Organisational Bullshit

Every organisation, regardless of whether it is large or small, private or public, civil or military, educational, commercial, religious or political, faces a chronic problem of bullshit that undermines organizational order and morale. It is, therefore, a subject that has to be understood if any organisation is to prosper.

Bullshit may seem a dirty word, but there is, unfortunately, no other word which so precisely describes this ugly phenomenon. It can be best described as: the efforts of the subordinate members of an organisation to deliberately sell or promote misleading or motivated information to their superiors. Other words like alibis, excuses, etc. are inadequate and feeble. Bullshitting is practiced by almost all people, sometimes unconsciously, but usually with quite intentional purpose.

As India has to now compete in the global arena many old customs will need to be discarded. Bullshitting continues to remain one of the critical problem areas of any organisation every manager must be armed to defend himself against the practitioners of this dangerous game.

Organisational bullshit can be identified in several distinct forms:

Type I: Instruction Indigestion:

The staff of every organization get used to routines and like to do the things they want to do. So if they are instructed to do something different will find ingenious ways to adapt their new instructions to the routines that they do not want to change. They will continue to do what they did before, and either proceed to bullshit their superiors by meekly pretending that they did not understand the new instructions, or they will loudly proclaim that they had understood them perfectly, but had used their initiative to adapt these to the so-called practical realities of the situation.

Type II: Reprocessed Bullshit:

When staff members are required to actually do something i.e. increase employees effectiveness, hold prices from suppliers, retrench surplus staff, improve dealers service, etc. they encounter stiff resistance from employees, suppliers and dealers who try to bullshit them that the new requirements are impractical or fraught with dangers. They will detail their terrible problems and/or their great past record of loyalty, sacrifice etc. Staff required to enforce the rules will try to project good external postures of representing the organisations’ interests by thumping the table etc. but will, in fact, listen very attentively to all the excuses offered by those affected because, it will be the very same excuse that they will use in their turn to defend their inability to get others to do what they should.

Type III: Simulated Motion:

When staff members are required to solve problems, they are faced with anxieties that the problems may be bigger than they can handle. As they do not like to admit their inadequacies, they may either bullshit their superiors by diverting their attention to lesser problems that they can solve, or alternatively they may create an entirely new problem so to divert management attention without doing a thing about their new orders. This latter stratagem also has the advantage of providing staff with many opportunities to meet their superiors and appear well before them.

Actually no seasoned bullshitter will ever try to solve the real problems, because a solution would automatically deprive them of an area of future opportunity. They would typically travel thousands of miles, attend hundreds of meetings and seminars by the dozen, without ever spending enough time at any point to actually do anything. Organisations infested with simulated motion therefore keep jumping from one problem to another without ever getting any nearer to the resolution of the basic issues.

Type IV: Diabolic Defecation:

When things go wrong, the staff accountable for the problems have to be especially inventive to find acceptable reasons to defend their past action or inaction, as the case may be. A favourite device is to find a ‘devil’ on whom the entire blame can be heaped. All nations blame the `foreign hand’ all staff will blame anyone but themselves. If a suitable ‘devil’ proves difficult to create, a ‘sacrificial goat’ with a few unfortunates compelled to resign or be dismissed may suffice for a short period. Once a suitable ‘devil’ is created, the concerned staff are spared detailed scrutiny into their own shortcomings.

A popular alternative to the ‘devil’ is the ‘magic wand’ where both managements and staff try to vigorously bullshit their critics that a miraculous answer is just over the horizon. The new plant, the new dynamic manager, the famous consultant or the radical staff reorganisation will be greedily accepted and proclaimed as the final solution to the nagging problem. As a rule the best ‘devils’ or ‘magic wands’ are rather intangible and abstract. The creation of a perfect ‘devil’ or ‘magic wand’ can ensure that both they and the problem can survive in perpetuity.

Type V: Congestive Constipation:

When staff members feel sufficiently secure in their routines and confident that they cannot be removed, they are reluctant to take up any new responsibilities as these would disturb their comfortable ritual activity. They will, therefore, either plead their inability to handle the new task with elaborately contrived incompetence, or alternatively, try to persuade their superiors that this cannot be done unless they have more budgets, more staff, more technicians and, of course, more elevated designations. This bloating is the bane of all bureaucracies, resulting in more and more staff doing less and less actual work.

Type VI: Decision Diarrhoea:

It often happens that the problem starts with the management itself. Staff soon learn that their assessments can be measured on some other scale than the obvious ones of efficiency or productivity. A production supervisor may, for example, discern that though he is supposed to run the line effectively and get the best output per man per day, his organisation is, in fact, sensitive only to the problem of production stoppage, and that he can with impunity be very inefficient, and so long as the production line does not actually come to a grinding halt. His marketing counterpart similarly learns that the cost of sales is not so important as long as he can meet the target numbers.

