In these new media, dotcom days, there are few things worse than working closely with someone who just doesn’t “get it”. And since you can’t always control who you have to work with or for, what should you do when you realise you have hopeless incompetents working with you slowing down workflow in your organisation? Or even worse: what do you do if you find yourself working for Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Boss (PHB)? As the Internet swiftly inundates traditional businesses, PHBs who “don’t get it” are frequently found clogging up the arteries of Internet time-based dotcoms - not just the large, old-style corporates.
June 1, 2000
If you find yourself working for a PHB you have only a few options open to you. You can quit, get transferred, attempt to neutralise them, have them whacked or lay traps for them to fall into until they hang themselves. These tactics sometimes work. Obviously if you have any influence with the management above you can think about going over their head and stabbing them in the back, but many times PHB's bosses are fools as well since it's usually a PHB who hires another PHB. Most people want to get promotions and raises and keep pushing until they find themselves in a position one level above the level of their capabilities - where they get stuck. This business principle is known as the Peter Principle, explained in greater detail in the book by that title.
A PHB is someone who certainly doesn’t “get it”, knows this deep down but doesn’t think anyone else realises they’re an ignorant idiot in well over their head. (If you don’t know about Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss go read the comic strip and come back.) These people often stay stranded on the sandbars of the rivers of bureaucracy clogging up workflow for years. Most large corporates are thickly populated with these types. Young dotcoms can also have their share of PHBs.
These over-promoted types tend to spread throughout large corporates like alien pods taking over people's bodies in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Here’s how they do it: through the process just described, a few B-quality and C-quality employees inevitably get moved up into positions where they can hire people. A-quality people tend to hire other A-quality people but B-quality people tend to hire C people or other Bs at the best. A-quality people know to hire people who know more than they do - other As. They will try to hire people who are better than they are. B people are scared of the As they interview being afraid the A will make them look bad or even take over their job if they hire them. So they hire Cs who are no threat. The Bs don’t always recognise the difference between Bs and Cs. A-quality employees recognise Bs and Cs instantly and don’t tend to take jobs where they see such types in upper management positions.
As an example, recently a large corporate was looking for a CEO to head up one of their subsidiaries and interviewed four candidates. Unfortunately one of the directors who this person would report to was a classic PHB who belligerently challenged the candidates’ knowledge and credentials during the interviews. In the process he exposed his own shallow knowledge of the business he was in and inadvertently made it plain he was going to be a ball and chain to anyone trying to get anything done around him. After the first round of interviews the search committee asked the recruiter to bring two of the candidates back for another round. The recruiter called back with the news “we have a problem. Neither of these two are willing to work with the PHB and declined to come back for another interview.” So of course they ended up hiring one of the rejects who was willing to put up with abuse and a ball and chain work environment. He had been on the beach for a year and had no previous Internet experience whatsoever.
At the beginning of this article I implied I might have an answer to this problem. The problem of incompetent people in positions of power has been with man longer than fleas and body lice and certainly won’t be going away any time soon. Here’s the deal: suggested solutions for what to do if you find yourself working for a PHB are outlined above. If you find you have PHBs working with you or for you there are also few choices. Avoiding hiring PHBs in the first place if you can but that’s much harder to do than it is to write the words. PHBs hide themselves well. I like to think I can assess a candidate’s work abilities fairly well in an interview but I believe most people have trouble assessing a candidate’s personality and work ethic in a couple of one-hour interviews. Obviously the more time you can spend with a candidate before making an offer the better but in today’s fast-paced dotcom environment that is not always possible.
I’ve hired many stars and I’ve hired plenty of losers and I know I’ll probably hire some of each again in the future no matter how careful I am. So let’s face up to it. If you find you have PHBs working for you either sack them, move them out of the way as much as possible, put up with them, attempt to educate them or . . . . Help me here - email me with ideas!
You’re probably going to have a couple of PHBs in your organisation no matter what you do. Dealing with them and making sure they don’t cause too many problems or make too many expensive mistakes requires micromanaging. I’m not too good at that myself. I don’t have time for it, get irritated and lose my temper. But it takes constant attention to head off or undo the harm the average PHB can do.
The best but rather daunting solution is to move the PHB out of the organisation completely. I like to think I’m a softy about sacking people but I do believe it is often better to remove a person as quickly and neatly as possible if they're causing problems or not fitting in rather than attempt slower solutions. There can be a steep cost in morale and team spirit (and thusly productivity) but quite often team members who seem blind to the problems are actually quite realistic and realise the need for removing difficult employees. Fears of causing team unrest by sacking an employee are often unfounded. This isn’t the place to go into detail about how to sack people humanely with the least negative impact on the team but obviously it is important to make as little fuss as possible. Sometimes creative inducements to leave can do the trick. A quiet word to your favourite head-hunter may relieve you of a troublesome employee.
PHBs, people who are hard to work with, troublesome, incompetent and all the other horrible things we can lump together under this acronym will always be with us. I’ve worked for several of them and probably will again. My experience has taught me that the best thing to do is get away from them as quickly as possible. You can try to outlast them. Stay and fight only if, in the cold hard light of day, you think you really have a chance of getting rid of them. Remember: never fight with a pig - you both get dirty and the pig enjoys it.
