Business Without the Bullsh*t: 49 Secrets and Shortcuts You Need to Know (34 page)

As much as we all wish it weren’t so, there’s plenty of evil floating around in the business world. This final part is your guide to identifying that evil and protecting yourself from its worst effects.

Please note that the information in this part is dangerous, because it’s impossible to identify some kinds of evil without explaining how to do evil things. For example, when I tell you how to spot a dirty political trick, I’m also telling you how to play that trick.

I strongly advise that you not use these secrets to do evil yourself. Remember: you’re going to have to live with yourself, and if you act like an asshole, you end up living with an asshole… you. With that warning in mind, here’s what you’ll learn:

Some people believe that the way to get what they want is to manipulate other people by playing dirty politics. This secret reveals the nine most common of these dirty tricks, as well as your best defenses against them.

The
development opportunity
is a trick bosses play on an employee when they want that employee to take on a job or project that he or she would normally avoid.

Development opportunities are not real assignments that might allow you to show your value to the boss or the rest of the company. They’re donkey work packaged as an educational experience.

There are two types of “development opportunities”—those given to current employees and those given to new workers (specifically interns).

Development opportunities directed at the currently employed are the crap jobs that need doing but that nobody wants to do. Why did the boss pick on you? Chances are you don’t push back as much as your coworkers.

There’s also a real possibility that the boss is dumping lousy
assignments on you in order to get you to quit, which saves the boss the time and trouble of doing the paperwork to get you fired.

Development opportunities directed at new workers take the form of the infamous unpaid internship. Every year tens of thousands of workplace novices are convinced that it’s in their interest to work for free, in the naive belief that this will help them get a job.

Sure, there are interns who landed a job after working for free. However, they most likely got those jobs
despite
working for free, not
because
of it. Just ask the thousands of interns who never get offered a paid gig.

The moment you agree to work for free, you’re setting the value of your labor to exactly zero. Working for free, or on the cheap, simply reduces the value of your labor to free or cheap.

A
rock fetch
is when a boss asks an employee to create or obtain a useless object or series of useless objects as a precondition to the manager’s making a certain decision. The fetching process allows the boss to avoid making that decision.

Rocks have two characteristics: they’re hard and they’re useless. Whenever a boss asks you to do or get something before he or she makes a decision, step back and assess the difficulty and usefulness of whatever you’re being asked to do.

If the request is for something reasonable (such as a go-ahead from another manager whose group might be affected), you’re not on a rock fetch. If the request is for something absurd, such as a fifty-page report to get the approval to move to another cubicle, you’re on a rock fetch.

Whenever you suspect you’re on a rock fetch, ask yourself why your boss might not want to make the decision you want made. Would it change the status quo? Would it weaken the boss’s power or limit the boss’s options? Try to find the root of the problem.

Figuring out the root is almost always a better use of your time and energy than fetching the rock. When you think you know why the boss would prefer to avoid the decision, confirm the root problem by asking about it. Example: “I sense that you’re uncomfortable with this decision. Are there some politics involved that I don’t know about?”

By probing for the root of the problem, you can propel the discussion out of the realm of manipulation and into the realm of working with your boss to accomplish a common goal.

A boss or a coworker might set you up as a
sacrificial lamb
in order to take the heat if something goes wrong but take the credit if something goes right.

For example, suppose your coworker wants to float a potentially controversial idea at a meeting with your mutual boss but is afraid he’ll lose credibility if the CEO thinks the idea stupid. An easy way to test the waters is to get you to present the idea instead.

Your coworker helps you prepare the slides, making certain that the controversial proposal is positioned so it looks as if it’s your idea. If the idea gets shot down at the meeting, your coworker joins in and takes some potshots to show solidarity with the boss.

However, if the idea is well received, your coworker inserts himself into the discussion and takes credit for it, perhaps by making a remark like, “Jim, you did a great job presenting my idea; why don’t I take over and provide the details?”

Please note this trick works only if you let yourself get maneuvered into “owning” an idea that isn’t yours. Therefore, the easiest way to defend against it is to preemptively give credit wherever it’s due.

So rather than saying something like, “This chart shows that selling explosives online will increase our revenue by 100 percent,” say something like, “This chart shows Fred’s estimates of the revenue increase that might result from online sales of our explosives.”

If the idea gets shot down, you make it clear (again) that the idea belongs to Fred rather than to you. Same thing if the idea gets kudos. Fair is fair.

This maneuver is more dicey if the person setting you up is your boss, because it’s usually a bad idea to throw your boss under the bus. (“ ‘Vengeance is mine,’ sayeth the Lord Boss.”) Therefore, use this maneuver after you’ve told your boss that you’re happy to be the mouthpiece but not the fall guy.

About half the card tricks in the lexicon of stage magic depend on the ability of the performer to ensure that a volunteer picks a particular card, even though it appears to the audience as if the selection is random. This is called
forcing a card
.

The business-world equivalent is when somebody (usually somebody who works for you) prepares three alternative approaches to a problem so it appears to you that there’s a choice, when actually only one of the approaches makes any real sense.

For example, suppose an employee wants you to hire his college friend. He recommends three candidates: (1) his friend, (2) an unqualified person who will need lots of training, and (3) an overqualified person who’s likely to leave when a better offer comes along. You choose the friend, thinking you made a good decision when in fact the decision was forced.

The challenge here, for your employee, was to make the two lousy choices plausible enough to warrant your serious consideration without making them plausible enough for you to actually select one of the two non-starters.

