Disrupting the Hierarchy

From Peter and Hull’s The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong (1969):
“Employees in the two extreme classes–the super-competent and the super-incompetent–are alike subject to dismissal. They are usually fired soon after being hired, for the same reason: that they tend to disrupt the hierarchy. This sloughing off of extremes is called Hierarchal Exfoliation.”

When I first started working, in my teens, my father explained the Peter Principle to me during many informal chats. Now that he’s long gone, I realize the importance of his message: Don’t ever let your boss know you’re smarter than them.

In practice, the way the best of us are exfoliated is to creatively conflate our super-competence into a super-incompetence, for the HR department’s legal files. So, if you really like your job, feign stupidity and stay under the radar.

Otherwise, you too will be exfoliated.

Hacking the MBTI Inventory

From Isabel Briggs Myers’s Introduction to Type, Sixth Edition: A Guide to Understanding Your Results on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (1998):
“Taking the MBTI inventory and receiving feedback will help you identify your unique gifts. . .understanding your MBTI type is self-affirming and encourages cooperation with others.”

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a psychometric test used by corporate astrologers to categorize their employees. Despite its pretext of validating all personality types in an organization, in the actual workplace you will be invalidated frequently by performance reviews, scorecards, metrics, and other corporate tools of conformity.

If you must take this intrusive anal probe called the MBTI, make sure all your answers make you an IFSJ; you will stay under the radar and outlast the rest of us, including the ISTP that brought you this advice.

2×2 Matrices

From Chetan Bhagat’s One Night @ the Call Center (2005):
“‘Maybe I can explain this to you with the help of a 2×2 matrix,’ Bakshi said and bent down to write ‘High‘ and ‘Low‘ along the boxes. I had to stop him.“

The dirty little secret for all you potential intermulticultural hucksters out there is to simply articulate your scheme into a 2×2 matrix that is easily penetrable into the managerial brain. It’s that easy.

The Cultural Perversity Agenda

From M.R. Hammer’s The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI): An Approach for Assessing and Building Intercultural Competence, in M.A. Moodian (Ed.), Contemporary Leadership and Intercultural Competence: Understanding and Utilizing Cultural Diversity to Build Successful Organizations (in press) :
“Individuals at the Acceptance level are typically curious and interested in cultural differences and committed to the cultural diversity agenda.“

An infamous charlatan on the intercultural scene, who uncannily bears a resemblance to Dr. Monroe on The Simpsons, makes much talk about aligning the global workforce to the “cultural diversity agenda”. The presence of a definite article directly implies that we should all understand what this agenda is, and indirectly implies that we should accept it as a good thing. He’s even got 2×2 matrices to hammer these implications in, no pun intended.

Now, before we take the sage’s regimen of psychometric tests and debriefing sessions, and weaken our resolve until we no longer question, let’s take time to ask:

What exactly is this cultural diversity agenda, anyway?

Intercultural Weasel Advice

From Scott Adams’s Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel (2002):
“Weasels are always eager to give unsolicited advice on topics as diverse as romance, work, and advanced satellite telemetry. But it’s not because weasels like to help. It’s because when you give advice, it makes you feel wise even if you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

An upstart intercultural consultant at one of the world’s largest software companies recently told me that when we say to someone:

“You’re lying!”

the judgment is too personalized because it interprets the action of the addressee. So, if we truly want to resolve conflict, it is a better practice to focus on our own actions, perhaps by saying:

“I think that you’re lying.”

I tried that with my wife, who’s from a much different culture than mine, that same night. Wrong move!

After three nights sleeping on the couch, I learned a valuable lesson: Beware of intercultural weasel advice.

D.I.E., D.I.E, D.I.E!!!

From M.R. Hammer’s Solving Problems and Resolving Conflicts Across the Cultural Divide: The Intercultural Conflict Style (ICS) Inventory Workshop (2007):
“Reframing is initiated through conscious application of the D.I.E. . . .move parties down the D.I.E. ladder from evaluation to description.”

One of the intercultural conflict resolution methodologies passed down to communication coaches at one of the world’s largest software companies is memorized by a spooky acronym, D.I.E.:

1. Describe
2. Interpret
3. Evaluate

We’ll look at the particulars later, but think for a moment about what might happen if we coach our students to D.I.E. Is it culturally appropriate to remind our students of death?

Now, read the quote above and think about the framer of this acronym; his recommendation is actually to evaluate, then interpret, then describe the actions of those who you are in conflict with. In other words, the actual sequence is E.I.D., yet the catchy acronym D.I.E. is used to market this particular intercultural conflict resolution strategy.

Personally, I think we’d be a lot better off if our opponents would DIE; it would save us thousands of dollars in fees to intercultural charlatans like Dr. Hammer.