My Machiavellian Disneyland boss was no idiot. He was as shrewd as they come. He might have felt my demonstrated competence was a threat because he assumed that everyone thought in terms of conquest and constant competition, as did he, and everyone was trying to be king of the hill, as he was trying to be. That's how he secretly managed to get himself secretly appointed to head a department he had no role in creating, and no background from which to supervise. Machiavellians distrust everyone but only have the power to exact vengeance on those below him on the food chain. Ken Blanchard has a possible explanation. In Ken's speeches, he sometimes describes behavior modification in animals like Shamu the killer whale at Sea World in San Diego. He talks about how the Sea World trainers start every session with the animals by simply jumping in and swimming with them. He points out that people are often like animals and need to be constantly reassured you're not going to hurt them before they will trust and stop acting defensively. Although you can earn the trust of many people through consistent, non-threatening behavior over time, some people will never trust you. If their motives are not pure, it's likely they'll never fully believe your motives are pure either. Even if competence is not an overt threat, competency will cause some incompetent people to feel seasick. An I-Boss doesn't have to know what's causing nausea to realize he is nauseous. The trick is to package your competency in ways that will benefit you and not threaten your boss.

It's a Cruel World, But a Great Life

I would like to believe that competency in the workplace is routinely rewarded. But my experience and observations have been otherwise. If you have been rewarded at work for your talent and competency, you've been blessed with enlightened leadership. Be grateful and throw your enthusiastic support behind any culture that recognizes and rewards excellence. On the other hand, there is nothing to be gained from getting frustrated and beating your head against a wall every time competency is punished. Punishment for competent behavior is not always part of a conspiracy. Sometimes, bosses just don't know any better. Competency is ignored more than it is overtly punished. Having no competency to speak of, most Idiot Bosses can't be expected to recognize it in their employees. At the end of the day, competency gets you nothing with Idiot Bosses, except perhaps banished from their inner circle for making them feel uncomfortable. That's the root of competency-based punishment or neglect—the fact that it makes certain people uncomfortable. Competency, Creativity, and Change

True competency is usually accompanied by creativity. Competency and creativity are foreign concepts to most idiots. To I-Bosses, there are fixed and rigid ways to do things based on nothing more than the way they learned to do things. When one is not sure of oneself, there can be comfort in rigidity. Change and uncertainty are like Kryptonite to idiots. Rigid people avoid change because they don't understand it. True competency leads to change and resists rigidity. Many people seek rigidity in their lives as a substitute for competency. Just give them a framework in which to operate, a strict set of rules, and they will operate with confidence. The next time your I-Boss explains something by saying, "Because that's how we do things around here," you'll know he is not being flip. He really likes to have fixed policies and procedures to fall back on, whether or not they make sense. Security that emanates from structure is a childhood developmental phase. You remember when your mom used to say, "Because I said so," and that was enough. You turned that around and used it on a younger brother or sister saying, "Because mom said so," and expected it to be enough. What did it feel like the first time you saw Mom or Dad doing something completely uncharacteristic of the behavior you grew to expect from them? I'll bet it shook your world. I-Bosses are developmentally arrested in that phase of childhood where things are done the way they are done because that's the way they are done. They find security, not in the competency they don't have, but in the rulearticle. True competency and creativity can be rewards in themselves. To creative and competent people, change is a welcome and often stimulating challenge. Building calluses Like Shamu, we intentionally do things to make ourselves feel comfortable and intentionally avoid things that make us feel uncomfortable.

