Category: Corporate World (Page 5 of 13)

So, in the old days, companies built out huge, elaborate structures. They had tons of management layers. Why? In short, they wanted to prevent communication between leaders and workers. What better way to do that than force workers to go through 3 or 4 layers of bureaucrats before they get to anyone who could make a real decision?

But that got way too expensive for them. In the neoliberal era, companies started targeting middle managers (and other people who don’t work  – but don’t have the power to fight back) for layoffs. They did so mainly due to pressure to cut costs. Sure, companies can lay off their actual workers. But that has certain limits. You can’t lay off everyone who does real work. That would also eliminate profits!

We can’t have that now, can we?

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So, businesses love hosting events! But they often name those events ironically. Sometimes even in an Orwellian manner.

Anyone following the Starbucks union drive probably read about this. According to the coverage, Starbucks held mandatory ‘listening sessions.’ In theory, a company holds these sessions to hear feedback from its workers. In practice, and in the Starbucks case, companies use them for propaganda sessions.

That’s a slap in the face, but it’s hardly unusual. That’s how many companies play it. They hold propaganda sessions and call them ‘listening sessions.’ They hold lectures and call them ‘town halls.’ Normally a town hall implies some kind of back and forth between leaders (or politicians) and staff (or voters). Not so in corporate world!

Why does this happen? Sometimes, as in the case of Starbucks, it’s probably so a company can make itself look better. At least to the public, but perhaps to its employees. But often it comes from much more ‘ordinary’ forces in the corporate world. Companies create a (pseudo) intellectual veneer by giving their lectures fancy names like ‘town halls.’ And then there’s the fact that corporate HR is often full of people who simply have no idea what the words mean.

So they just use whichever word stands out as trendy.

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Welcome back to the Corporate Politics 101 series! In my previous post, I updated the infamous Peter Principle for the 2020s. Whereas employees used to rise to their level of incompetence, now they leave and perform the role badly for a different company! Project managers and middle managers unite…and become lateral hires.

In this post, I’ll look at a corollary to the previous one. Since lots of bad managers hop ship to a different company, competence tends to drop as one looks up the corporate hierarchy.

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I think quite a few old timers know about the Peter Principle. But for anyone who doesn’t, the basic idea is that people keep getting promoted for doing a good job until they get to a level in the corporate hierarchy where they can’t do a good job. And so, they stagnate at that level. Stated simply, the Peter Principle says that people ‘rise to their level of incompetence.’

Neat trick, right?

Does it still work in the 2020s? Sort of. The major difference now is that people rarely stick around at the same company long enough to fulfill the Peter Principle. At the very least, they spend only a few years at their level of incompetence. Maybe they stick it out for 5-10 years. And then they make a parallel move to a new company!

That shows the need for an updated Peter Principle. When people hit their level of incompetence, they go to a new company and perform the job incompetently over there.

What’s fun about today’s corporate world is that HR plays directly into this. By requiring years of experience in a job to get hired into that job, HR discourages good employees from applying for a promotion into a job they might do well. Instead, they hire experienced, but mediocre, middle managers and project managers.

Go figure.

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I think most Americans over the age of 35 watched Office Space at some point. But quite a few of my readers are under 35 and missed it. So, yeah, the film’s 20+ years ago. Maybe some of the references strike us as dated. But the movie sure was right. About more or less everything.

Office Space talked about bullshit jobs well before Graeber got around to it. The characters in the film still exist in many companies. And as for the basic corporate structure – the way companies divide between competent workers and foolish leaders? Yeah, it still works about like that.

And so, I’d highly recommend readers watch Office Space again (or for the first time). It goes well with some of my posts on corporate ideology and on the Great Resignation. It sheds lots of light on the white-collar world.

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