Why Self-Involvement Leads to Doom
I remember when it hit me. The sudden realization that we were all doomed. I was sitting in a meeting inside a conference room, in one of the most well-known cities in the United States, inside a building of impressive stature that housed a company that most people had heard of. The company I worked for.
I was working for an idiot. Not just your everyday run-of-the-mill idiot, mind you. But one of the idiots who spends three to four weeks of their time and their senior staff’s time working on a slide presentation to present to the CEO and his direct reports as well as the board of directors of the company.
The day before, I learned that this particular idiot had gotten promoted because their boss, one with a three letter title that starts with “C,” had gotten in real trouble for mis-managing his entire division. Perhaps one might also call him an idiot, but that would make it confusing with far too many idiots to keep track of. Anyway, the C-something had grossly mis-managed the team, a subordinate of the C-something had spoken up about it and was fired. And my idiot had stepped in, covered up the problem, and vouched for the C-something saying that the former employee who spoke up was insubordinate. And so the C-something promoted the idiot far beyond their capable limits.
So that day, the day it hit me, I was sitting there listening to the idiot try to rationalize their decision to manipulate information and mislead both the board of directors of this public company and what people refer to as the cesspool, I mean C-suite. What the idiot was demonstrating to me, was a not-so-veiled attempt to make themselves look better and ensuring that any hint of poor performance on the part of the C-something not be exposed. Their self-interest was hurting the company. A company which, at the time, might have been one of the top-10 darlings of Wall Street.
So the idiot showed me that their own rise to a position of prominence in a company of note, was based almost entirely on their eagerness to degrade another person’s integrity and character when they tried to do the right thing. All because it served the idiot’s own self-interest. And what’s more, once the idiot acquired the power, the idiot spent the bulk of their time protecting their own interests and the interests of those who protected them.
Sound familiar?
I think we are doomed.
-M
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