Scapegoats, Poppies, and Being Punched in the Face 17 Times
Scapegoats, Poppies, and Being Punched in the Face 17 Times
Five tales about loyalty, betrayal, and (un)predictability. Part 8 in a series about trust in the workplace, in our personal lives, and in general.
We’ve been writing about trust and mistrust for the past five months (since Thanksgiving in the USA). Let’s close out this long article series with five parables – instructive stories to help you calibrate the number of marbles to place in your trust and mistrust jars.
The Fall of the Favorite
The institutional memory of Company McCorporateface, Inc. includes legends too lurid to put into writing. These are passed down by oral tradition, becoming warped by embellishments or faulty memories along the way. Here’s one:
There once was a Company McCorporateface, Inc. senior vice president who had a trusted subordinate. The two had a symbiotic relationship: the subordinate’s stellar results helped boost his boss, and the boss advocated for the subordinate’s ascension in turn. The two journeyed from the fringes of Leadership Land up to Executive Mountain in tandem, one behind the other.
One day, a scandal erupted from the fiery peak of Executive Mountain. Fingers pointed and the blame game ensued, but ultimately the Senior VP remained on Executive Mountain while his subordinate took the plunge into the Career Swamp. It was an unfortunate situation, but no one believed that the Senior VP would deliberately sacrifice such a talented, trustworthy colleague.
The closer you are to someone, the easier it is to betray them…or be betrayed by them. If one person makes a scapegoat of a close friend, it’s easy for observers to believe that the fall of the favorite was deserved. After all, most people can’t imagine themselves betraying an ally, so they are more likely to be fooled into sympathizing with the perpetrator and blaming the victim.
Our story continues…
The Senior VP took on a new deputy, but this person could not replicate the results achieved by the previous subordinate. Soon, a new red-hot scandal erupted, and the Senior VP blamed the new deputy. But the CEO and Board of Directors were no fools. They saw the common element in both scandals – the Senior VP – and sent him tumbling off Executive Mountain into the Career Swamp far below.
Throwing a close colleague under the bus is a sure-fire way to demolish the Temple of Trust. The ones who scapegoat a close friend may save their own skins today, but they also create a vengeful enemy who wouldn’t hesitate to strike back later – at the worst possible time. When a leader lives in a Machiavellian trust-free world of his own making, he rarely meets a peaceful end.
The Great Mistrust Arms Race
Company McCorporateface, Inc. hired a consultant to improve operations while its white-collar employees were working remotely. The consultant noticed:
Teams/Slack status bubbles showing “away/idle” for long periods
Barking dogs, screaming kids, doorbells ringing, and construction noises in the background of calls. At an all-hands meeting, a TV show could clearly be heard in the background of someone who forgot to mute themselves.
Needy cats stealing screentime during Zoom calls. Browser tabs with online shopping and personal email tucked in the corner when someone shared their screen.
The consultant concluded that employees were slacking off during work hours, and suggested to Company leadership that they monitor remote workers more closely. Executive Mountain decreed that all Company equipment must be upgraded with “productivity-enhancing devices and software.” This included apps that recorded employee activity on Company computers, and telematic devices (GPS, speed/idle tracking) on fleet vehicles.
Mistrust is a useful tool. For instance, “zero trust” is a system of formalized mistrust for protecting a computer network from cyber-intruders. Internal controls prevent middle managers from stealthily embezzling millions of dollars to an offshore account.
Mistrust is also costly. Employees spend a lot of time laying audit trails to comply with internal controls, and no one likes authenticating their login for the umpteenth time. Like insurance, the cost of mistrust must be outweighed by its payoff. What price did Company McCorporateface, Inc. pay for their mistrust? Let’s find out…
Most employees reacted negatively1 to the opening salvo of the Great Mistrust Arms Race. The new system penalized employees for reading and writing on paper, for critical thinking, and other forms of deep work that required concentration. Business travelers were reprimanded for idling a car (so they could use air conditioning or heating in extreme weather conditions) while they joined a call or ate lunch.
