In December, 1972, about 117 hours into the Apollo 17 lunar mission, as Astronaut Eugene Cernan was loading the Lunar Rover for the mission's first excursion across the surface of the moon, he accidentally caught the right rear fender of the rover with a hammer. He damaged it, and made a quick repair that really didn't hold. Overnight, Houston worked out a more durable repair that the astronauts installed in the morning, and it held up well during two subsequent excursions.
It's a good thing, too. On Lunar Rovers, fenders are important. They protect the vehicle and the astronauts from the dust and rocks kicked up by the wheels. Fenders do something similar for cars, bicycles, and motorcycles.
And sometimes, people serve an analogous role for their supervisors. At work, a fender is anyone who serves to prevent political mud from splashing on the fender's boss. Here are some indicators that you might be a fender.
- Other people are fenders
- If one or more of your peers or predecessors (or their predecessors) were or are fenders, you might be one yourself. Sometimes it's easier to see in others than in yourself.
- You can't exercise your authority
- Even though you have formal authority for something, you can't really exercise it without your boss's approval. For instance, if you want to initiate a replacement process or a performance improvement plan for a problem subordinate, and your boss insists on detailed involvement in the procedure, you might be a fender. In extreme cases, you might be told to wait for a "more convenient" time, or that a replacement requisition won't be available.
- If the task is risky, it's yours
- A fender is someone
whose role is to protect
the boss from being splashed
with political mud - Most managers handle some tasks through delegation, and some personally. But if your boss tends to delegate tasks to you if and only if they are high-risk politically, you might be a fender.
The consequences for the individual fender are unpleasant enough, but the existence of fenders also harms the organization.
- Tolerating unethical behavior
- While it might be OK to use an inanimate object as protection from the consequences of your actions, using human beings that way is unethical. Tolerating one form of ethical breach could be a signal of breaches elsewhere.
- Disguising the real problem
- To enable the organization to take corrective action, bad management must be revealed. Using a subordinate as a fender enables managers to trick the organization into believing that the problem was in the subordinate. This can lead to mistaken corrective action.
Even if you're pretty sure that you aren't using fenders yourself, think carefully. Are you someone who benefits from subordinates who designate and manage fenders on your behalf? Top Next Issue
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For more about the Lunar Rover, see A Brief History of the Lunar Roving Vehicle, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, 3 April 2002.
And for more about the Apollo 17 mission, see Apollo Lunar Surface Journal,edited by Eric M. Jones, NASA Headquarters, November, 2005.
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- How to Undermine Your Subordinates
- People write to me occasionally that their bosses undermine them, but I know there are bosses who want
to do more undermining than they are already doing. So here are some tips for bosses aspiring to sink
even lower.
- Social Transactions: We're Doing It My Way
- We have choices about how we conduct social transactions — greetings, partings, opening doors,
and so on. Some transactions require that we collaborate with others. In social transactions, how do
we decide whose preferences rule?
- Conway's Law and Technical Debt
- Conway's Law is an observation that the structures of systems we design tend to replicate our communication
patterns. This tendency might also contribute to their tendency to accumulate what we now call technical debt.
- Time to Let Go of Plan A
- We had a plan. It was a good one. Our plan seemed to work for a while. But then troubles began. And
now things look very bleak. But people can't let go of the plan. For some teams in this situation, there
isn't a Plan B. For others, Plan B is a secret.
- The Fallacy of Division
- Errors of reasoning are pervasive in everyday thought in most organizations. One of the more common
errors is called the Fallacy of Division, in which we assume that attributes of a class apply to all
members of that class. It leads to ridiculous results.
See also Workplace Politics and Managing Your Boss for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming May 8: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 3
- Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of problems. Here is Part 3 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure, emphasizing past experiences of participants. Available here and by RSS on May 8.
- And on May 15: Should I Write or Should I Call?
- After we recognize the need to contact a colleague or colleagues to work out a way to move forward, we next must decide how to make contact. Phone? Videoconference? Text message? There are some simple criteria that can help with such decisions. Available here and by RSS on May 15.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group