Working in a Mediocracy

© Copyright 1998, Wayland Systems Inc. All rights reserved.

A “mediocracy” is an organization in which the mediocre prevails. Most people in a mediocracy are mediocre in both mind and soul, and most products of a mediocracy lack merit. Although a few individuals in a mediocracy may strive to rise above the second rate, their attempts are likely to be doomed by the prevailing ethos of their surroundings.

Sad to say, many software-development organizations — departments or even whole companies — are mediocracies. These shops hug a narrow brow of dullness, being unable to scale the slope of high quality but also just avoiding the chasm of complete extinction. Such shops deliver systems that are barely passable and retain personnel who are virtuosos of the banal. Yet, they produce just enough that works in order to survive.

In this chapter, I first examine the causes of a software mediocracy and describe its negative effects. I then offer ways to change the mediocracy, depending upon your level in the organization.

15.1 Causes of a mediocracy

From my description, you might conclude that a mediocracy is just another department suffering from poor hiring practices or some other ill that I described in previous chapters. In fact, all the problems that are generally and unthinkingly lumped under the Peter Principle contribute notably to the development of a mediocracy. However, the full explanation for its genesis and for its differences from a department that simply has problems is both subtle and complex.

To help identify the underlying causes of a mediocracy, I use a cause-effect diagram, as Figure 15.1 shows.

Figure 15.1. Cause-effect diagram

To the immediate left of the problem I’m investigating (the mediocracy), I identify two prominent, closely related causes: the formation of employee cliques who work for their own good, rather than for the corporate good; and the tendency of employees to gain self-advancement through denigrating others’ work and reputations. These each have their own causes, as shown in the diagram.

If you follow Figure 15.1 all the way to the left in each branch, you will arrive at the five primary causes of a mediocracy: evaluation of employees subjectively and by comparison to others; weakness of the formal organization; employees’ desire for self-advancement through divisive competition rather than cooperation with fellow employees; departmental problems that limit employees’ ability to perform well; and chronic self-perpetuation of a mediocracy.

15.1.1 Evaluation of employees subjectively

With well-defined objectives for tasks, there is a kind of absolute scale against which to measure people’s performance. Hence, it’s possible to gauge reasonably objectively people’s true contributions to the aims of their department. It’s also possible, again with at least reasonable objectivity, to decide whom to reward for their efforts and achievements.

Without well-defined objectives, however, managers have little by which to measure people’s performance objectively and little basis for deciding how to reward people. Instead, people’s contributions are judged subjectively according to the whims of the evaluator and relative to the contributions of other people. This, in turn, tempts workers to advance themselves by discrediting others, rather than by making substantial improvements to their own performance. It also encourages people to behave sycophantically, rather than honestly, toward their bosses and results in unproductive image-building efforts rather than productive work.

15.1.2 Weakness of the formal organization

As explained in Chapter 5, the formal organization is basically the organization depicted on the company’s official charts with positions defined by job descriptions and objectives. The informal organization is the formal organization adapted to fit real circumstances and the actual personalities of the members of the organization. Without the framework of a sound formal organization to give it a fundamental structure, the informal organization must do the duty of the formal organization as well. As a result, the organization is subjected to the random forces of the organization’s various strong personalities, which coalesce into groups united in bending the organization to serve their own social and business aims. These often unstated aims do not necessarily benefit the organization as a whole. For example, a group of people unites behind a pet project that interests them, such as the development of a robot that is technically fascinating but that has no market.

Some employees may not belong to any subgroup and so, denied an opportunity to contribute to departmental society, they feel alienated from the department. They thus form a loose subgroup of outcasts who snipe at the deeds of others. They become the bitter, antisocial employees who are found in almost every mediocracy.

15.1.3 Desire for advancement through divisive competition

Competitiveness and individualism are two of the cornerstones of our Western culture. Competitiveness in moderation is a healthy quality, since it tends to stimulate people’s innate creativity and their desire for improvement. In the business world, this quality means, for example, that each of two competing airlines continually works to improve service to its customers. A single monopolistic airline, on the other hand, may well stagnate in complacency for lack of any incentive to improve.

Unchecked competitiveness, however, can be downright harmful. For example, nobody benefits if Hogwash Airlines sets its schedules so that passengers miss connecting flights on Codswallop Airlines. Furthermore, if Codswallop Airlines starts a rumor that Hogwash’s pilots all are dropouts from the West Fredonia Air Force Academy, again the cause of commercial air service is not furthered.

This unethical and unproductive type of competitiveness is akin to rats in a rat race, an attitude that is totally unacceptable when it is shared by professed colleagues within an organization. Unfortunately, it is exactly this internecine destructiveness that reigns supreme in a mediocracy.

