
The flagship store of the Market Basket supermarket chain, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. The privately held chain, which serves Eastern New England, was embroiled in a decades-long family feud between the descendants of Telemachus DeMoulas and George DeMoulas, who had purchased the business from their father in 1954. The two brothers each owned 50% of the business, and the arrangement worked well. But when ownership passed to their survivors, trouble began. The first lawsuit was filed in 1990, setting off a chain of hostile legal actions that finally ended on August 27, 2014, following a strike by most employees in support of the re-hiring of the then-recently-fired President of the company, Arthur T. DeMoulas, son of Telemachus. The final settlement was achieved when Arthur T.'s buyout offer was accepted by the opposing side of the family. More about the history of Market Basket
This tale is a family tragedy, of course. One cannot know for certain, but one possible cause is the 50/50 ownership structure the DeMoulas brothers created. It is one form of the technique of having "overlapping or ambiguous job descriptions" listed in this essay.
Photo by Cybah courtesy Wikimedia.
Working for a bad manager is frustrating, but working for a truly bad manager drives you absolutely insane. Almost daily, truly bad managers shock their subordinates with unexpectedly breathtaking examples of incompetence, stupidity, and malice. Being a truly bad manager requires energy, devotion, and limitless creativity. Managers aspiring to be truly bad need a comprehensive resource of tools and techniques for driving subordinates insane.
This short essay can't possibly be a comprehensive resource, but it does outline methods for achieving one of the truly bad manager's strategic objectives: creating toxic conflict. Here is Part I of a catalog of techniques for setting subordinates against one another, written as advice for the truly bad manager.
- Have overlapping or ambiguous job descriptions
- Ensure that the job descriptions of subordinates are written explicitly enough or ambiguously enough that several of them can be read so as to cover some of the same responsibilities. For extra zing, overlap those responsibilities that are most valued, and most likely to be regarded as bases for self-esteem or career advancement.
- Set ambiguous, immeasurable performance objectives
- To motivate your subordinates to do whatever they can to destroy each other, you want them to be anxious about their own performance. In performance reviews, set objectives that are unclear, ambiguous, and immeasurable. If they also aren't achievable, so much the better.
- Play favorites
- Show favoritism in making assignments, allocating resources, and distributing credit and praise. Be consistent about confiding in some people, and not others. If you have a small circle of favorites, those outside it will quickly learn to resent those inside it.
- Communicate ineffectively
- Whenever you communicate anything important, do it ineffectively, and hurriedly depart for an important meeting, off-site, or vacation. Leave them wondering what you really meant. Let them argue it out amongst themselves.
- Use harassment, blaming, and scapegoating…judiciously
- Repeatedly harassing, blaming, and scapegoating a few specific individuals provides a means of shifting responsibility for failures from yourself or from your favorites onto a few people. Their careers are already in ruins, so it does them no real harm. But it does provide a pattern for other subordinates to use when they need to evade responsibility.
- Deny having made previous commitments
- When someone Being a truly bad manager
requires energy, devotion,
and limitless creativityclaims that you agreed to do or not do something, and you later didn't do or did do it, deny having agreed to do or not do it. Claim confidently that you thought you were just discussing doing or not doing it. And make sure one of your favorites backs you up. - Overload some people and underload others
- Distribute work unevenly. Make sure some people have to work, well, not 24/7, but maybe 19/6 or something like that, while others can just kick back. Keep stress levels at maximum.
We'll continue next time with many more ideas for creating toxic conflict. Next in this series Top
Next Issue
Are you fed up with tense, explosive meetings? Are you or a colleague the target of a bully? Destructive conflict can ruin organizations. But if we believe that all conflict is destructive, and that we can somehow eliminate conflict, or that conflict is an enemy of productivity, then we're in conflict with Conflict itself. Read 101 Tips for Managing Conflict to learn how to make peace with conflict and make it an organizational asset. Order Now!
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Related articles
More articles on Conflict Management:
The Perils of Political Praise
- Political Praise is any public statement, praising (most often) an individual, and including a characterization
of the individual or the individual's deeds, and which spins or distorts in such a way that it advances
the praiser's own political agenda, possibly at the expense of the one praised.
Dealing with Rapid-Fire Attacks
- When a questioner repeatedly attacks someone within seconds of their starting to reply, complaining
to management about a pattern of abuse can work — if management understands abuse, and if management
wants deal with it. What if management is no help?
Reframing Hurtful Dismissiveness
- Targets of dismissive remarks often feel that their concerns are being judged as unimportant, which
can be painful when their concerns are real. But there is an alternative to pain. It requires a little
skill and discipline, but it can work.
When Somebody Throws a Nutty
- To "throw a nutty" — at work, that is — can include anything from extreme verbal
over-reaction to violent physical abuse of others. When someone exhibits behavior at the milder end
of this spectrum, what responses are appropriate?
Dealing with Deniable Intimidation
- Some people use intimidation so stealthily that only their targets recognize the behavior as abusive
or intimidating. Targets are often so frustrated, angered, and confused that they cannot find suitable
responses.
See also Conflict Management and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming May 2: Narcissistic Behavior at Work: VII
- Narcissistic behavior at work prevents trusting relationships from developing. It also disrupts existing relationships, and generates toxic conflict. One class of behaviors that's especially threatening to relationships is disregard for the feelings of others. In this part of our series we examine the effects of that disregard. Available here and by RSS on May 2.
And on May 9: Unethical Coordination
- When an internal department or an external source is charged with managing information about a large project, a conflict of interest can develop. That conflict presents opportunities for unethical behavior. What is the nature of that conflict, and what ethical breaches can occur? Available here and by RSS on May 9.
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