The Systemicide Principles of Un-Managment

General Motors, perhaps the greatest symbol of American manufacturing and business, filed for bankruptcy this morning amid a firestorm of massive debt, union disagreements, federal bailouts and gross mismanagement. A company whose stock was once synonymous with risk-free investing has vanished from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, its shining blue and chrome nameplate now tarnished, hanging crooked above the wreckage of a vacant factory in middle America. In many ways, a bittersweet victory for the grand theory of systemicide.

It seems fitting on this occasion of corporate failure to release to the world the Systemicide principles of un-management: a manifesto of business that casts aside traditional notions of order and hierachy in favor of an organic, natural, and reasonable code of human productivity that reflects a desire to create a happy, sustainable, and hyper-productive workplace.


- Divide the work calendar into manageable chunks.

People like university schedules because they are comprised of finite units with tangible outcomes and a foreseeable ending. Upon completion, they know that they will have sufficient leisure time to recharge their intellectual curiosity, to reflect upon what they have learned, and to celebrate other, often more social, aspects of their lives. This seems to create an environment where people are motivated to produce interesting and useful work, where they can see the rewards of that work, and where those rewards are directly tied to the quality that work. If a student finishes a particularly difficult semester and is rewarded with exemplary marks, the positive reinforcement is immediate and gratifying. The student will take the skills and strategies learned during that semester and identify ways to leverage them toward further success. Conversely, a student whose grades have suffered because of faulty or inefficient strategies is likely to identify the causes of poor performance and work to improve them in the future. This assumes, of course, that the student is interested in receiving the reward of good grades. Though this may not always be the case in a university setting, when we replace academic success in the form of grades with financial success in the form of monetary compensation, we find that the person in question will almost always be interested in the reward.

Why the business community has chosen to abandon this construct in favor of a never-ending cycle of homogeneous toil makes little sense to the manager interested in maximizing the potential and sustainability of his employees' efforts. Just like a university schedule, the business calendar should be divided into manageable chunks with substantial scheduled leisure time between them. While the exact structure of the calendar will undoubtedly vary based on the type of enterprise, the ideal structure is four quarters with at least two weeks of time off between them. While the thought of giving employees eight weeks off will cause most American managers' heads to explode, I'd be willing to bet that such a schedule would yield more productivity than the traditional American schedule. With strategic goals set for each quarter, projects that require completion within specific timeframes, and evaluations at the conclusion of each time chunk, employees are naturally incentivized to work hard, meet deadlines, and care about performance.

- Pay for performance, not time.

This one seems so simple, and yet it may be the most grossly misunderstood principle of productivity. If you pay people for time, the are naturally inclined to work slower. This lowers the effort they need o expend while at the same time increasing the amount of compensation they receive. Creating a system that rewards employees for producing less lowers profits, bores employees, stagnates growth, and stifles innovation.

This doesn't mean that employees need to be paid like contract workers who receive compensation only when they finish a project - that arrangement may encourage employees to rush through projects in order to buy groceries for the week, degrading the quality of the finished product even if more projects are accomplished in a given time. It simply means that you let employees go home when they're done. In almost all work situations, some days are lighter than others. Making employees stay until an arbitrary time won't increase productivity. More often than not, peer pressure will dictate when employees head home anyways. A focused, productive, and efficient day of work should be rewarded with an early dismissal, not penalized by an arbitrary chronology. Creating a culture where work is done in teams will serve to organically eliminate slackers, or at least to highlight their incompetence. When they make themselves visible, under-performers should be fired immediately. No performance, no pay.

- Incentivize ownership and reward success

The more connected people feel to their work, the better their work will be. Whenever possible, give employees the chance to take ownership over a task or project. In particular, allow junior employees to take leadership positions on projects that include senior employees. This serves several distinct purposes. First, it encourages junior employees to work hard because they won't want to appear incompetent in front of their higher-ups. Second, it gives the most talented employees a chance to separate themselves from the pack organically, without the divisive and poisonous effects of traditional hierarchical promotion. Third, it forces managers and senior employees to understand the strengths and weaknesses of junior team members, allows them to leverage their experience at all levels of the organization, and fosters an environment in which everyone, regardless of rank, is continually pushed to improve their skills. Lastly, it allows young, ambitious employees to feel as if every project is a new chance for success. Those who take ownership of projects that turn out to be exceptionally successful should be rewarded financially, optimally with a fixed percentage of revenue generated by their work. Rewarding success with money is important, but the reward must be directly proportional to success. Adherence to that simple rule of bonuses might have saved more than one Wall Street hegemon.