The achievements of a department are the achievements of its people. In an effective department, each person works toward his allocated subset of the department’s goals. In the malignant competitiveness of a mediocracy, however, people expend much of their energy on their own self-advancement, largely to the neglect of the department’s needs. They may do this by frenzied attempts to look good to their bosses and to be the star.

The cult of the individual superstar is another aspect of our culture that has grown out of all proportion to its true value. Though uplifting, the saga of the brilliant innovator who ran with an idea to become the hero of the hour has little relevance to a modern corporation.

The spirit of independent and individual success is not a realistic spirit in today’s complex organizations, for the simple reason that one person cannot single-handedly take on the problems of a whole department and hope to solve them. It fails, too, because it leads to disharmony, rather than coherence in the contributions of a department’s workers.

Contributions thus tend to cancel one another. Just as farmers know that plowing is faster when the horses in the team all pull in the same direction, so too all the “horses” in a shop must pull together, especially since the many technical intricacies involved call for full cooperation by many skilled people, rather than for random and uncoordinated solo efforts.

Not only does unbridled competitiveness lead to the poor integration of people’s efforts, but it also leads to divisive contests to prove who is the best. No one can truly win such damaging struggles. Unfortunately, members of mediocracies often spend more time engaged in contests than they do in genuine work. Often, they seek to win out over fellow employees not by dint of their own efforts, but by sabotaging or belittling their colleagues’ efforts.

Thus, an archvillain in a mediocracy not only wastes his own time but also wastes the time of many other people. His motto is, Get ahead at all costs, even if it means climbing over the corpses of colleagues. Of course, if everyone goes by this motto, there will be a great deal of carnage and very little advancement.

Ultimately, the mediocracy reaches the point at which no one is prepared to do anything significant for fear of having any ostensible failure held against him. I once asked a manager in a mediocracy how many people worked in her department. “About half of them!” she replied with a grin.

One veteran of a mediocracy graphically described the situation: “The best way to stay alive and live in peace here is just to go through the motions of working, but to avoid at all costs producing anything visible. Otherwise, everybody criticizes it and delights in pointing out its flaws and your own patent incompetence. Ironically, the better your contribution actually is, the more uncomfortable your colleagues become and the more likely they are to attack it.

“Right now, for instance,” he went on, “Eldridge is broadcasting to everyone that Walter’s project should have been completed by June, and Walter is retaliating by advertising that Eldridge’s project is way over budget. Theodore is trying to ward off criticism by discrediting me with my users, but I’m better at discrediting with his users. By now, none of our users trust any of us. Soon they’ll be attacking us with cleavers.”

In short, then, the ruinous effects of uninhibited rivalry in a shop are these: Individuals’ efforts are uncoordinated with one another; people spend too much time in competing rather than contributing; people engage in destroying others’ contributions; and people become conditioned to do nothing visible, innovative, worthwhile, or controversial so as to avoid the criticism of their colleagues.

15.1.4 Problems that limit employees’ ability to perform well

A department’s decline into a mediocracy is accelerated if that department has problems that constrain employees’ performance in some way. For instance, a lack of training limits a worker’s ability to perform well. This not only reduces the quality and quantity of the department’s achievement, but also frustrates the employees themselves. These frustrations fuel the fires of competition, since the easiest way to advance oneself when one’s own performance is circumscribed by factors beyond one’s control is by demeaning others’ performance in some way.

Departmental problems, therefore, often act as catalysts for a decline into mediocracy. However, the removal of these problems does not necessarily allow the department to recover from mediocracy, as we shall see below.

15.1.5 Chronic self-perpetuation of mediocracy

In an oddly recursive way, a mediocracy is one of its own causes and is thus self-perpetuating. Specifically, there are three ways in which a mediocracy constantly suppresses the overall level of performance of its staff:

• First, a manager in a mediocracy usually hires new employees who are especially insipid in order to reduce the risk of his being usurped by someone who is more competent than he is. This results in the well-known mediocratic phenomenon of the bland leading the bland. (Some recruiting firms contribute to this effect by referring only mediocre candidates to a shop that has a reputation itself for being mediocre.)
• Second, employees who are truly competent and are eager to make a genuine contribution to the department soon resign from a mediocracy, leaving behind them the dross of nonproducers and internecine warriors. I term this effect the Inverse Gresham’s Law: A mediocracy hoards mediocre people and drives good people into general circulation.¹
• Third, a chronic mediocracy incorporates mediocrity within its basic culture. Such mediocracies are thus extremely difficult to redeem, as I discuss in Section 15.2.

