Let’s Be Frank: The Centre Cannot Hold

It is hard to avoid rhetoric and polarization these days. In uncertain economic times, people tend to get even more entrenched and willing to follow ideas and/or groups that fit with their preconceptions, especially if they offer what seems to be a viable solution to their problems, real or fantastical. You can crack open a history book and see this phenomenon play out over and over again.

I worked with an inspector for many years who always said all decisions are based on greed and fear. When circumstances stress an individual’s livelihood, fear can become the overriding motivation. I think this can be applied to the organizations, companies, and departments we all work for as integrity personnel.

Let’s first think about the fear component of my wise compatriot. When, as integrity personnel, we allow our judgement to be clouded by fears (fear of loss of job, fear of the company folding, fear of our retirement portfolios disappearing, fear of the value of our house decreasing, etc.), we can start making decisions based on emotions rather than objectively factual information.

Or, our fears can compel us to allow other departments, managers, and bean counters (sorry, accountant is the correct term) to convince us to make decisions based on monetary impact only. I have many examples from my career where I have been pressured due to these fears. A great example that I am sure you have all run into at various times is, “The company has to tighten its belt right now or we may not be around anymore.” This is a common refrain I have heard to justify cutting preventive maintenance, inspection, and extending run times, or just postponing normal raises and bonuses. And in the last 25 years or so, I seldom see what was cut in times of lean put back in place when money is being made.

And unfortunately, Frank has succumbed (unhappily) at previous times in his career to some of these fear-based pressures, basically due to the fear for myself and my family (loss of income) overcoming my fear of failing at my job (potentially causing destruction and/or loss of life).

I think these are very relevant topics to be thinking about as integrity personnel in these uncertain times, as we are all going to be facing hard decisions, potentially both professionally and personally. Bad management will just exacerbate these already difficult processes.

If I keep rolling along with this “greed and fear” concept, does fear help explain bad management? In a simple way, yes, it does. Think of managers who dislike conflict and confrontation. They fear having those critical conversations with someone they may only barely know, or sometimes worse, know really well. Because of this fear, they deploy other management techniques that I think are usually detrimental. I don’t like conflict either, but if I am in a personnel management role, then that is my job, and I will try my best to do it.

For the greed side of my oversimplified hypothesis and analysis, think about the manager pushing hard on safety, or taking part in the new corporate initiative with an intense fervor. When they can’t seem to ignite that in their employees, they can become very demanding. Is that manager driven by greed? Likely. From my stints in the corporate side of this business, you come to realize that performance bonuses are based on a couple of items, usually: profitability of the business unit, low to no performance/personnel safety issue targets, achieving business unit goals, and supporting corporate goals. The last two are where participation in the “flavor of the month” corporate goal can often impact your quarterly or annual bonus as a manager.

In any case, you can see that I can probably make every example of poor management techniques being driven by greed and fear. I will refrain from getting into the discussion that the methods you use to measure and evaluate your world can change how you view that same world around you. In other words, let’s pretend I may not be bending my internal narrative to fit into my chosen “assessment” methodology.

I think if we get heavy into a “greed and fear” cycle, then decisions can be very poorly made, especially when you add in time concepts of trying to hit things like quarterly financial goals. I guess all I am saying to all of you currently in personnel or departmental management, if this downturn in the economy continues to get worse, try to maintain a level of rationality against the tide of greed and fear which will rise faster and faster.

I don’t want to get too apocalyptic in this article, but also consider the new generation of managers entering the industry right now. I am seeing what appears to be a shift in styles that also might just be driven by fear.

What I am noticing in the next generation of managers coming up is a notable change in management style that is going away from being very interpersonal interaction-oriented and much more driven by alternate means of communication and more intertwined data-driven goal management. They also tend to use the phrase managing with “good” data. I am not sure I really know what that means. But at the end of the day, this seems to be an extreme fear of interpersonal direct contact.

We won’t get into a discussion of all the variables that led to a generation of managers like this, but fear and greed are part of the process that got us, and our kids, here.

This rising trend toward a more technocratic style of management, where consideration for individuals seems less, and the desire to operate on just “good” data is a major driver. Now I don’t mean to imply that we all managed with bad data in the past (and I don’t mean the technical integrity data we deal with day to day, I mean the “data” needed to manage people, or the processes you oversee effectively).

The “stop by the office to give direction and feedback” methods that were more common throughout most of my career are now being replaced by emails, chats, and virtual meetings, even though the manager’s office is still only 30 feet down the hall.

These new managers seem much more interested in managing through data collection and analysis, rather than understanding the motivations of those they employ. Is it going to create a better management style and thus better work environments? Frank remains doubtful, but I kind of want to see how this plays out. I can see an easy evolution from what could be a good management tool (as long as people don’t mind being treated as a number in the data pool) to one that seems designed for over-monitoring and micromanagement at formerly almost impossible levels (at least outside of Amazon warehouses, allegedly). It will also break down work relationships, which will likely have undesired repercussions.

Well, now I am just unnecessarily putting fears into everyone. It seems that I am just adding to the problem I am talking about…

The news cycle and social media also seem to be really into selling us fear right now. I am reading and hearing the word “unprecedented” more and more again (The last time was during the pandemic response). These are unprecedented times! Well, unless you can travel back and forth in time, aren’t all times unprecedented?

The problem with our tendency to promote fear accelerationism is that we can get panicked as individuals or organizations. If you even mildly agree that “greed and fear” are the big motivators to a lot of what we do, then it is easy to see that when we are always in a state of fear, that is going to drive our decisions, and that is what really concerns me about all of this.

We have a repeating trend in history that at the start of any scary “unprecedented” times, we tend to make some really bad decisions, especially at the company/state levels, when the major driver is only fear. Fear also tends to cloud our ability to reason through things, which tends to lead to oversimplification and selecting the seemingly easy choices.

And as I am sure most of you have seen in your own lives, the easy choice is not necessarily the right one.

Please keep that questioning attitude and desire to learn why. I believe more and more it’s those motivators that get many of us into this field to start with. When the unprecedented times hit, try to continue to do the right things the right way to keep our facilities operating safely. When fear and greed are pounding at the gates, try to continue to keep integrity number one.

Why did I title this article "The Centre Cannot Hold"? Well, it is a line from William Butler Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" that is usually interpreted to mean that the established order and values are crumbling, leading to a state of chaos. It talks about a loss of authority (specifically moral in the poem) and a breakdown of structures (with a bit of occult doom and gloom for good measure). The idea of “loss of authority” resonated with me because during times of distress, we sometimes let fear direct us to voluntarily give up any authority or agency we have.

Also, the poem may be just a great early example of using fear to sell media!

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” November 1920