Really skillful bullshitters will run their areas of responsibility on a ‘constant crisis’ basis, so that their imaginative efforts to rescue the organisation from the grip of their own incompetence or cleverness will be of such relief to their superiors that they will continually increase their appreciation of their value. Such operators usually cause their managements to make more and more ad hoc decisions, which in turn, give them ever-widening opportunities for exploitation.

Type VII: Floating on flatulence.

Some enterprising managers learn that the management skills of their bosses are actually a lot of gas and that their weaknesses of egos, lack of ideas and need of achievements can be easily exploited to propel them fast up the management tree. Bosses who want to succeed but do not know how to can be very vulnerable to `brilliant ideas’ presented by inventive subordinates. They, in turn, see these as ways to con their bosses up the ladder right up to the board of directors. It may take months or years before the hollowness of the `idea’ is exposed but the time is long enough for the `idea’ to move the initiator closer to higher management as well as several increments past his less imaginative colleagues. Having made a reputation as a `Whiz Kid’ he can quit the organization before his scheme fails and get a much better job elsewhere. It becomes all the easier if the top management tycoons are ageing bureaucrats, well born yuppies or political appointees who lack real knowledge about the organisation.

The above examples have been mainly drawn from industrial situations, but the same basic principles apply to government bodies, armed services and political parties. In fact, the wild claims of politicians are not just their efforts to bullshit the public but frequently reflect real beliefs based on the bullshitting from their own party workers.

There are also mutations that appear in studies between public sector and private sector organisations. The former can find excellent shields like social commitment, public interest, security concerns, etc., to disguise poor performance and in the last resort there is always some contradiction in the rules and procedures which will allow unchallenged bullshitting. Practitioners in the private sector can in their turn, conveniently refer to any foreign text book for an untried modern management concept which he can then use with equal impunity.

Bullshit is not only a problem for managements, it is equally a headache for trade unions. In fact, trade unions are in the unenviable position of having to simultaneously receive and promote a virtually continuous deluge of bullshit concerning their member’s problems and concerns. There are also many regional variations. In Bengal an employee unwilling to do something will find a hundred reasons why it cannot be done. His Punjabi counterpart will adopt a more positive and helpful posture of saying ‘certainly it will be done tomorrow’ and will later present excellent reasons for not doing it. The Tamilian will try to make out that he has been doing it all along.

There are also many international ramifications. In England an unwilling worker will demand his customary rights to go to the pub or to have a cuppa. The American can usually be persuaded to do anything by appealing to his Patriotic all-American-anti-Communist/ Fundamentalist-Democratic—Frontier spirit. The Swiss will do nothing until the price is right and then both the price and work will be tops. Germans will diligently follow the rule. Japanese will pretend to be doing nothing while, in fact, working overtime to make a better device. The Chinese will try to sell it at half the cost.

After detailed statistical evaluation, researchers have now established a thumb-rule ‘ bullshit factor’. In most situations it has been found that all forecasts of quantity or time should be divided or multiplied by three as applicable. So the estimates of crop losses or numbers killed in police encounters can be divided by three and estimates of time needed to complete a project should be multiplied by three. It has also been found that if there are more than one bullshitter in the chain of communications, then a further factor of three can be provided.

Bullshitting is usually a game played by those in subordinate positions to mislead their superiors. This situation is generally found in the relations between employees and their employers but applies equally to employers in their relations to still higher authorities. Bullshitting of the finest vintage is often evident in applications for licenses, appeals for concessions, tax returns, etc. Equal virtuosity is evident when Government has to give explanations to their Ministries or when Ministers have to answer to Parliament or to their electorates.

The pervasive influence of bullshitting also invaded the privacy of domestic households as is evident in the spluttering bombast of husbands accountable to their spouses for increasing the domestic income. The roles are exactly reversed when wives are, in turn held accountable for household expenditures.

The pernicious and insidious influence of bullshitters can gradually reduce any organisation to one of flabby chaos with staff members engaged in vigorous visible activity directed to no real purposeful objectives. After short bursts of enthusiastic reform most organisations adjust themselves to their bullshitters who are digested into the organic structure. Bullshit is then institutionalised into expert committees or commissions, research programmes, management theories, rights and duties, traditions, etc. Once these ‘sacred cows’ are firmly established, staff members can comfortably relax in their routines and bullshit becomes the only ‘end product’ that the organisation can be depended on to produce. Holy Cow!!