Long have I ranted about the rise of mediocrity in the corporate sector, folks who need ties and attitude to look smart., and today as I made my morning coffee.. I understood!
I as a corporate manager am hiring you and paying you to do my bidding. If you are short on the grey cells, you will mess up my instructions and cause me losses of time, money, reputation etc. (Category L)
If you have too many grey cells, you will know why I am wrong and how to do my job better than I am doing it. You may get on my nerves second guessing all my decisions or end up replacing me or overtaking me. (Category M)
It is easy to get rid of category L by highlighting his/he goof ups. It is trickier to get rid of category M. Then I will claim that you are not aligned to the organizational goals. I will do the discredit/harass/provoke routine. Unless you are smart enough to handle a boss who is threatened by you, you will lose your place in the corporate.
A similar concept applies to ethics. You must be ethical enough not to cheat the company. Don’t take stationery, don’t overbill your hours, don’t overstate your qualifications, don’t fudge your expense reports….
But you must be unethical enough to support the company in any cheating it decides to do., upsell/oversell your products, don’t talk about environmental concerns, use pretty girls to sell weak products (peripheral route to persuasion – in marketing), overcharge to the extent of the customer’s naivety.
That is why corporates will eventually prefer computers and robots to human beings. They are smart enough to execute orders and foolish enough to obey them..
