Implementing sacrifice-based management

If you can control people’s mind, you can push them to do virtually anything. Let’s say you’re the supreme leader of a population and you’re able to convince them that the current drought is due to some fussy god who didn’t receive his/her quarterly share of sacrifice, then it’s relatively easy to convince some hapless farmer to give his young daughter, who is then pushed into an active volcano and vaporized instantly. If the drought persists, repeat the process with someone more chubby as gods seem to favor high-fat content.

If the rain comes, then you can claim the gods are happy and that you are pretty effective in dealing with this kind of situation, and this reinforces the trust between you and the population.

Note to CGI managers: DO NOT throw resources into active volcanoes, they instantly become unbillable and HR must be notified.

My point is that one of the skill you need to develop – as a manager – is how to convince your staff to make sacrifices for the greater good. Greater good being anything that does not benefit your employees. When I talk about growing CGI to 100,000 employees, this is a good example of a greater good.

Now, how do you implement this? How can you push your people toward making great efforts without having any kind of reward attached to it? How can this achieved with minimal efforts from your part?

The idea of sacrifice is the business model of any organized religion, so a closer examination of religion management as a service industry would be beneficial. I think the core idea is to manage hope without promising anything tangible. Be vague, yet paint an idealistic portrait or an improbable future, people like that. Nobody saw the Garden of Eden, the literature on the subject is scarce and they have no Web site. Yet, people believe in it.

Let’s say you manage a couple of guys who are fed up with the way CGI acts toward them. First, acknowledge their frustration, this creates an initial bond with you and them. Next, talk to them about what the company could be in the future. Promise anything that doesn’t sound too wacky. Like, they could be part of a special group which might report directly to the business unit top VP. This is all bull of course, but this will bait them into believe that they are worthwhile. People desperately want hope. Once they are in this psychological state, they can be manipulated managed to perform a bunch of dull tasks without being paid for doing it.

If you are able to take your staff to this stage, make sure you maintain minimal communication with them. Since nothing will happen, it’s best for you to keep a low profile. Ignore their calls, forward their e-mails to a spam box. If they corner you, tell them that you highly appreciate their efforts and this will likely influence their performance review. Tell them that upper management will likely do something “soon” about whatever you promised. The whole idea is to maintain hope.

Obviously the scam cannot be maintained indefinitely, so at some point you’ll need to tell them that the “special project” has been discarded by upper management but that is was nevertheless a “clever idea” and they have been “visible” to some very influential people at CGI. Repeat the process with different buzzwords.