About two-thirds of the way through my 30-year career in the Highly Protected Risk (HPR) property insurance industry, some member insurance companies began to downsize. As a result of one particular force reduction, the company for which I worked ended up with a castoff management-level employee. The individual had no background whatsoever in HPR insurance. But, as a favor to someone in a member company, he was hired to advise on matters relating to employee morale and development. After managing an employee morale campaign that utterly failed to meet it's objectives, he was tasked to oversee the Human Resources Department.
As he got to know the various departments in the company, he seemed particularly annoyed with the training department that I managed. In the survey of employee morale, most departments scored 20 out of 100, indicating rather low morale. However, the department that reported to me scored 97 out of 100.
Instead of rewarding my colleagues and me for our cohesive and company-supportive efforts, we became suspects. What could we possibly be doing that would create such a climate of satisfaction. We must be “giving away the store” in order to have fostered such high morale.
Once this new department head began to focus his attention on “bringing us down,” we turned our attention to him. On our own time, we carefully and thoroughly researched his background. We interviewed colleagues from his previous employer. One of my colleagues even interviewed his college roommate. Now this may seem unusual to you, but when someone would go out of his or her way to make himself or herself our enemy, we felt we had a responsibility to “know the enemy.”
We also began to pay particular attention to his management style. We observed the way he interacted with those he supervised. By so doing, we learned some very valuable lessons. Please let me share one of them.
When an incompetent individual rises to a management role within an organization, he or she will sometimes intentionally create a climate of chaos. The reason for this climate of chaos: it offers one way of exercising control over people and events.
By keeping the daily flow of information and activities swirling in chaos, the erstwhile manager can let the unpredictability of the work environment consistently move his or her role into the center of the storm. The manager can retain a position at the center of the chaos through procrastination in making decisions, through absence (seldom actually present in his or her office), through a systematic discarding of long term processes and procedures by replacing them with new, less well-defined processes and procedures, and by juggling job responsibilities among team members to keep them unsure of exactly what they are supposed to do, to name just a few of the techniques.
He or she may also create a climate of distrust, secretiveness, and disdain among team members, and between team members and the next upward level of management, by a creating a web of lies.
Think of a spider sitting in the center of its web. Upon close examination, you will discover that the elements of the web have a similar, but not precisely identical, geometry. Scientists have discovered that these dissimilar elements of the spider’s web appear to occur through some inner programming within the spider’s brain. Part of the strength of the web comes from these dissimilar or off-balanced elements.
In like fashion, the incompetent manager, who rules by creating a chaotic environment, often keeps team members off balance through a web of lies and distortion. In the midst of chaos, the manager begins to breed distrust between team members by telling each team member a slightly different version of the same story. Usually couched as “inside information,” and often told with an insistence that the team member hearing the story vow to remain silent about it, the manager plants specifically unique misinformation in the minds of those he manages. Many times this misinformation will include negative information that one team member has supposedly spoken about another team member.
The incompetent manager will also employ this same technique when dealing with those to whom he or she reports. He or she will convey information to the bosses that includes carefully crafted lies about what his or her team members have said or done. These lies give the bosses an inaccurate and prejudicial view of the individual team members. Because the manager gives these reports in the confidentiality of the meetings with his or her bosses, the team members never have the opportunity to hear about, or correct, the lies the manager has told about them.
By weaving a careful web of lies, the manager creates an ineffective work environment that helps assure that he or she will remain in a position of absolute control. He or she will likely also create scenarios, framed from the lies, that will help shield the manager’s plot from discovery. And, when operations at the workplace begin to fail and customers or constituents begin to complain, the lies he or she has told the bosses can often create scapegoats from his or her team members on which to blame the failure.
Over the course of my nearly 46 years in the business world, I have observed very crafty incompetent managers weave such webs of lies and sustain the lies for significant periods of time. The good news: the truth is always ultimately revealed. Let me say that again. The truth is always ultimately revealed.
The Apostle John reports Jesus’ words in John 8:32:
32Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Over the passage of time, we observed this new department head radically change the character of his portion of the organization. He systematically moved people out until he had brought in a whole new crew of team members. Some employees transferred to other departments. Others simply left the company entirely. At one point we determined that his incompetent management techniques had cost the company dearly in terms of the intellectual capital represented by lost employees.
Surely, we thought, once he has all new people he will alter his techniques. But, no, he repeated the same evil process with the new batch of employees until most of them had also left the company. In some ways, that department never recovered.
Webs of lies are toxic and destructive. But, the truth always brings freedom. Every web of lies gets wiped away. So, if you labor under a manager who has chosen this way of gaining and keeping absolute control, don’t despair. God has a way of bringing light into every dark corner.
Don’t fall prey to the temptation to weave your own web of lies. Just patiently wait for the truth to rise to the surface. It always does.
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