The Benefit of Sameness

Nothing feels more exhilarating than hiring a guy/gal fresh out of college, their resume is free of useful experience and therefore their mind is a blank canvas ready to absorb whatever dogma you feed them.

When you were a very young person, you did what your parents told you to do When you were old enough to attend school, you did what your teacher told you to do in order to get good grades. You may have attended church where someone in a position of moral authority told you what to do. When school gets to an end, you want to have your own place and drive a nice car so the natural thing is to look for a job.

It's only logical for an employer to leverage from the submissive situation into which many people have been raised into. Our culture doesn't push people to think by themselves, start companies or revolutionize something. Our culture pushes people into conformity, the opposite would create societies that would be unmanageable. As a result, our culture rewards unproductive tasks where our brain is shut off most of the time, only to resurface during momentary lapse of reason to enter a state of quiet desperation. When you’re not thinking, it’s the society that benefits. Why do you think a TV show like "Deal or No Deal" is so popular?

All this grooming into sameness is deeply rooted in our subconscious, so for a employer implementing strict procedures that defy logic is not hard at all. Employees somehow expect to be treated like a number, even though they'll say the opposite Employees expect an org chart with a tiny box with their name on it (or better yet – no name at all), like a universe map with a arrow titled "You are here". Employees expect a performance review from their boss because they're so fucking stupid they can't make a self-assessment of what they're worth. Let me tell you something, people do not think by themselves, Oprah Winfrey was able to figure that out and built a billion dollar empire on that.

So this week's advice to manager is this: Think about something in your organization where there is weak control, something for which employees do not ask for permission. Or maybe it's a loose process that would benefit from a standardized form. Take that weak point and enforce a strict control around it and make sure 2 people need to authorize it, just one is insufficient and does not justify enough middle managers.

You’ll be amazed with how easy it is to enforce something.