The Key to Creating Complete Confusion

Mo really didn't know how to solve the [farm's] problems. But late one night, while he was rereading Hell on Earth: The Leadership Secrets of Satan, several paragraphs attracted his attention. "Managers can be the key to creating complete confusion in your workforce. By making certain your employees never know what to expect from their supervisors -- even from day to day -- you can substantially increase their level of anxiety and frustration and almost guarantee that everyone will be unhappy. Thus you will successfully maintain a very undesirable workplace. The result will be falling production, financial losses, and eventual failure."

The book also pointed out that every ladder goes two directions. Just as some workers will choose to climb up the ladder to success, the right amount of improper planning can be used just as successfully to make them climb down to failure: "The way to create a climate that ensures unhappiness and failure is to make certain your managers are climbing down that ladder. Each and every one of the 10 rungs on the ladder to failure is important:

• The top step: Make sure your managers put the wrong people in the right jobs.
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• Second step: Set unrealistic goals that can't be achieved. But if anyone gets too close, move the goal line.
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• Third step: Treat all employees exactly the same, no matter what their individual skills and desires.
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• Fourth step: Determine the weaknesses of every employee, and make sure they are all doing jobs that emphasize those shortcomings. For example, make sure your shyest people have as much direct contact with your customers as possible.
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• Fifth step: Keep pay and benefits to the absolute minimum -- but make sure your employees find out how much more than them other employees are making.
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• Sixth step: Be sure that your employees have every tool and all the materials needed to complete an important assignment -- except for one really small and important thing that will be impossible to obtain.
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• Seventh step: Never overlook an opportunity to undermine your employees' self-confidence. Master several clever remarks that will produce insecurity. For example: 'How could you screw that one up? It was so simple even my Aunt Beatrice could have done it right -- and she's 102 years old and thinks she's a foghorn.'
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• Eighth step: When an employee is really good at a job, immediately promote him to a job at which he's not as good.
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• Ninth step: Insist that your workers take training classes that will have absolutely no value in their jobs. For example, make sure production workers have computer programming skills.
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• Tenth and last step on the ladder: Regularly schedule 'very important' meetings with workers to review their progress and discuss their future. Then cancel at the last minute without giving any reason and tell them, 'Ah well, it doesn't matter anyway.' Then walk away without saying another word."
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As Mo finished reading, he let out a long wheeze. "Wow," he said to Lawrence, taking a long drag on his cigar, "you should take a look at this list."

He pushed the book over to Lawrence, who read the list quickly, nodding as he did. "They wouldn't work for us," he decided, "but you got to admit that those rules have worked pretty well for Satan."