1. Gresham’s Law is a tenet of monetary theory that states when two units of currency are equal in debt-paying value but unequal in intrinsic value, people will tend to hoard the one having the higher intrinsic value and force the other into general circulation.

One particular incident comes to mind as an archetypal example of the counterproductive shenanigans in a mediocracy. Alison was a project manager in a large mediocratic information-systems department. Igor worked on Alison’s project. Igor wasn’t the most talented or well-liked person, but Alison was stuck with him. She couldn’t fire Igor solely for disliking him and no other manager would take him.

Then, Alison had a brain wave: Roland was a new project manager who needed a database designer for his project. Alison could solve her problem with Igor by passing him off as a relational-database expert, even though Igor’s knowledge was limited to writing database calls in COBOL programs. Although every other manager knew this, Roland was grateful for getting Igor. Alison was overjoyed. In one stroke, she had rid herself of Igor and slipped him into Roland’s project as a sort of Trojan Horse. Oh, perfidious Alison!

Sure enough, with Igor on the critical path, Roland’s project slipped further and further behind, with only a woefully inadequate database to show for the time spent. Eventually, Roland relieved Igor of any database responsibility, but it was too late. Roland’s boss relieved Roland of responsibility for the project. Who looked good in comparison to Roland? Everyone, especially Alison. Unfortunately, she had used her resourcefulness not to help the department, but rather to destroy one of its contributors. And that’s typical of how a mediocracy operates.

15.2 Responses to a mediocracy

Your ability to bring about change in a mediocracy depends upon your position in the organization. If you’re close to the bottom of the hierarchy, there’s very little you can do. Any individual’s effort at that level, by the very nature of a mediocracy, is likely to get neutralized. The best you can hope for is to form a grassroots coterie and, either by diplomacy or revolution, work together to rid your shop of the oppressive yoke of mediocracy. Unfortunately, however, your efforts may be misinterpreted as political maneuverings and subverted by the usual mediocratic machinery. Your best bet is to subscribe to the Inverse Gresham’s Law and to find a shop that will truly appreciate your talents.

If, on the other hand, you’re at the middle level of the organization, you do have a chance to make inroads into the mediocracy. Start by offering your colleagues help and encouragement without any strings attached. Once they overcome their bewilderment and accept that your cooperation is genuine, your colleagues may begin to follow your example and help one another.

Set a similar example to inspire the people who report to you. By training and grooming them as I described in Chapter 13, you encourage them to excel and thus liberate them from their lackluster limbo so that they can realize their full potential. But remember one constant, brutal fact: You’re still in a mediocracy, and all your good intentions may very well come to naught. The mean-souled multitudes may defile your good examples and seek to destroy you. Even your boss may become nervous of being usurped and do his utmost to suppress you. If such attitudes persist, I think that the Inverse Gresham’s Law deserves another recruit: Vote with your feet.

If your position is high in the mediocratic organization (for example, you’re the head of the shop), then you have the best chance of all to exorcise the mediocratic hobgoblins. Your first lines of attack are at three of the primary causes of a mediocracy: absence of well-defined objectives, weakness of the formal organization, and departmental problems that limit employees’ ability to perform well. As a top manager, you are in a position to establish an effective formal organization, such as a matrix structure, and valid shop objectives to defeat the first two weaknesses. As a high official in the mediocracy, you are also obviously in the best position to tackle any problem that limits employees’ performance.

Your greatest impact in a mediocracy, however, is that you alone can deal potently with the two most troublesome causes of a mediocracy: people’s drive for self-advancement through pathological competitiveness, and the mediocracy’s tendency toward chronic self-perpetuation. The reason is that both of these causes are cultural in nature and the culture of an organization is difficult to change. An organization’s culture is established by the people at the top levels of the organization, through unwritten laws, powerful personalities, and precedents; and the culture is disseminated through the organization by role models and examples. Therefore, it is only the top-level people who can change the culture.

In order to rid your shop of mediocracy, therefore, you must explicitly end the cultural patterns that give rise to and perpetuate the mediocracy. What specific steps should you take then? First, outlaw all political infighting within your shop, reminding everyone that playing politics is the first resort of the incompetent. Set a good example yourself by not indulging in such activities, and punish anyone who persists in Machiavellian machinations — even going so far as to fire him for more than one serious offense.

Encourage cooperation and a team spirit among your people. Foster the attitude that what counts is contribution to the shop and not the acquisition of individual kudos. (A slogan I once saw on a shop’s wall was borrowed from President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your company can do for you. Ask what you can do for your company.”) Encourage egolessness by instituting such practices as walkthroughs. Further the cause of excellence by setting up quality circles in which people can convene to improve the shop as a whole. Again, show that you’re serious by setting a good example yourself. Demonstrate that you’re not afraid of talent by hiring skilled people into the shop and by thoroughly developing the talents of your current staff members.

