Sunday, February 14

The Gervais Principle

   Late last year I started seeing references to an interesting essay
   series by Venkatesh Rao, in which he proposes the "Gervais Principle".
   This principle of organisational behaviour has been distilled from the
   TV series "The Office".  It's a devastating critique of behaviour in
   the workplace, and is quite different to what is usually taught in
   management courses.

   The essays are quite detailed, and additional parts in the Gervais
   Principle series may be published later this year.  In the meantime,
   here are the first three parts:
   * The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to "The Office"
     <http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-
        the-office-according-to-the-office/>
   * The Gervais Principle II: Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and
     Gametalk
     <http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-ii-
        posturetalk-powertalk-babytalk-and-gametalk/>
   * The Genealogy of the Gervais Principle
     <http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/02/04/the-genealogy-of-the-gervais-
        principle/>

   If you don't have the time to read through the essays right now, I'll
   try to give a very brief introduction to the basic principle.  The
   principle assumes that any reasonably-sized organisation is comprised
   of three broad classes of people: sociopaths, the clueless, and losers.
   Here's a simple diagram of the hierarchy, by Hugh MacLeod:
     <http://gapingvoid.com/2004/06/27/company-hierarchy/>

   The Gervais Principle is this:
   "Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-
    performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing
    losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort
    losers to fend for themselves."
   The essays then go on to back this up with many examples from "The
   Office".

   I've held off posting about the Gervais Principle for several reasons:
   * until recently I'd only skim-read the essays;
   * the essays contained spoilers for fans of The Office outside the
     United States;
   * the principle can be quite confronting (especially when you try to
     see where you would fit into the hierarchy);
   * I had other things to write about.

   I still haven't read the essays fully, but from what I have read I'm
   impressed with the arguments.  The principle very neatly underpins
   the dysfunctional organisation portrayed in The Office.  Fortunately
   I've never had to work in such an organisation, but judging from the
   comments, it appears such places do exist.  Australian viewers have
   finally caught up with the material mentioned in the essays, hence
   this post.

   To wrap things up, here's a quote from the first essay in the series
   that leads in nicely to an amusing job ad from Microsoft.  The quote:
   "sociopaths use buzzspeak as a coded language with which to
    simultaneously sustain the (necessary) delusions of the clueless
    and communicate with each other."
   A blog post about the job ad ("Secret language"):
     <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/30.html>