Forcing Other to Deal With Their Horrible Directives

Managers are not perfect. However, some are, putting it less than diplomatically, idiots. These are managers who are more interested in their careers than actually managing; they come in with the need to make major changes to prove their value to the company. Some just want to prove that they are the alphas and that their word is law. Others are more worried about covering their butts than actually managing. These are all great examples of bad management.

However, employees have various means of shutting these managers down, or at least making them better managers. They can take them to court, make them deal with Human Resources, or, even worse, do exactly what they were told. This is basic malicious compliance, or doing what you’re told, knowing that things will backfire, sometimes in the most glorious of ways. There are three basic types of malicious compliance: following bad directives, doing exactly what they were forced to do, and simply following well-intentioned directives.

Are You Sure?

Most malicious compliance is based on doing exactly what you’ve been told, regardless of the fallout. A private is told to work on a vehicle that hasn’t arrived and not to come back until the work is finished; the private will likely mime working on a vehicle just to make the NCO happy. The NCO can’t fault the private, and even the bad ones will generally see that they were wrong. In this case, the private tried to wait until there was an actual vehicle to fix but his complaints were ignored by the NCO; this is just plain bad leadership.

Another example is a construction company that notices a potential issue and tells its client about it, such as a cover that won’t stand up to local winds. The client will tell the construction company to just do it; to cover themselves, the company has the client sign off that they will do as originally planned despite being warned. When the cover fails and the client sues, that written letter becomes evidence that’s hard to beat in court.

If someone asks, “Are you sure?” it’s usually a good idea to listen to them. They may have a perspective or other information that solves a potential problem that you’re not aware of, saving a lot of time and money.

Sure, Let’s Do This!

People come up with great ideas on paper that fail in reality. One person suggested a way of organizing panels on pallets; this new organization also required building up the pallets. To shut they guy up, a team decided to try it, even putting in 110% effort to get it done. Well, the new organization style ended up damaging the panels so badly that the entire batch had to be redone. The pallets were also destroyed at the destination, so the extra time and lumber ended up being a waste. The person was embarrassed by the failure of his idea to better organize panels enough to stop making suggestions without asking questions first.

Every business that creates something has a story about a manager who wanted to mess with the standard operating procedure and enforced their changes by threatening to fire everyone, usually to shave off a few minutes here or a few dollars there. The workers shrugged, did what they were told, and chaos ensued. In short, the changes ruined entire batches, wasted time, work, and resources, and ended up ticking off buyers who were expecting the item to be delivered on time. This isn’t a small mistake, either; this has cost some businesses millions of dollars and, worse, reputations.

This is not to say that changes can’t be made that will have a positive effect. However, before you make changes, try to figure out if there is a possibility of things going awry and if the risk is worth it. The career you save may be your own.

But You Said….!

Then there are the managers who are so worried about losing their position that they are stuck in permanent covering their butt mode. They create new policies, instigate pointless investigations, and do a lot of feel-good actions that actually create morale issues. However, dealing with these policies is where some people really get creative. When a head accountant told people to save money whenever possible, two department heads decided to have their staff meetings at a local beach while offering drinks. When the accountant came down on them, they had him run the numbers; their meetings saved the company $800.

The head accountant was fit to be tied.

Dealing with investigations is actually easy. A lot of investigations have been undone or shut down by the instigator simply because those being investigated decided to play completely by the rules and presented evidence that not only showed they were innocent of the charges, but that the instigator was guilty of breaking their own policies. A little paranoia is a good thing: Pay attention to new policies and record everything, including CC’ing yourself when you reply to emails. Also, NEVER delete messages from your superiors.

Bonus points if you can show if you can show how you obeyed the rules TO THE LETTER. Homeowner associations especially hate people who do this. The classic example is the person who has been told to move or hide his boat. So what does he do? He builds a fence around his boat and then has a photo-realistic painting made of the boat on the fence. This is also explains a lot of interesting painting choices, where homeowners have painted their homes Pepto Bismol pink just to make a point.

Sometimes a little malicious compliance gives people a chance for creative revenge, such as putting a little too much mayonnaise on a sandwich where the person keeps complaining about the lack of it. Some principals hate this creativity as well, as they try to enforce dress codes that simply don’t make sense; not letting boys wear shorts in summer has led to them wearing skirts (suffice to say that the dress codes were modified a bit soon after).

In short, malicious compliance is a great way to make your point when leadership has failed. The rules are pretty simple: Make sure that you have given the target a chance to realize his mistake, cover your own butt by documenting the directive, and then take the directive seriously, very seriously. It usually makes change happen; even if it doesn’t effect change, the petty revenge will make you feel a little better.