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I have just written a couple of articles on bad decisions and I seem to be getting a little carried away with the idea (the articles are here and here).

But I have been focusing on how to avoid or learn from mistakes. This is a little one-sided, so I thought I would balance things out by exploring how evil agile coaches and dodgy leaders actually encourage greater mistake making and greater carnage generally, without expending too much effort.

Regular readers of my blog are probably aware of my occasional work with evil coaches.

Even if you are not familiar with that, though, you will have observed that there are some coaches and leaders out there doing some fine work, creating cultures that maximize error making, minimize learning and amplify the damage of mistakes, almost systematically.

But how can you really excel at this if you are an evil coach, already hard-pressed to keep up with your quota of carnage and already struggling to stay under the radar?

Understanding the risk of regret

There are many approaches to creating systemic stupidity, from the use of aggressive language to burning people out and letting their stress lead to consistent error making and friction.

But one of the most straight forward approaches is to understand and leverage the “risk of regret.”

The risk of regret is the likelihood that you will either regret making a decision, or regret not making a decision. While it is not possible to predict this with certainty, it is often possible to anticipate it.

The risk of regret is really a combination of two opposing risks:

• The risk that you will regret making a mistake because you were impatient and did not stop to think things through, for example buying a “nut surprise cake” for someone without checking if they have a nut allergy. This is usually caused by impatience, panic or pressure from others; and
• The risk that you will regret your inaction when you should have made a decision, for example, if you hear a fire alarm and are not sure which exit to take, so you sit back and hope that someone comes to tell you what to do – only to realise that fires can be dangerous as the fire appears at every exit on your floor. This is usually caused by inertia, fear or panic.

Of course, not all decisions carry the same risk of regret, so let’s create a matrix to compare decisions where the likelihood and impact of regret are low or high.

OK – so people might regret things, but surely an evil coach can do more than just turn up and gloat when people are feeling down.

That is the beauty of understanding the risk of regret rather than the actual regret since it is the fear of regret that usually leads to suffering from decisions. And what is even better for the eager evil-doer is that each quadrant in the matrix contains simple strategies for causing systemic organisational damage and human suffering, including but certainly not limited to simple fear and regret.

Let’s look at each quadrant in turn and examine some simple, easy to implement yet powerful “hacks for evil.” I will also add some simple suggestions for being nice when you are taking a well earned day off your campaign of evil.

Here is the same diagram as before, but with some suggestions for mischief-making added in.

It may be tempting to move to the top right quadrant to try to cause distress or dampen hope among your crew, but all four quadrants are rich with opportunity.

High risk of regret caused by inertia

Let’s start with decisions that appear to have a high risk of regret if we delay the decision and little or no risk of regret if someone is able to make and act on their decision.

Here the goal is to delay decisions while appearing helpful. The most common way of doing this is to add unnecessary bureaucracy. Try to implement sign off steps, reviews or even ask for sign-off from someone in another office.

A more devious approach though is to add people. This represents a great opportunity to appear eager to help while actually slowing things down.

Each person you add will need someone to bring them up to speed and will also try to contribute suggestions before they know what is going on. Ideally, seek to add people who have little knowledge in the subject but a history of friction with the team.

Perhaps you can even bring in some people who have a pet project or solution they are pursuing that appears to be related but is not linked to the problem at hand in any real way. They can almost always be relied on to subvert discussions to try to move to their pet project, creating delays and diverting energy simultaneously.

But don’t discount the frustration and delay that simple questions can create here either. If you lack obstinate fools to deploy then simply ask the team to respond to a complex, yet ambiguous question before proceeding. Even if they put it in the parking lot or “phase 2” then you can tell people that the question is critical to success. When people come back with some kind of answer, then simply reword your question or add some jargon. This can cause ample suffering with surprising delays.

Speaking of delays, though, I worked with a guru of impeding movement, who introduced me to the “surprise second guess” move.

This is best deployed when you have already used some other approaches and the team are fighting back. Appear to give them your full support and even agree to everything – particularly where you lack any real authority anyway.

Then, just as they are moving from decision to implementation, second guess what they are doing. Either announce they are doing something different, creating confusion all round, or better yet, re-introduce a previous risk that they thought they had fully explored already, with an apology that you had a bad feeling about it and had been worrying secretly. Ask for a full explanation of their plan to fully explore and mitigate this new crisis.

OK, enough evil for the moment, what can you do when you are in a good mood and feel like being helpful. Here again, there are some simple solutions, which I have added to our matrix.

Still, in the “high risk of regret caused by inertia” quadrant, the goal is to reduce inertia and help to lower fear of failure to an appropriate level.

The most common approach is to run interference for the team.

Constantly remind people of the goal and why it is urgent. Constantly saying things like “If we don’t get this done … ” OR “this is costing the poor front-line guys an hour a day …”. This is called the broken record technique. Constantly keep the cost of delay top of mind by repeating the same thing at every opportunity until people are so sick of you they support any decision,

Related to this though, people will often highlight problems that might arise, sometimes blowing them out of proportion but often actually raising reasonable impediments or problems.

Rather than steamrolling them, ask for clarity and then immediately ask people how they can mitigate the issue, rather than how we can better discuss it in detail. Use your broken record message and then add, “yes, this is still something we should tackle – how can we deal with this without delaying our implementation?”, or “how do you suggest we help people deal with this, given it may happen and we are not stopping?”

There is also a subtle trick that I employ sometimes. People often ask for permission and then find that stakeholders are considering the risk of approving quick action, which can cause a delay.

Instead, I remind people of what is at stake and get them to sign off that they accept the risk of delaying action and will be accountable for the cost. I call this “flipping the problem.” When your organisation is risk-averse, fear of inertia can create momentum where fear of failure used to cause the inertia. The key is to make the cost or risk clear.