Some Company employees responded by using “mouse jigglers” to keep their statuses active. Others taped down keys on their keyboard, or kept the keys weighed down with a heavy object. Executive Mountain fought back with upgraded software that not only logged activity, but analyzed activity patterns. Company employees adapted by calling each other, then spending the entirety of the call on mute – putting a literal twist on the “conspiracy of silence.” Executive Mountain roared in fury, and directed supervisors to police these sham calls. Many complied, but others became disgruntled and joined the conspiracy.
Let’s count the casualties of Great Mistrust Arms Race:
Company McCorporateface, Inc.’s Temple of Trust lay in smithereens. Company managers didn’t even schedule token teambuilding activities, fearing it would lower their productivity score.
The Great Mistrust Arms Race taught employees that signaling busyness was more important than conducting business. The quantity of measurable work increased, but there was no appreciable increase in quality. This was fine for the routine work of producing interchangeable widgets, but not the innovative work of providing insights and novel ideas to customers.
Employee morale plummeted, and workers left in droves. The Great Mistrust Arms Race damaged the Company’s reputation, which made it more difficult to hire replacements. After quitting, disgruntled employees review-bombed Company McCorporateface, Inc.’s page on Glassdoor, warning prospective applicants to stay away.
The Company sacrificed production capability for production. The new surveillance system disincentivized anything that couldn’t be easily measured, like mentoring staff, clearing emotional debris, and the type of deep work that induces the psychological state of flow.
Who won the Great Mistrust Arms Race?
The software vendor and the consultant, of course! The software company authored the corporate spyware, and the consultant received all of the payout but none of the consequences. The arms-dealer and the undertaker are victorious in every war, and this one was no exception.
It was a lose-lose for both the Company and its employees.
You could say that the Company won a Pyrrhic victory against its employees. Our view is that a struggle between employer vs. employee is like an autoimmune disease. When the organism’s immune system “wins” by attacking and killing functional cells, the entire organism loses.
In this great post by
, lays out the differences between “weak-link vs. strong-link” problems:Weak-link problems are solved by eliminating the worst. An example would be an assembly line where reducing defects and bottlenecks will result in more interchangeable widgets.
Strong-link problems are solved by boosting the best. An example would be an R&D department where a single ingenious idea can make up for a thousand uninspired ones.
The Company’s business model is more like an R&D department than a manufacturer. By implementing a system that prioritized quantity over quality, the Company sought a weak-link solution to a strong-link problem. Executive Mountain chose to support the bottom at the expense of uncapping and boosting the top. Sure, they got more widgets, but they couldn’t force inventions to drop out of people’s skulls like clockwork. This misguided attempt to create an “assembly line of innovation” damaged the Company in the long run.
Ultimately, Company McCorporateface, Inc. executives forgot that you can be efficient with things, but not people. Oops.
Tall Poppy Syndrome
Tarquin the Proud was an ancient Roman tyrant. After failing to capture the stronghold of Gabii, he hatched a plot to take by guile what he couldn’t by force. Tarquin had one of his sons, Sextus, pretend to escape the murderous violence of his father and flee to Gabii as a refugee. Sextus declared a revolt against Tarquin, and commanded several successful military skirmishes against his father’s forces. Impressed by Sextus’ martial prowess, the Gabines appointed him the general of the army in their war against Rome.
Sextus sent a messenger to his father, announcing his ascendancy to a position of power. Tarquin did not respond to the messenger. Instead, he strolled around his palace garden, striking off the tallest poppy heads with a stick (see image above ↑). The confused messenger, thinking his mission to be a failure, returned to Sextus and reported what he had witnessed. Sextus, however, understood the meaning behind his father’s erratic behavior. He proceeded to destroy the intelligentsia and aristocrats of Gabii with all the weapons from the arsenal of treachery: exile, assassination, and false accusations that incited lynch mobs. Sextus then divided the fallen elites’ wealth among the populace to pacify them.