Explain to everybody that interdependent, cooperating employees form a much stronger and more powerful department than do independent, naturally competitive employees. Point out that you all have similar big problems, but they are not necessarily bigger than all of you together can solve.

Communicate that your new ethical code is to cooperate with your fellow employees in order to best serve the overall goals of your department and your company. If the whole company benefits, so also does everyone in the company. Conversely, if the company suffers, so do all its employees, and being a pack of squabbling rats on a sinking ship is hardly an ideal employment situation.

Of course, you won’t be able to transform your mediocratic department overnight. The longer the mediocracy has persisted, the longer it will take you to change it. Even when you have conquered the mediocracy, a modicum of politics will remain. There will always be politics so long as there is more than one human being in your shop. If your department has a sound formal organization, firm objectives and a cooperative, meritocratic culture, your shop will no longer fall easy prey to as many plots, cabals, and conspiracies as in 19th century Europe. Politics will be constrained by your new manifesto of excellence and good service.

As a footnote to this section, let me present two warnings about what not to do about a mediocracy. My first warning is, Do not spend vast sums of money on schemes to improve appalling employee relations. Such schemes as lavish Christmas parties and boondoggles to industry conferences held in tropical climates do nothing for improving professional employee relations over the long term. They cannot solve the problem of a poor formal organization.

My second warning is, Do not introduce detailed policies, standards, and procedures into the shop without understanding their impact upon the organization. By introducing policies and procedures, you may intend that everything will be rigorously defined and that therefore everyone will turn out excellent products in a cookbook manner. Unfortunately, introducing such rigor into a mediocracy usually spells disaster for two reasons. The first reason is that if the procedures are developed or tailored in-house, they are themselves a product of the mediocracy and are likely to reflect the mediocre qualities of the host organization.

The second reason is that when the bureaucracy mandated by the detailed policies, standards, and procedures is superimposed on the mediocracy, the resulting structure is even less workable and stifling. The mediocracy becomes enshrined forever in a probably mediocre set of painstakingly elaborate procedures. The effect of this is that the procedures become religious dogma to be followed without question. As soon as anyone tries to escape the prescribed path, his deviance will be exposed in a type of religious inquisition by his colleagues. Everyone will become trapped like flies in amber by the new bureaucracy. Eventually, obeying the procedures will become an end in itself, and a more important end than producing products. The mediocracy will reach a new depth of vapidity.

Therefore, before introducing policies, standards, and procedures into your organization, discuss with everyone affected the good and bad aspects of a bureaucratic structure and its relevance to creative technical work. Then, if you decide to establish procedures, make sure you first expunge any mediocratic problems from your organization. If, for example, you set up a shop with policies, standards, and procedures, but without any objectives and rationales, you will have created an environment fit only for lifeless automata: an ultra-mediocracy.

15.3 Summary

A mediocracy, examples of which are unfortunately provided by many software-development departments, is an organization in which the mediocre prevails. Mediocracies are typically composed of overly competitive, undisciplined employee factions, which war with one another in attempts to gain relative advantages. The primary causes of a mediocracy are fivefold: evaluation of employees subjectively and by comparison to others; weakness of the formal organization; employees’ drive for self-advancement through competition with other employees; departmental problems that limit employees’ ability to perform well; and the mediocracy’s tendency to self-perpetuate.

Your ability to rectify a mediocracy depends greatly on your place in the organization. If you are at a low level, you unfortunately have little chance to affect anything and your best response may be to resign. At the middle levels, you have the chance to set a good example and to spread forth excellence in a middle-out approach. However, without strong allies to your cause, your attempts may also be doomed.

At the top of the organization, however, you are in a good position to make an all-out assault on the primary causes of the mediocracy, including the pervasive mediocratic culture itself. Break down the mediocracy forcefully and set good examples yourself. Avoid, however, the traditional superficial remedies of spending large sums on employee relations and establishing stultifying bureaucratic procedures intended to enforce quality. These will only bury you more deeply in mediocrity.

Chapter 15: Exercises

1. What characteristics of a mediocracy, if any, does your shop possess? Which of the causes of a mediocracy do you think are predominantly responsible? What do you recommend to nullify these causes in your shop?
2. In this chapter, I emphasize the value of cooperation and teamwork. However, some software people tend to be loners by choice or by their difficulty in communicating or for a variety of other reasons. How should you handle a loner? Should you assign him to a team anyway? dismiss him? find one-person tasks for him to handle? provide him with remedial therapy?
3. Would Alison’s ploy with Igor work in your shop? If so, why? If not, why not? What could you do to prevent such tricks in the future?