It’s no great secret that most people dislike their corporate jobs, and yet aren’t quite willing to commit to the insanely higher workload of having their own company. Many of us take the middle path, which is working on contract, because although we don’t get benefits we also don’t have to put up with that feeling that our career hinges on the personalities involved. As a contractor, you see many workplaces, and over time, you start to see the patterns in function and dysfunction which regulate them.
The type I’m going to talk about today is the office ruled by what I call “the inflexible devotee.” This person looks at a company as a long-term investment, and so will start and work their way up, but the consequence is that when they do finally get promoted to management-level positions, they are unwilling to cede much control and so either micromanage or undermanage. These seeming opposites are resolved in the two attributes of this person: first, they are devoted to the company because they see it as their path to success; second, they are inflexible because they know what has worked for them and want it to continue this way.
This type of person generally has a lowercase-c conservative character, meaning that they believe society will reward them for consistent behavior, and that there’s one right way to do things. They run into problems when this right way changes, or their role changes. The inflexibility is a byproduct of the same doggedness that brought them success in the first place. They are people who in times of crisis, turn toward institutions instead of theories, and want hard results. They are also slow to be promoted, and equally slow to leave behind their old role and focus on their management responsibilities.
It is that tendency that makes them difficult. They will work hard with great dedication, but they won’t let go of the reigns. This leads them to either micromanage, or try to do each employee’s job for them save the most repetitive tasks, or undermanage, which means they will divide tasks into important ones and less-important ones, and they’ll hand off those underimportant tasks and keep the others for themselves. The result is that they drive away their most qualified help by forcing them to either be limited in creativity through too much oversight, or slog through mindless tasks without ever being given a chance to exercise their abilities.
I wish I could say that in my years as a contractor, I have seen companies be well-run. Rather, that’s the exception to the rule, which is that companies are founded by people who don’t know how to lead them, and they keep promoting whoever doesn’t flake out, shoot up the office, or die young. This means that often total incompetents are promoted, and that most times, the people who are running departments are good at the skill needed in that department but are terrible at leadership. Large companies become liberal tyrannies that favor people who are friendly and replaceable over the talented, and small companies become gnarled fascists who want to squeeze every last drop out of their employees, without handing over any of the power.
As smart people have known for some time, there’s a relationship between creativity and power. By creativity, I mean the desire to do things right in some way other than axing bad stuff. I mean coming up with new methods to replace the old, refining what exists, thinking around problems, rising to challenges. That’s creativity. For creativity to exist, the people exercising it must have as much power as they need to make their vision manifest, and this is where all human politics begins. Power between individuals, and between those individuals and the larger company or society, determines what can be done.
Between the extremes of anarchy and fascism in the workplace, there is a sensible middle ground where strong leadership directs the company, but is able to allow enough breathing room in its hierarchy that those who can lead are given the positions they need, and individual employees aren’t unduly hampered in what they do, so they can be creative. The inflexible devotee is one of many errors on this path, just as much a creativity killer as the company that requires forms in triplicate for any move the employee makes. It’s the same principle. Power from above doesn’t want to let go of enough power to let people be effective and think outside of the way things were done two company-sizes ago.
I think about these things a lot, but most when I’m leaving a contract. I like to sit down in a quiet space, with some very English tea, and think about what I would have done differently. I’m convinced that the people who screw up worst are often those who mean best, and that most situations can be alleviated by talking out what people actually want to achieve, and forcing them to describe their own behaviors in trying to get there. But too often, this causes people to lash out and make people’s lives hell, which is why I remain enamored of contract employment.
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