It's logical that if a sport suffers from low ratings, additional broadcasts of said sport will pull in low ratings. It's also logical that stubbornly airing additional broadcasts of the sport, over and over, will do little to change the reality of those low ratings. It's logical, but not obvious. I cite as evidence the history of The Contender, a reality show that my friend once described as being "about a tournament where the winners fight each other, which is just boxing" (1). The problem with the show was that its focus on the reality TV aspect prevented it from realizing that it was just boxing, a concern it exacerbated by relying on promising but relatively unknown athletes rather than creating a show which featured its most recognizable stars. After all, if ratings for boxing were low when the fights featured the best in the business, how would airing additional fights with less talented boxers increase viewership? It wouldn't, and it didn't. In hindsight, the reality TV aspects of the show became a convenient scapegoat for its failure, taking the blame for low ratings that were always better explained by the reality of boxing on TV (2).
There is a broader lesson in how misunderstanding the cause of low ratings prevented the business bros in charge from making improvements to the program. The story of The Contender reminds us that this form of blindness - which prevents us from seeing the forest for the trees - is all too common when we try to diagnose the primary cause at the root of the issue. It's similar to a story I shared two months ago about a former boss and his doomed bonus scheme - the math suggested that the additional time required to earn the bonus reduced overall hourly pay rates, implying that the bonus plan was in fact a poorly disguised pay cut. The problem could have been resolved with a better bonus (or, I suppose, by giving the staff an official pay cut, such that the math would suggest pursuing the bonus was profitable).
The biggest universal challenge facing most of us aspiring business bros involves finding the line between the relevance of the moment's details and the eternal truth that almost always sweeps such details away; it's like knowing when to run back into the burning building instead of remaining safely on the sidewalk. One way to illustrate the ubiquity of this task is to look at organizational truisms. The common business bro leans on these truisms to explain away what could otherwise serve as a critical alarm for the organization, but in some cases the truism must be set aside in order to properly recognize the root cause of a particular problem. It's a critical skill, which enables us to see what should have been obvious all along - no one watches boxing, even if the reality TV aspects bring an intriguing twist; no one likes a pay cut, even though most broadly agree that they like bonuses.
The first truism that comes to mind is the Peter principle, which states that in hierarchies employees rise to their level of incompetence; Peter's Corollary adds that the logical outcome for any position in a hierarchy is an incompetent employee. The stunning mechanism is based on the observation that promotions for good performance have no direct connection to success in the next role, seeing as how skills from a lower level are never certain to translate to a higher position. Thus, the conclusion is that an employee rising to a new position will either succeed and be promoted again, or struggle and stagnate at the new level. The business bro who looks at this mechanism may conclude that the situation is hopeless - there are no good reasons to promote someone except for good performance, but firing incompetent people seems like a good way to hurt morale while also dismissing someone who was valuable in a different position. The Peter principle offers an easy escape from the responsibility of resolving the issue - oh, what choice did I have, I had to promote him! And I can't be expected to fire him now, right?
There are two things that come to mind when I think logically about the Peter principle - training and structure. First, does the organization train promoted employees with the same commitment they demonstrate toward a new hire? From my experience, I'd say it's rare for an organization to even recognize the value of training a promoted employee, and my sense is that the promotion from "individual" to "manager" is treated with the barest indifference; I've seen CVS customers receive better training at the self-checkout kiosk than I have seen newly promoted colleagues receive useful managerial training. If entry-level employees are succeeding at rates much higher than promoted employees, perhaps the relevant issue is about training rather than the self-fulfilling prophesies glittering in Peter's crystal ball. But what if the lack of training isn't a relevant concern? This leads me to my second point, which is that the business bro may then wish to consider the hierarchy and assess its functional value. Does the hierarchy improve communication and decision-making, or does it exist merely to allow for promotions as a manner to acknowledge success? Rather than relying on promotions to recognize success, could a compensation scheme tied to the organization's performance be used instead? This would keep employees where they are competent while also enabling the organization to properly reward and acknowledge success. The Peter principle to me seems like an excuse for ignoring two more common issues - the failure of the organization to train promoted staff and the reliance on hierarchy as a way to recognize success.
The second truism is Parkinson's law, which suggests that busywork expands to fill the time allotted for the work. I’m sure anyone can relate to this concept, whether it be in the workplace or elsewhere, though of course it's commonly used to explain the way bureaucracy gradually overwhelms an organization. The suggested remedies to this phenomenon are so void of imagination that I wonder if they are in themselves results of the very busywork to which they state their objection. "If someone takes three hours, give them two" sounds like a decent solution, but it's destined to end with a spectacular double whammy - a missed deadline, closely followed by the particular form of shoddy work that only results from panicked rushing. I struggled a little bit to envision an acceptable remedy for Parkinson's law, then it came to me - the solution is to find interesting work, such that the busywork is no longer necessary; if the busywork is necessary, find new employees who will find it interesting.
I know this solution must be true because I've experienced the same challenge today with writing - having had nothing to write about, I've found something here that resembles busywork, then allowed it to fill up all the space thus far consumed by this essay. The sooner I end this, the better, but lacking as I am at the moment in terms of good ideas, I feel compelled to carry on rather than face the reality. The solution isn't to convince myself to stop, or to work within an invented time constraint, or to write faster - the solution is to find a new topic that contextualizes this subject as busywork, which will enable me to leave it alone without guilt as I explore a new project. I think this is the solution we all know, but prefer to leave unsaid, opting instead to invent wide-ranging explanations of unstoppable phenomena that create so many problems in our lives, problems over which we claim no agency. These explanations make us feel better, but they rob us of the opportunity to reach our potential. When we encounter a bad TV show, an exploitative boss, an organization that refuses to train, the solution is simple - find something better and move on. When we find ourselves mired into the twisted logic of our own busywork, we must stop for a moment until the picture becomes clear - if busywork expands to fill the time allotted to it, and we allot all of our lives to busywork, well, you don't need me to explain the logic of rising to your own level of incompetence.
Footnotes
1) My friend's capacity for these concise summaries was famous in our group - we used to refer to them as "___'s logical explanations". I didn't realize that these explanations, which we mostly treated as comic relief, were also examples of highly advanced critical thinking about the BS in daily life.
2) I assume they thought the show was like American Idol for boxing, but the process of an audience voting for singers based on short performances has no equivalent in the music industry, which gave Fox's hit program a necessary novelty factor that undoubtedly contributed to its success.