Thus did Sextus deliver the stronghold of Gabii to Tarquin, without his father fighting a single battle.
There are several lessons to unpack from this tale:
Sextus earned the Gabines’ trust by launching a revolt against his father, but the Gabines confused their trust in Sextus with his trustworthiness. The Gabines’ trust in Sextus reached its highest point on the eve of his betrayal.
Tarquin mistrusted the messenger, so he sent a coded message back to his son. Cryptography is another useful tool of mistrust, alongside internal controls and “zero trust.”
Even your champions are capable of treachery. Do not assume that someone who has taken risks and sacrificed for your organization has its best interests at heart. It’s safer to assume that:
Everyone is self-interested first and foremost
Everyone else’s welfare is a secondary consideration that only matters to the extent that self-interest remains satisfied.
If you are a tall poppy in your organization or community, you have a target on your back. It doesn’t matter whether you earned your superlatives by hard work and sacrifice, or by being evicted from the right uterus. Someone will eventually find a reason to strike you down, and mistrust will protect you when that day comes.
To avoid criticism: say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.
Loyalty and the Ship of Theseus
Let’s turn to a happier, more uplifting story that’s just as instructive:
In the Middle Management Foothills, there once lived a feudal lord named Lara. She had a knack for deducing the preferred love languages of her colleagues, and was fluent in each language. For example, if a colleague craved "Words of Affirmation," she would compliment them frequently. She held one-on-one mentoring sessions with those who preferred "Quality Time" and took on tasks for others who appreciated "Acts of Service."
Most managers kept a standard-issue nameplate on their desk to display their identity and lofty job title. Lara replaced hers with a quote:
Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to.
What’s more, she turned the nameplate so that it was only visible to her, not the person facing her from across the desk. This, and a thousand other tiny behaviors, demonstrated that Lara was more interested in serving others than virtue-signaling and self-aggrandizement. Everyone in Company McCorporateface, Inc., adored Lara for her competence, compassion, and composure2.
During one mentoring session, Lara applied an ancient thought experiment to the modern question of organizational loyalty:
Consider the ship captained by Theseus, a legendary Greek hero. If you replaced each component of the ship (oars, planks, mast) one-by-one, would it still be the same Ship of Theseus after each piece has been replaced?
Now imagine you saved each of the pieces taken from the old ship in a warehouse. After gathering a full collection of old ship parts, you re-assemble them. Which is the true Ship of Theseus: the one that maintained its form and name as it was rebuilt piece-by-piece, or the one re-assembled from its original components?
Finally, imagine this happening to an organization called Theseus, Inc. If the employees of Theseus, Inc. were replaced one-by-one, and all the departing employees joined a startup called Theseus 2.0, which of the two organizations is the “true” successor?
Lara answered her own riddle years later. When Company McCorporateface, Inc. initiated the Great Mistrust Arms Race (story #2 above), Lara quit to start up a new business. Many of her colleagues jumped ship to follow her. Some customers also followed, switching from Company McCorporateface, Inc. to Lara & Co.
During her career at Company McCorporateface, Inc., Lara built a grand Temple of Trust and attracted a loyal congregation. As long as Lara’s interests were aligned with the Company’s, loyalty to her was indistinguishable from loyalty to the Company. But when Lara left, it became clear that loyalty to people is distinct from loyalty to organizations.
Two Brothers and 17 Punches to the Face
The following story has no basis in truth; it’s a pure thought experiment wrapped inside of a narrative:
There once lived two brothers who had the same parents, but opposite temperaments. The first brother was utterly unpredictable. If the barista put too much ice in his Frappuccino, he might unleash a howl of torment and sob hysterically into the nearest ashtray. He could get X ± 27.4 minutes (it varies) into a movie, then start shouting at other theater-goers and throwing popcorn at them. He might look up at a clear blue sky, start babbling about how many p–n junctions dancing on the head of a bacterium it would take to solve world hunger, then vomit all over the sidewalk. The only predictable element was how unpleasant other people found his unpredictability.