Hence, the concentric rings around incompetence. While this protective layering insulates incompetent bosses from potential discomfort, it also pushes competency farther and farther from the epicenter of decision-making in organizations. Sometimes the concentric rings of incompetence are formed intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. With each new I-Boss and the insulating personnel he gathers around him, another ring is formed. It was a painful moment in my professional life when I discovered I was one of the people my boss was insulating himself against. A boss who needed insulation from me was Bill, my partner in an electronic publishing firm I became involved in after leaving Disneyland. He was a powerful businessperson I met before I resigned my position at Disney and, when the opportunity arose to become involved with the independent audio/video production company, I called him for advice. The more we talked about the opportunity, the more he saw dollar signs and invited himself to join the party. I didn't balk at his enthusiasm. For one thing, he had the capital to help finance the aspirations I had for the fledging business. He was successful in the construction engineering field and I figured I could learn a thing or two from him, which I did. I noticed Waldenbooks had recently begun selling books-on-tape. Formerly, only a product for the vision-impaired, they were now being commercially marketed to the general public. We became the second company in the country to publish what were then known as Waldentapes. Bill was the best of mentors and the worst of mentors. I learned more about business from him than any other person in my life. I learned important principles for successful operation of an enterprise. I learned if something costs X to manufacture, you must charge X times three at a minimum to cover hidden costs and turn a profit.

I also learned how to torture people. Big Bill believed in management by intimidation. I call him "Big," not because he was big and tall, like Steve and Doug at Disneyland, but because he had a large presence. It quickly became apparent how he had earned his fortune in the construction industry. When a bunch of contractors gather on a job site (in Big Bill's case, skyscrapers, major hotels, hospitals, and university buildings) decisions must be made about necessary alterations to original plans, how to proceed with the variances, and whose fault it is. The inevitable disputes and conflicts must be resolved quickly. In the construction business, negotiations on the job site aren't conducted as judicial processes or mediation sessions. They are conducted more like a brawl in an alley. Bill could out-brawl them all. Imagine being belligerent enough to make construction contractors, those guys who drive the big gasguzzling SUVs and monster trucks, throw up their hands and walk away saying, "Have it your way." I saw it happen many times, after which he liked to go drink hard liquor and debrief his victory. For one like me who hates confrontation, my relationship with Big Bill was conflicted from the start. The ambience in the literary publishing industry is different from the construction industry.

There is gentility about publishing Bill never even tried to understand or honor. Thankfully, the sissies in the publishing business repulsed him and he stayed out of the end of our business that involved negotiating intellectual properties and anything else that might tarnish his reputation as a two-fisted businessman. He left all of that up to me. As senior partner, he had an office in our facility, but he operated mostly out of his engineering firm offices and his Mercedes. He appeared around the publishing company several times a week to check up on us or to amuse himself. We never knew from one appearance to the next what kind of mood he would be in. He fluctuated between overt and covert intimidation. He might come in one day and go off on how there was a box of tissues in everybody's office and he would be damned if he was going to pay for everyone to blow their noses. On other days, he would come in happy-go-lucky and greet everyone with a big smile. "Hey, easy money," he would say to our graphic artist. "When are you going to get to work and stop stealing my money?" he chuckled at the guys sweating out in the warehouse. He had a great sense of humor. Although they never took a vote, I'm sure our staff preferred the seagull approach. Seagull management, as Ken Blanchard describes it, occurs when a manager comes into an office, flies around, flaps his wings with great commotion, craps on everybody's head, and then flies out. Rather than feel the sting of Big Bill's underhanded humor, designed to remind you who works for whom, I know I'd prefer somebody to come at me with his foul attitude clearly visible on his sleeve. Constantly reminding staff members of who works for whom, even with a smile, is a power play. The unmistakable message is, I'm the big dog, you're the little dog. I'm strong. You're weak. I'm important. You're not. I'm irreplaceable. You're easily replaceable. You could make a case, technically speaking, that all of those statements are true. But they're only true in a context of hierarchical relationships. As much as people like Big Bill think this attitude will make them a lot more money, they fail to accept that those who practice a more equitable and appreciative approach to people in their employ will make a lot more money. For all the good Big Bill did for me, for all of the doors he opened for me, for all the opportunities he made available to me, he still left me impaled on the horns of a dilemma. By the time I left Disney, I was a disciple of Danny Cox and the principle that team members get better right after the leader does. My motto had become: lead the way you like to be led. Whatever characteristics I wanted from my team members, be it hard work, high energy, innovation, creativity, loyalty, efficiency, or high performance, it was up to me to model every behavior before I could credibly expect it from others.