Do you work for a psychopath? Someone who’s just plain nuts? One of the crazies mentioned last week?

Nuance is an overused word and underused way of looking at the world. Our thinking about mental illness could, for example, use much more of it. There are those who think we create syndromes for every idiosyncrasy that’s a decimal point away from some mythical state of normalcy – that we use syndromes as excuses so nobody is responsible for anything they do. It’s the syndrome’s fault, and there must be a medication to take care of it.

There are also those who consider the increased diagnosis of mental illnesses to be progress … a way to understand people who do suffer from very real medical and psychological challenges and need help, not criticism or opprobrium.

Then there’s Jon Ronson and his book The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (2011). Ronson manages to avoid, not only both extremes, but the “fairness trap” as well. He doesn’t take a middle ground. He takes a nuanced ground, where the conditions and syndromes we all know about are both real and tragic when they happen, and over-diagnosed and often over-medicated as well.

It’s a world where attention deficit disorder can be both a real problem for real human beings, and a convenient excuse for not paying attention for others who are perfectly capable of paying attention if they didn’t have ADD to fall back on.

It’s a world where criminal profiling yields both startling successes and alarming miscarriages of justice.

And, it’s a world where Robert Hare’s PCL-R checklist provides both real and useful help in recognizing seriously dangerous individuals, and is also over-used by armchair experts who cheerfully label as psychopaths anyone who isn’t as sympathetic as we might prefer, including not a few business executives, and the crazies described in last week’s column.

The PCL-R checklist, in case you’ve never heard of it, is the gold standard diagnostic for sociopathy (or psychopathy … the terms are interchangeable). It lists symptoms like impulsiveness, lack of empathy or remorse, and pathological lying as key indicators of the syndrome.

Oddly enough, it appears true psychopaths are not “bad people” in any meaningful use of the word “bad.” Psychopathy apparently has a physiological cause – an under-active amygdala compared to “normal” human beings, which very likely is why their ability to feel and respond to emotion is so limited. It’s a real and thus-far untreatable condition.

This makes them no less dangerous, of course. If you work for or with someone who has these tendencies, the only trust you can put in them is your trust in the predictability of their behavior … namely, that they’ll do whatever they feel like doing without compunction, scruples, or concern over the possible consequences.

And it’s worse, because true psychopaths are superb manipulators. They’re charming, glib, and excellent at figuring out the levers and buttons they can pull and push to get people to do as they’d like.

Including you, unless and until you catch on. And when you do, there will be nothing you can do about it as you watch executives, managers and employees all around the company fall for it. And if you raise a red flag, they’ll brand you as a backstabber.

Office psychopaths are better at manipulating than you are at persuading. As playing someone else’s game is for chumps, you’re better off not trying.

If you take the time to learn the PCL-R checklist you’ll be surprised at how many of the top people in your company score high. It’s a scary thing.

But if you take the time to read The Psychopath Test you’ll realize something else as well: If you apply the checklist to someone you dislike, you’ll focus on those behaviors that match up to it, while ignoring the ones that don’t, just as, applying that same checklist to someone you like, you’ll do the exact opposite.

It’s something we humans do all the time – latch on to whatever evidence supports our preconceived notions while filtering out or finding reasons to wave off whatever doesn’t.

So the next time the company crazy does something that … well, that drives you crazy, try to consciously reverse your filters. See the world through the crazy’s eyes. Empathize.

You might find they aren’t horrible psychopaths after all. They might just be doing what they have to do to deal with the pressures some other psychopath puts them under.

Craziness can be good. Positive feedback loops can be good. It’s like steak and hot fudge … two good things that aren’t so good when you put them together.

Many businesses need their crazies. They’re the movers and shakers who combine a willingness to do the outrageous with a complete lack of fear. They put the company in harm’s way, forcing everyone else to figure out how to make things work that didn’t seem possible until the consequences of failure made them possible after all.

Without their crazies, many companies would fall into complacency, coasting along until all momentum is lost and the company either closes its doors or is bought by some other, larger company whose executives want no part of craziness either.

The problem with craziness is that every time a crazy does something crazy and it works, it ratchets up the positive feedback loop — the loop that says, “This works, so I should do more of it.”

It’s the loop that says if 16 ounce sirloins are popular, 64 ounce sirloins will be even more popular … and hey, here’s an idea: Let’s just put a steer on a plate instead.

And so it happens that at some stage in a company’s life, its resident crazy publicly commits it to selling a perpetual motion machine … something it can’t build because it can’t be built, but which would be so popular in the marketplace that when the company fails to deliver the goods, it must be the fault of those close-minded engineers who aren’t willing to consider the possibilities.

It must be their fault because it can’t be the crazy’s fault. It can’t be, because part of being a crazy is that everyone is afraid of them. They’re willing to do anything and everything necessary to get their way, and over time they’ve built up so much political capital by making things happen that even the company’s top executives are afraid to rein them in for fear the board of directors will side with the crazy.

Something else about crazies: While they’re very good at insisting other people take responsibility, they’re the best excuse-makers in the galaxy, exceeding even the Flarpswenkers of Tau Ceti IV, who are so good at it that people (well, entities) pay good gimtarkers just to hear them blame-shift.

The crazies, after all, have a track record, so if their next flash of inspiration doesn’t work out as planned, it must be Someone Else’s Fault, and that someone must be Held Accountable for failing to get the job done.

No matter where you sit in the company you’ve probably been the crazy’s victim, because the crazies of the business world have no respect for reporting relationships. If they want something from someone, they ask them directly.

No, that’s not right. The crazy doesn’t ask you. He (or she) tells you. Whatever else you were working on doesn’t matter, because whatever the crazy wants is your top priority if you want to keep your job.

Your existing assignments and responsibilities, which your manager has delegated to you so your workload more or less matches your capacity? When dealing with a Crazy you understand you now have two full-time jobs — the one defined by your manager, and whatever the crazy’s next whim says it is.

Change seats. You’re now the CIO. What can you do about a crazy? Very little, which is better than nothing at all.

One possibility, which has little chance of success but it can’t hurt to try, is to reform the crazy just enough to protect your staff. Your message: Whatever the need, ask you, and you’ll assign it personally, making sure the very best person gets the assignment.

Good luck with that, but what the heck.

Your other alternative is to be patronizing … not with the crazy, but with the CEO about the crazy. Commiserate frequently about the need to accommodate the craziness, even when it means scheduled, important work is put on hold for a while.

Because really, if you and the CEO agree that disrupting the plan is okay, you can tell your employees they don’t have to work double shifts to handle their regular workload and the crazy.

That should get you by until the crazy eventually self-destructs. Which will happen, because if there’s one other thing crazies have in common, it’s a complete lack of regard for building and maintaining relationships.

And that, eventually, is politically fatal in even the craziest environments.