Ever since Samuel Johnson famously proposed that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” last-refuge quotes, such as Isaac Asimov’s “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent,” have been popular.
I have to follow Ambrose Bierce’s lead on this subject, though: In both cases, far from being the last refuges, they are the first.
Which leads to this week’s attempt at aphoristic immortality: “Coercion is the first refuge of the lazy.” (Yes, I do recognize that Freecell is the real first refuge. Chalk it up to artistic license.)
Why is it that, when faced with a choice between coercion and persuasion, threats and promises, penalties and incentives, so many managers place their faith in coercion, threats, and penalties?
I have three hypotheses, and they aren’t mutually exclusive.
Laziness is the first, hence the aphorism. “Do it because I said so,” takes less time and effort than persuading someone it’s a good idea. “Or else” — using fear as the primary incentive, takes less time and effort than figuring out how to translate the desired action into employee benefit. And punishing an employee for failure is much, much easier than the hard work of discovering what went wrong and addressing the root causes of failure.
My second hypothesis is that some managers are either unable or unwilling to hire well. Maybe they’re too cheap; maybe they’re poor judges of talent, character and drive; maybe they’re too lazy. It’s possible they don’t want to hire anyone who might show them up.
For whatever reason, they hire second- and third-raters — employees who, left to their own devices, would while away their days ignoring the work to be done, showing little interest in accomplishing anything of value and less initiative in figuring out better ways of doing so.
Employees whose bovine personalities are a perfect match to their manager’s preference for the cattle prod as a motivational tool.
That leaves one more explanation — a near-complete lack of self-confidence.
This might seem counter-intuitive, because those who rely on coercion generally appear crisp and self-assured.
And yet, the no-self-confidence theory is consistent with leaders creating environments in which ideas for improving their plans are unwelcome and expressions of concern are forbidden. It accounts for the emphasis on threats and punishment: Leaders who have no confidence in the direction they set and plans they’ve developed won’t want to explain why they’re good ideas, probably worry their response to challenges will sound bland and unconvincing, and certainly anticipate that nobody in their right mind would do as they ask without threats of reprisals.
These, of course, are just hypotheses. Even the most thesis-hungry MBA candidate is unlikely to try to test any of them.
From your perspective, their importance is in how they might guide introspection: If you see these tendencies in your own behavior, understanding why you have them will help you overcome them.
And that is important, because coercion has no place in a healthy organization — a proposition that’s more easily proven than, for example, the Pythagorean Theorem:
- In healthy organizations, excellent employees, individually and working in teams, presented with a terrific idea and a well-thought-out plan for implementing it, will want to make it real and will work hard to do so.
- Therefore, in healthy organizations, coercion, threats, and punishments are, at best, superfluous.
- Therefore, if employees who are presented with an idea and a plan don’t want to make it real and/or aren’t willing to work hard to do so … if, in other words, coercion, threats, and punishments are necessary … then the organization is unhealthy in one or more of these respects:
- The employees are not individually excellent.
- Employees’ sense of teamwork is inadequate.
- The idea is less than terrific.
- The plan won’t work.
One more conclusion is entirely clear: Recruiting excellent employees, developing and maintaining teams and a sense of teamwork, setting the right direction, and creating realistic plans, all are part of the management job description.
Therefore, if coercion, threats and punishment are needed for an organization to function, it’s a symptom of bad management.
And it highlights a distinction that seems vague and nuancy in theory but is clear and distinct in practice:
In a healthy organization, accountability is clear, but there’s never a need to “hold employees accountable.”
In unhealthy organizations, the reverse is true.
Looking for “holding the employees accountable” and a fuzzy accountability are signs for a bad management.
This demonstration looks like the resolution on a 3rd degree equation.
First a thought on the meaning of “excellent”. In many cases, a more appropriate terminology might be “excellent fit”. It seems to me anyway, that employees might exhibit all of the attributes of excellence in one environment, but not in another. Additionally, an idiotic plan presented to idiots and syncophants will sometimes be accepted with relish and implemented (though perhaps poorly) with zeal.
I vote for a combination of “leader” laziness, -of-confidence, and also inappropriate selfishness as primary causes of the failure of plans to be accepted and implemented. Management decisions and plans are too-often motivated by whatever makes the life of the manger easier, and/or whatever is in the manger’s best personal interests. The best interests of the organization, the firm, and the shareholders often come far behind. The lack-of-confidence often comes in because the manager can’t articulate why one path was chosen over others… or even articulate what were the other candidate paths. Lack-of-confidence also helps one get to this position because a generous helping of it will prevent the “leader” from getting factual, strategic, tactical, and innovative input before the decision is made or the plan set.
My favorite management edict is “Get it done,” meant to be succinct, leaderly and stylish, but loaded with subtle, unspoken threats (“…or else”).
Bob,
I suspect that healthy/unhealthy is not a dichotomy but a continuum with various over all levels of health from very good to very bad. I also suspect some unhealthyness is temporary (like having a cold) and that others are more permanent (like having diabetes) and that part of an organization can be unhealthy while the rest is relatively healthy (like haveing a broken arm) which effects overall organizational effectivness and efficiency, but is not catastrophic.
One also has to wonder what caused the unhealthyness. I tend to agree with those who suggest that organizational health is a reflection of those who manage it. But I also know that when I am in a conversation and am thinking to myself s/he just doesn’t get it, that the other person is typically thinking exactly the same thing.
