(‘Jerk’ is used here as an umbrella term for bullies, manipulators, bigots, rotten attitudes, rudeness, cruelty, etc.)

Jerks have been around since the dawn of man.

In today’s workplace you can find jerks at any level of an organization.

It’s always been difficult to call out the jerks, because they are usually bullies and good at intimidation.

The rise of individual jerks, some of them extremely powerful, has fostered the rise of institutional jerks, also very powerful.

Some are in tech and run for companies that are household names — Facebook, Google, Amazon — others aren’t as well-known, such as Palantir.

However, you can find them everywhere, in politics — national, regional and local. In religion — any of them. And any other arena you want to focus on.

Their power is more far-reaching and they believe they are untouchable.

Sadly, they often are.

But how much worse is it when the institution itself is the jerk?

Talk about untouchable.

WeWork is on a role to lead the newest crop of institutional jerks.

The company acquired and plans to monetize software that tracks employees throughout a company.

Euclid’s website says the company is “focused on redefining the workplace experience of the future.” Translation: optimizing every aspect of the physical workplace so workers are their most productive.

Euclid does this by tracking how people move around physical spaces. Its technology can track how many people showed up to a meeting or to that after-work happy hour. The company can see where employees tend to congregate and for how long. It’s all done over Wi-Fi.

Sound creepy?

It is.

Governments are getting into the act, too.

While the legislation varies slightly from state to state, it generally requires contractors to install software that allows “automatic verification” of their hours billed. Some bills, such as those being considered in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, are as exact as requiring a software solution that takes screenshots of “state-funded activity at least once every three (3) minutes” and store that data for seven years. The New Jersey and Pennsylvania proposals also require logging “keystroke and mouse event frequency.”

Now comes the question that the jerks never seem to think about.

How do you recruit talent, let alone top talent, into an environment that says up front, “we don’t trust you”?

As for the private sector, there is no way that any kind of monitoring or surveillance will remain secret — any more than salaries did.

Companies that choose not to go down that road will enjoy a more productive, creative and loyal workforce, not to mention one heck of a recruiting edge.

Image credit: Steve Baker

Yesterday’s post cited a quote from a book, “Power is the ability to sustain illusion.”  At the time, I used it in a post that focused on the idea that powerful people often believed and acted as if the rules didn’t apply to them.

Of course, powerful people — glitterati, politirati, digirati, corporati, religirati — have acted on that premise for centuries; still do and always will.

But there is a difference, actually two differences, between then and now.

The first is the new technology that is blurring and even erasing the separation between truth and lies, reality and fantasy.

The second is far more worrying.

It’s not just people’s willingness to turn a blind eye and rationalize what’s happening, AKA, business as usual.

Rather, it’s their willingness to actively embrace it — often with their eyes wide open.

Not as active protagonists, but as passive ones.

It’s not that they are bad people, but as Edmund Burke said, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Image credit: Angie Trenz

I recently questioned whether, in fact, the imperial CEO is indeed dead as many are saying.

Wednesday Dan McCarthy was inspired to write 10 Ways to Avoid the Arrogance of Power after reading The Arrogance of Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Business School. Pfeffer says,

“The higher you go in an organization, the more those around you are going to tell you that you are right. The higher reaches of organizations–which includes government, too, in case you slept through the past eight years–are largely absent of critical thought. … There is also evidence, including some wonderful studies by business school professor Don Hambrick at Penn State, that shows the corroding effects of ego. Leaders filled with hubris are more likely to overpay for acquisitions and engage in other risky strategies. Leaders ought to cultivate humility.” He ends by advising not to hold your breath waiting for this to change.”

I think much of Dan’s advice is good, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for the advice to be taken.

I think that power corrupts those susceptible to it, not all those who have it; there are enough examples of powerful people who didn’t succumb to keep me convinced.

Susceptibility is woven in MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and is especially prevalent in today’s society of mememememememe with its sense of entitlement.

Changing MAP and stopping drinking are similar, since the individual has to choose to change. All the horses and all the men can’t convince the king to change—that only happens from the inside out.

Moreover, as I’ve frequently said, MAP is sneaky; it will pretend to change and then revert to its normal pattern when no one’s looking.

We, the people, can’t force them to change, but we can learn to sustain our attention span and keep looking.

Image credit: flickr