Confronting Indifference Toward Truth – Dealing with Workplace Bullshit

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.

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