Episode 70: Idiocy Unchained

I admit to being very naïve. Whenever I meet someone in a business setting, I assume a priori that they have achieved their position through experience and merit, and that they are eminently qualified and credentialed. It continues to astonish me how often this assumption is disproved. You would think that I would learn from these experiences, but you would be wrong.

Over the years, I have met any number of dolts, dipwads, dopes, and dickheads at dozens of companies around the country. (Here's a fun fact: Microsoft WORD's spell-check feature is a bit thrown by the expression "dipwad," but has no problem with "dickhead.") Yet, it still amazes me when I find dickheadedness (WORD doesn't like that one) at the highest levels of a corporation.

Way back in the day when I was not only naïve, but also considerably younger, I worked in the non-profit sector. By non-profit, I mean organizations that are funded through charities or governments, and not required to generate profits. (This is opposed to companies such as my own, which while they also do not generate profits, aspire to that status some day.)

In the non-profit world I used to know, if you would spit in any direction, at least half of the time you would hit an idiot. I'm talking about highly-paid people who had no discernable talents, no imaginations, and did effectively nothing – people who gave no indication they would be able to, say, understand the implications of a Walk/Don't Walk sign.

The same was true in government. I had the dubious opportunity to interact with folks at the township, city, county, state, and federal levels. The interesting thing is that the idiot quotient actually increased as you moved up the food chain, with the feds topping the charts. My theory is that at the township level, you have to be pretty sharp to survive because you have the least amount of resources and few, if any colleagues. As the mass of resources and co-workers increases, the level of incompetence and laziness rises commensurately. There are more places to hide as you go up the food chain.

Full disclosure: I need to come clean and admit that I, too, am an idiot. In my own defense, however, I believe I should get a few points for recognizing this fact.

I also admit my tenure in the government/non-profit worlds was years ago, and for all I know, these sectors might have since undergone a miraculous transformation, negating my experience completely. As I said before, I am naïve.

While I was still swimming in the non-profit cesspool, however, I distinctly remember thinking to myself that "There is no way that these people could survive in the real world. A for-profit business would never put up with this crap." Someday, I imagined, if I ever had the opportunity to work in the private sector, things would be very different.

You already know what's coming. When I did finally enter the real business world, I found very little difference between the public and private sectors. The idiocy level is, well, level. In the business world, idiocy is not only tolerated, it is often the difference between a low level producer and a high flying senior executive without a clue in the world.

Need proof? Consider the case of "New" Coke. Back in 1985, some genius at Coca-Cola decided that Coke drinkers really wanted to drink Pepsi, so they changed the formula, and brought out a sweeter new Coke. This turned out to be as popular as Dennis Kucinich for President. Coke drinkers hated the stuff.

Coca-Cola quickly retreated, revived the old formula, and brought back "Classic Coke." Some have speculated that this was an ingenious, perhaps even brilliant ploy to focus attention on the classic formula; that Coca-Cola intended things to work out that way from the beginning.

I've been around the corporate world long enough to know this isn't true. I've seen high level management idiocy in action. What really happened was this: Some muckety muck at Coke had a wild hair up his sphincter, backed it up with half-assed research, and got the ear of an even more muckety muckety muck. The rest is idiocy.

On any given day, many of the dumbest-assed ideas on earth are actively floated, examined with enthusiasm, and approved idiotically in board rooms across the world. All you need is something resembling an idea and a clueless, somewhat bored, and lethargic audience.

I've had the dubious honor of helping to implement any number of dumbass ideas over the course of my long and extinguished career. Charged with developing a communications plan to launch these turds, I try to swallow my discontent and ignore everything I've ever learned about anything and give the projects my all.

It's really hard, however, to sustain your enthusiasm when you know a project is doomed to failure. Devoting time and resources to produce promotional material in support of a really, really, really bad idea is demoralizing. What's worse is when it seems you are the only one who realizes that the emperor is not only naked, he's a twit.

Again, I must disclose that I have, on more than one occasion, championed (if not devised) a really stupid idea. Fortunately, I've never had sufficient resources at my command to fully unleash such a thing on an unsuspecting, innocent world.

Maybe someday...