Sabotage Pattern #5: Misunderstand Orders and Tasks
This is a technique that can be combined with Follow Orders Exactly and Never Ask Why featured in last weeks post. And it is pretty obvious: if a order can be misunderstood, misunderstand it.
Do not ask anyone for clarification, just do it and perhaps ask for clarification afterwards (so that you have spent time doing something absolutely worthless). When someone tries to blame you, point at the processes and try to setup new meetings to discuss dysfunctionality of these processes. On these you will be able to replace them with much more complex (and error-resistant ones).
This technique has the effect of you doing meaningless work. It creates the overall atmosphere of busyness, but there is no value to what you are doing. And of course, when your misunderstanding is discovered, you can point at the ones who assigned you the tasks — their problem that the task was ambiguous. After all, they are the leaders and they should now better.
Misunderstanding generally slows down progress, makes companies do useless things and demotivates people. It can also lead to a culture of fear or to micro.management where everything is analyzed and documented as precisely as possible to eliminate even the slightest chance of misunderstanding. This in turn leads to highly skilled and professional people being treated just like pieces of machinery — not something most of us want.
Recognition
- Look at people around you. Do they use their brains or just follow orders you give them without thinking?
- Watch how often are instructions or processes willfully misunderstood by your colleagues. Are they misinterpreting many instructions, processes and policies?
- Observer your own behavior. How many times have you instead of asking clarifying questions or raising concerns just done what you though was the task even if you did not know anything about it?
Removal
- Don’t give orders, give goals and provide context and general explanation (why is it important, what should be the benefits etc.). Let people create their own tasks and orders to fulfill these goals. Move people up the leadership ladder or agree on delegation of responsibility using delegation boards.
- Make it everyones responsibility to think about their work. Don’t accept just people following orders. Challenge them to think about problems from various angles. Ask open-ended questions.
- If you have many complex processes, policies and procedures, simplify them, preferably with the people who are doing the work these processes describe. Only by doing it like this will the processes actually make sense.