The second brother was the most predictable human being on the planet. He was so punctual that you’d consider filing a missing-person report if he showed up five minutes late (he never did). No one remembers him ever committing to something and not following through; he’d rather walk through a hurricane than flake out on a social engagement. If consistency were a religion, he would be the avatar of the gods – the embodiment of consistency itself.
Always living up to expectations had its downsides. People found him reliable, but boring. He resisted any change in plans, often sacrificing common sense to maintain a routine. Someone discovered that he would withstand exactly 17 punches to the face with perfect equanimity, then explode into a crimson rage upon receiving the 18th blow. People started playing the cruel game of punching him in the face fewer than 18 times with impunity. Most people would punch him exactly 17 times, then stop. Others would clobber his face 15 times so they could come back later and smack him twice more for gits and shiggles.
This thought-experiment-inside-a-narrative is totally bonkers, but we can salvage some nuggets of wisdom from the steaming pile of absurdity:
Being too unpredictable and unreliable is a great way to be feared and hated.
Being too predictable and reliable is a great way to be exploited and abused.
Many more people fall into this category than they’d like to admit (including us). We’ve caught ourselves observing traditions mindlessly, doing things “because we’ve always done it that way,” and upholding consistency for consistency’s sake.
Overly-specific rules are like the second brother. If people can avoid punishment by stopping short of a threshold, many people will come right up to that “bright line.” Some people will game the system by exploiting legal loopholes or salami-slicing (performing a series of small actions which individually don’t break the rules, but cumulatively do).
Brother #2 is a cautionary example for anyone building a Temple of Trust. Yes, leading with integrity is great. Setting clear expectations is non-negotiable. But to stay out of the Desert of Good Intentions, we must set the right expectations, and only for the right reasons. We must only uphold the precedents with a purpose. We must avoid building systems that are easily exploited (this is where mistrust becomes useful, once again).
Let’s not forget about Brother #1. Unpredictability, like mistrust, is a useful tool. A touch of benevolent unpredictability adds some spice to relationships with friends, family, and teammates. Pleasant surprises – an unexpected gesture of affection, a “just because” gift, a random expression of kindness – are nice things that keep life interesting.
At the opposite extreme is the “shock and awe” strategy. Calculated unpredictability can strike fear into the hearts of competitors and enemies, while also evoking respect from those close to you. Let’s say you’re a kind, polite person for 1,000 days, but on the 1,001st day you overturn all expectations by taking drastic yet justifiable actions such as:
Litigating the legal daylights out of someone who wronged you
Savagely subduing a physical threat
Unveiling a new product, capable of capturing substantial market share from competitors, that you’ve been developing in secret
Used sparingly, this type of unpredictability turns everyone else into a turkey at your Thanksgiving feast – in the best possible way for your allies, and in the worst possible way for your enemies.
When drastic actions are justified, it doesn’t damage your Temple of Trust at all. In fact, demonstrating the use of extreme measures is evidence of your resolve; it strengthens your Foundation of Credibility. And the most beautiful part of all: it comes at no cost to the Bricks of Integrity. After all, you never claimed that you wouldn’t become the incarnation of vengeful fury, right? 😉
This concludes our 8-part series about trust and mistrust! Next up is a reader check-in, and we’ll go spelunking in the dank, dark bowels of Leadership Land afterward. We’re going to explore Liar’s Lair, risk management, and what people aren’t telling us.
Some high performers didn’t mind the increase in surveillance, and some even cheered that their lower-producing colleagues would be forced to pull more weight. But even they were outnumbered by the high performers who detested the new tracking system.
Almost everyone. Some of the other feudal lords in the Middle Management Foothills envied Lara’s success and viewed her as a competitor. They magnified her flaws and invented reasons to dislike her. See story #3 about the Tall Poppy Syndrome.