to pay for it with their career.
Such techniques not only make the workforce far easier to manage but often draw undiluted admiration from superiors and can easily be a first step, not to dismissal but the exact opposite, launching individuals on the way greater things.
Charles Cawley is Managing Consultant at Gateway Logistics. 26 Hatton Garden EC1N 8BR The above is a condensation of a theme explored in The New Information Landscape.
Note
Status manipulation is sometimes used very negatively. In one company it was common practice to evict managers from their offices on some pretext such as refurbishment. They would then be expected to work from a shared desk or some low status room. The effect sent out a message: "This person is not listened to." In turn other mangers stopped talking to him, so his information standing dropped and with that he was no longer able to use his authority in a directed manner. The choice was simple- either to try to carry on and risk inevitable misjudgements and wrong decisions or to stop taking decisions at all. In the former case, he would mismanage and in the latter, he would not manage. Status removal made his departure a fait accompli. Management skills are open to use or abuse but status manipulation can be an excellent item in the armoury of good managers once it is clearly understood.
Preceding Article by Charles Cawley is used by his permission.
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