The C.R.A.P. Framework for Addressing Workplace Bullshit

How to comprehend, recognize, act against, and preempt your bullshitting colleagues.

“Most of us would agree that our workplaces are awash with bullshit,” Ian McCarthy and his colleagues write.

Call me naive but I was shocked as an undergraduate to see, in a serious book about George Orwell, an unserious profanity preceding the table of contents. Within the first few pages I read that the author, Christopher Hitchens, dedicated his book “To Robert Conquest — premature anti-fascist, premature anti-Stalinist, poet and mentor, and founder of the ‘united front against bullshit.’” This, in a work of sober historical scholarship, made an impression on me. Naturally, I became curious about what this “united front against bullshit” was but, alas, after some searching, I never found out. This admirable “front” was perhaps an inside joke among literary and humorous friends.

I thought of this recently after coming across another united front against bullshit of sorts — the four co-authors of a new paper, “Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit.” This “Executive Digest,” as the authors call it, offers a hopeful message: that the workplace bullshit that many employees and organizations are “drowning in” can comprehend it, recognize it effectively, act against it, and, perhaps most importantly, preempt it. Together, these comprise what the authors — Ian…