The challenge for you is to recognize when you’re being presented with false alternatives. If this happens, refuse to accept the list. Say something like, “I wanted three real alternatives and what you’ve given me here is one that’s viable and two that aren’t.”

In all probability the other person will get defensive and claim that the alternatives are real and so forth. Ignore this, then say: “Be honest: are you trying to force my hand? Because I really do want some real choices.”

Your goal is to insert honesty into the relationship while letting the other person understand that you don’t intend to be manipulated.

Hiding skeletons is when an employee or coworker possesses information that he or she doesn’t want you to know but that you’d have every right to be angry at that person if you learned you hadn’t been told.

For example, suppose you’re the boss of an engineering group and one of your engineers learns that the product he designed has a higher-than-normal failure rate. However, the engineer is up for promotion, which will be jeopardized if you find out.

In this case the engineer might elect to provide that information to you in such a way that the implications of that information are not immediately clear. The engineer will then get his promotion and, when (or if) the bad news emerges into daylight, the engineer can claim he told you all about it.

Skeleton-hiding is generally accomplished through locating the toxic information near the end (but not
at
the end) of a long e-mail or report. Another method consists of burying the toxic information in plain sight through the use of technical jargon and biz-blab.

Finding hidden skeletons is mostly a matter of common sense combined with careful observation. When you receive a long report that might contain something problematic, click to the end of the document, then click back a few paragraphs. If there’s a skeleton, that’s usually where you’ll find it.

A red flag should also go up in your brain whenever somebody who usually communicates clearly suddenly lapses into semicomprehensible
jargon. When confronted with such jargon, your best approach is to ask, point-blank: “What does this mean in plain language?”

For example, suppose you run across something like this near the end of a long e-mail:

You could just skim the paragraph and forget it, which is exactly what the skeleton-hider is hoping you’ll do. Rather than doing this, though, press the person who wrote the gibberish to clarify what the paragraph really means. (In this case, the skeleton being hidden is “Our product is killing customers.”)

When somebody doesn’t like where a meeting is headed, he or she may try to change the subject by bringing up an issue that’s guaranteed to distract everyone. This is known as
ratholing a meeting
.

For example, suppose your meeting is to review a project’s status, but Jill hasn’t gotten much done. Rather than take the heat, Jill brings up a rumor that your firm’s biggest customer may leave for another vendor.

Suddenly the project review meeting turns into a planning session to avoid the impending disaster. That discussion consumes the remainder of the meeting, leaving the late project still to be reviewed at some future date (when Jill will presumably be more prepared).

Ratholes work only when whoever is running the meeting is willing to jump down them. If you have an agenda for every meeting and stick to that agenda, your meetings will stay on course, even when people bring up distracting issues.

Whenever you sense a rathole opening, state that you realize the rathole is an important issue (even if it’s not) and then table it for discussion later. Eventually people will realize that ratholing is a futile gesture, at least when you’re running the meeting.

This is a more sophisticated variation of ratholing. In this case, the goal is to actively direct the meeting in a completely different direction from the one the meeting leader intends.

Here’s how it works. Suppose a coworker you’ve invited to your meeting wants to work an issue that’s not on your agenda, or that is even contrary to that agenda. The coworker decides to
hijack your meeting
for his own ends.

In preparation, the coworker suggests a list of other people who should be invited to your meeting. Before the meeting, the coworker meets privately with as many of those people as possible, obtaining their support for the coworker’s agenda.

When the meeting takes place, the coworker volunteers to take minutes. The coworker’s allies change the direction of the meeting to work the coworker’s issues rather than yours. Then after the meeting, the coworker sends out meeting minutes that support the coworker’s agenda.

There are two ways to prevent your meeting from being hijacked. First, have a clear agenda and distribute it well before the meeting. Second, either take your own minutes for your own meetings or delegate this task to somebody you trust. Then distribute your minutes immediately after the meeting, thereby preempting the would-be hijacker’s minutes.

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “The king of hell is easy to avoid; it’s the little demons that get you.” That’s certainly the case with stealing credit. The big abuses—such as somebody’s sticking his or her name on something you wrote—are obvious.

It’s the more subtle forms of credit-stealing that are harder to prevent. I’ve met people who have built
entire careers
out of worming themselves into projects that are almost complete and then hogging the limelight.

Your best defense against credit-stealing is to write and distribute ongoing progress reports whenever there’s even a
possibility
that somebody might try to steal credit for your work.

That way, if there’s ever controversy over who’s contributed or who’s responsible for the success of your project, you can simply point to your reports. The reports prevent the situation from descending into a “he said/she said” discussion.

Beyond that, you’ve got to be willing to publicly embarrass the person who’s trying to claim credit. (Unless it’s your boss, in which case you’re better off keeping mum and letting your reports speak for themselves.)

For example, if you’re in a meeting and somebody talks about the success of your project while implying that he or she is responsible, you
must
very quickly point out (even if you have to interrupt to do so) that the presenter wasn’t really involved.

You don’t have to be rude, but you do have to be straightforward. Say something like, “I just wanted to thank Steve for providing a status report on project X, but somehow the fact that it’s my project got dropped from his slides.”

After you’ve done something like this two or three times, nobody will dare attempt to steal credit from you again. The other side of
this, of course, is that if you let it slide even once, the credit-stealer will know you’re a pushover and steal again.

This one is truly insidious. If a coworker or employee is secretly hoping you’ll fail, he or she will sometimes stockpile facts or rumors that will throw you off your game at a crucial moment.