Ray
There’s another possibility, also not mutually exclusive with the others: they were raised and/or trained that way. I.e., it became ingrained long before they were in a position to apply punishment, etc. My mother-in-law (really, this is true) was raised by her parents to think violent punishment was the only way to raise children, and raised hers accordingly. There’s no reason to think that this sort of introduction to persuasion technique wouldn’t apply to managers, too.
Employees whose bovine personalities are a perfect match to their manager’s preference for the cattle prod as a motivational tool.
This provocative statement (to a dairy veterinarian like myself) got me to thinking about how far we can stretch the analogy of dairy cows as employees. At any rate, use of a cattle prod on cows is evidence of all the same failures in management that you list regarding coercion of human employees.
There is one exception, and it might apply to people too. When a cow is down and unable to rise due to a medical condition (typically hypocalcemia), she may be too discouraged to stand even after correcting the medical problem. In that case, surprising her with a prod may make her stand before she realizes it. It is the surprise that works the magic, not the pain.
I bet you could work the analogy back the other direction to people – i.e punishment to provide pain does not work, but a sharp painful shock might supply needed stimulus and focus. Occasionally a kick in the rear is the most loving gift a friend or boss can give.
wile away, to spend or pass (time), esp. in a leisurely or pleasurable fashion: to wile away the long winter nights.
Unless you are in a family business, it would seem the exception that a lazy person rises to a management level. In the past coercion was the first resort of those with low self-esteem – your lack of self-confidence type. In today’s world Sociologist data shows a large increase in Narcissism – especially in the Millennial Generation. I see coercion as the first resort of the Narcissist. They believe they are entitled to be right about everything and thus can not tolerate input that would put this to question. They look to surround themselves with team members who are willing to become just like them. So not only do they demean those that would question their plans, they also demean and seek to coerce those that do not behave like them into changing into their mini-me alter egos in order to survive. One can explain a lot of the incredibly poor decision making from Enron to Tyco to the recent Wall Street meltdowns by the rise of the Narcissist to senior positions and the resulting lack of questioning even when the emperor is obviously naked.
Bob,
I agree with “First Refuge” but as often is the case, I find the comment “developing and maintaining teams and a sense of teamwork” troubling. Good employees, clear direction, reasonable plans that match resource to task are all independent inputs. “Teamwork” is not. In my experience, teamwork developes when encouraged and supported but only when direction is clear AND challenging, and the task is reasonable–although not necessarily a sure thing–in plan and resourcees. Take out challenging, in the extreme a task that several team members feel they could do by themselves, and teamwork becomes bureaucracy, work sessions become text messaging conglomerations, and morale, to be technical, sucks.
I question whether teamwork exists, as a development effort for people or in practice, without the context of the other elements. On the otherhand, teamwork around a worthwhile task often overcomes less than perfect staffing, direction that turns out to have been incomplete or askew, plans that must evolve to meet circumstances and handle surprises, and resouces much tighter than thought.
I learned from a brilliant manager to manage for success rather than failure. To wit: if we want ‘correct’ behavior we need to define it and reward it.
The correlary is what we do: define what isn’t allowed and punish what we get.
It must be awfully difficult for man to reward good instead of punish bad.
Excellent analysis–should be required reading at least once a year for all managers, top to bottom.
I must have a great team of people! They are always willing to work, want to keep busy, and do a fantastic job. We are responsible for both operations and development for a large data store. I have had my share of poor employees that came recommended to me by others and eventually I had to fire them or convince them to leave. I don’t use threats and prefer open communication with everyone equally giving their input on ideas and problem solving. That gives everyone a say and gets buy in on a project. For those projects that seem silly, we just have a laugh about it and do it anyway. We have lots of code that has never been fully implemented by the upstream system because it was requested foolishly by our product people. I can’t say the same for the rest of the company but my little world seems okay!
No argument about it being a spectrum rather than a dichotomy.
Not sure how important the how-we-got-here question is. What to do about it now that we’re here would seem to be more significant.
– Bob
No argument, teamwork isn’t an end in and of itself, and there are plenty of tasks that are assigned to “teams” that would be better assigned to individuals.
Still, in a modern work environment it’s a rare responsibility that one person can fully accomplish. Once work has to move from one employee to the next to be successfully accomplished, the individuals in question had better trust each other and share common goals (a pretty good definition of “team”) or the work will fall apart.
– Bob
I have worked on my own (rather happily) for 10 years now. I went on my own because I found the wrong things amusing in the corporate world. For example, when questioning a decision or plan being put forward by the top brass, they would say: “Don’t get smart”. At that point I knew that they had already made a decision – as pointed out above – that was entirely driven by their own a) lazyness or, more commonly b) their own self interest (company and team be damned).
I found the expression “Don’t get smart” amusing (and frustrating) because it is the same as saying “I need you to be stupid”. In short, the only way their argument would carry the day was if everyone sat there stupidly… did not question… and allowed them to carry on their self interest agenda. That was not something I wanted to be part of.
Ray’s comment leads right into my observation: While coercive managers may appear self-assured, their self-assurance is mostly unjustified–they’re just incompetent managers wielding what we called in my Navy days the “bigger, better hammer.” I’d disagree with Bob’s assessment that they even appear to be “crisp”–all the ones I’ve known have been tightly-wound and fraying at the edges (until they unravelled completely).
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“Yes, I do recognize that Freecell is the real first refuge”
It’s Freecell that reminds me that what looks like a hopeless situation often is not.