- Don't fight the seasons.

Despite a highly-technical and impeccably-engineered work space, and despite America's insistence on an anti-natural economy, humans are fundamentally affected by the seasons. Daylight savings time was a step in the right direction, but businesses can do even more to reflect these seasonal changes to keep their employees happy and productive. Shifting hours back in the winter time and forward in the summer (say starting at 10:30 in the dead of winter and 6:30 in the heat of summer)makes perfect sense from a physiological standpoint. Before the advent of the industrial revolution, this took place naturally - the sunrise would dictate the start of the work day. Recreating this cycle attaches people to the natural world, allows them to spend daylight hours with their friends and families when the weather is nice, and breaks up the mental drudgery that and monotonous delirium that accompanies most corporate schedules.

The type of work being done can also be segmented by season. Save the more clerical, dense, and grind-it-out tasks for the winter, when distractions are fewer, and utilize the spring and summer months for the more creative, innovative, and hands-on projects. Strategy and planning are best held off until the fall, when the days get shorter and humans are naturally prone to prudence and practicality. The human animal has been around much longer than the modern workplace, so why not change the latter to suit the former, instead of trying to reverse three million years of evolution?

- Engage and leverage your employees' other interests.

This doesn't mean simply encouraging them to read books in their free time, nor does it mean that blatantly unrelated tasks should be tolerated during work. Instead, employees should be prompted to find ways their outside interests can be related to their professional lives. Is World of Warcraft related to Financial Accounting? Probably not. But the expansion of virtual communities like W.O.W. and the market for virtual goods certainly is. How do we calculate inventory of virtual goods? What happens to the cash cycle when no physical product exists? Is computer software an asset, or a cost? And how does one calculate the liability of a flaming lava sword?

Even if they appear unrelated to core products or services, employees' interests can provide new and refreshing contexts within which to explore concepts and ideas that an organization encounters every day. Whether it's W.O.W., whitewater kayaking, knitting, or fiction writing, chances are there's a lesson or mantra that can be applied to whatever business you're in.

Ask employees to think about and look for these connections, however vague they may seem, and encourage them to present these 'case studies' of sorts, to their employees. Aside from getting them to think outside the box, it encourages team bonding and can be a nice way to break up a busy work week. And talking about what makes them happy makes people happy.

- Don't confuse ability with experience.

One is learned, one is innate. It's impossible to say which is more important, and valuable arguments can be made in favor of either. But they are distinct traits to be recognized and separated when possible. In sports, the difference between the two is easy to recognize. Sometimes a young superstar will blaze past an experienced defender on his way to the goal, or the endzone, or the basket. Other times, the experienced defender will take a better angle, or make a craftier play, and nullify the superior ability of his younger counterpart. Millions of examples of both instances exist. The winner is determined by circumstance, the equalizer. In business, the two are sometimes harder to differentiate. Experience can be the key to crafting a successful, stable deal, or finishing a project on time and on budget. Or it can be the blinders that prevent a manager from seeing the new and innovative methods his competitors are employing. Ability can be the incalculable intangible that pushes an stagnant company into the stratosphere, or it can be the hubris than plunges as sustainable one into debt.

The important thing is to realize that past experience doesn't always translate into future success, just as inexperience doesn't necessarily translate into certain failure. As with the sports, the results are largely situational. But remember, ability only gets experience when given the chance.

In retrospect, perhaps GM should have relied a little more on ability and a little less on experience. In the end, reliance on the tried and true formula turned out to be its failure. And as with the banks, it has taken a crisis to get the machine to stop moving long enough to assess its overall health. This is why the system is prone to crisis. Predisposed to catastrophe. Predestined to period failure. The successful and sustainable business of the future must take the time to pump the brakes and change the oil every few months. Just like the natural world in which it exists, it must recognize that seasons come and go, that cycles begin and end, and that value is neither created nor destroyed, but simply changes form.