
Confronting Indifference Toward Truth – Dealing with Workplace Bullshit - Dowwie
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000768132030001X#
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7532yahoogmail
This topic is surely worth a lot more discussion. It's a systemic pronlem that
needs a systemic solution. I would heartily recommend "The Human Element" by
Schutz. in this regards. It's worth reading because of its simplicity,
effectiveness, and because it deals head-on with this subject of BS.

Among the major arguments,

* The single biggest obstacle to good teamwork (well defined therein) is rigidity on the part of individuals

* Rigid individuals are unchanging because the person's self esteem is threatened. Teams are busted by individuals who don't change behavior.

* And ultimately the biggest problem in the long run for human organizations is lack of openness.

* The book explains why this is so.

The background and impetus for this work (Schutz was Harvard trained) came out
of WWII Navy experience dealing with battle conditions. The Navy realized a
major impediment to better performing battle execution was that the bridge
officers could resolve conflict well. It's not that conflict exists; this is
intrinsic to any open ended, unconstrained problems in an evolving
environment.

To respond the Navy post war completely revamped training. They chose
physically fitter officers, smarter, and trained them harder. The results
however under test exercises were random: sometimes teams worked and sometimes
they didn't. The Navy couldn't predict when or why.

Schutz was asked to consult on this problem and through this work and in
corporations subsequently this work was born.

If you work in an environment where office BS reins, and where management of
teams really amounts to people tinkering with a Markov like hidden variable
random process until something works, this book is for you.

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berdon
It's unfortunate that the CRAP acronyms Act didn't use EVIL (Exit, Voice,
Ignore, Loyalty) instead of EVNL. Though I prefer. :(

