One of my recent experiments with myself has lead me to the conclusion that actual objective work done is not as important as perception management. On the contrary, people who do perception management get some work done sometimes. This recent run had enough data points for me to validate my own skills, but taught me that work has no co-relation with the final perceived result.
Some clear pointers when perception management drives your organization
- You are busy trying to cut corners
- Your senior management is busy saving their own jobs
- You get told consistently by inferior higher-ups to increase efficiency, while they are busy not showing any
- Loyalty is not a metric within the company
- Objectivity and logic takes a backseat, everything becomes personal
- Being outspoken is seen as being rebellious, not towing the party line. No interest in fixing the core issues
- Hindsight becomes ever so important, that you mess up your future goals
If you notice, all of this revolves around how neat/efficient an upper management guy can look. In this experiment, I felt a gamut of human emotions like betrayal, loyalty, etc which are irrelevant. The objectives however of validating my own skills worked out fairly well.
Onto the next experiment!