High stakes - a high risk of regret from both making mistakes or delaying

 Let’s talk about decisions with a high risk of regret from both delay or mistakes.

This seems like a great place to be evil, but it is harder to stay under the covers here because of the focus people have on the issue.

You can employ any of the delaying tactics that we have discussed, but you might also extend these with some simple recipes for regret.

Adding noise, with either superfluous information or perceived risks that are actually unrelated is a good start. With people already stressed, noise is easy to create and can have become a real distraction. Add superfluous meetings, rabbit holes and unrelated “quick things we need today” wherever possible.

But consider this one too – state that we really need to get this right and we do not want to really mess up. Remind people how unpopular they will be if this goes cactus. Then (seemingly helpfully) state that we need to clarify everyone’s role so that we make sure we have everything covered.

But don’t actually talk about shared goals and accountability, nor supporting each other.

Drag people into needless detail around RACI matrices and specific responsibilities. This will almost always cause people to suggest bringing in others and will create an opportunity for early ass-covering conversations that can create considerable delay and mistrust.

Even better, you will find that you cannot possibly cover all the bases, so by definition, you are able to create gaps in understanding and areas where things will fall through the cracks, especially with everyone discussing roles and processes so they are distracted from discussing the real root cause of the problem.

Finally, and most dastardly of all, you can “deploy moths.” This is probably not a term you are familiar with, but you may have seen it in action.

When I grew up in Perth, Western Australia, we had a lot of barbecues. These were a huge part of our culture and we often ate outside as the sun was going down.

When the sun when down, we would naturally turn on a light and when we did – moths would miraculously appear from nowhere. They weren’t there when the sun was up and nobody knew where they appeared from, but the moment a light went on they appeared in large numbers and flocked around the light.

You don’t need real moths in your corporate castle of chaos though – corporate “moth people” will do just as well. As soon as there is a big problem, invite a horde of concerned citizens who want the attention of senior management or who love to stick their nose into problems. You will know the people you need – rich on opinion but poor on time to help or lacking the accountability and energy to help in any way. They will flock to the problem like moths to a flame, expressing opinions and demanding answers to important-sounding questions, even requiring frequent updates. In essence, they will distract the team far more than anyone evil coach could ever do on their own.

But back in Perth, we noticed something else strange – as soon as you turned off the light, the moths seemed to teleport away. There was no delay, they just vanished.

Then if you flicked the light on they all rushed back, only to disappear the second you turned it off. You might think that they were just camouflaged in the dark, but even in the twilight, you could see them vanish.

Anyway, this will happen with your corporate moth people too. As soon as it gets tough, they will vanish. They will offer no budget, no cups of tea, and certainly no follow through as soon as the crisis is over. They will neither change their behaviour nor support the implementation of the boring bits of the solution. They are rushing off to the next shining light already. This leaves the team disheartened and overstretched. A marvellous medley of mayhem.

Again though – you may want a break from being evil, there are some simple strategies to employ.

The first is to spend a little time breaking the problem down. Where things are so dire that mistakes and delays really matter, there are normally multiple entangled problems. Some need urgent attention and others need some greater focus. By breaking things down you will find many more options to reduce the risk of regret as the team iterate through problems and solutions.

But breaking down the problem is hard if you cannot dedicate the right people. So drop everything else – and I mean everything. Allow a focus on this one issue.

Then as you start to clarify the real problem, free up the right people from everything else for the duration, even though there will be a cost. No holding the fort, no “update someone on what else you were doing so they can run with it.” Just drop everything and let people know this takes precedence.

As soon as you know more though, cut back on the people so ONLY the critical people are involved. Then let them draw on others when needed.

There is one more step though, related to the “moth effect.” Protecting the team from moth people sounds like a start, but actually, the bigger issue will be having the time to follow through to close the issue off properly. I hate to admit it, but I have been a corporate moth in the past, pulling people off just before they finish and rushing to the next light, leaving the problem “nearly fixed” and the people exhausted but harried.

Once the crisis seems to be under control, the team are likely to be dragged back to other work while half baked workarounds are still in place. Instead, reconvene when things are coming together.

Say thanks and maybe do a retro, but most also plan into the next wave of action, including some time for the team to recover and some additional time for people to finish the job that they started, or to get others carrying it forward in a sustainable way. Tactical solutions are great for the ego, but professionals close the loop.

Low risk of regretting a delay but a big risk of regretting impatience

This seems like an anticlimax after the last two topics. But there is some fun to be had with situations that require proper analysis.

Rushing people is mean, but lacks flair. So here are some nicer tools for your wicked toolkit.

Demanding complete solutions allows you to keep growing the boundaries of the problem so that analysis turns out to be useless. It also allows you to keep things ambiguous. This is literally the opposite of allowing people to break problems down into bite-sized chunks and roll out multiple steps towards the complete solution.

Great fun and delays can also be added by bringing in teams of evil consultants to second guess the team. Make sure that you do not share their results and just keep referring to some murky master strategy that they consultants allegedly supplied. If you find good consultants by mistake and they start getting to the bottom of things though, don’t despair, just bring in more consultants to second guess them and add murkier “master strategies” that are not communicated – the more the merrier really.

However, there is another option. One of the most effective approaches I have ever seen is to “prepare a detailed briefing for the minister.” Note that the minister could be a senior politician or a company executive or anyone more senior than your crew really.

It doesn’t really matter who they are though because the briefing will never be shown to whomever the “minister” is.

Start by wasting considerable time asking the team for a full, detailed report, while asking them to dumb everything down so someone with no idea what is going on can read it and learn nuclear physics overnight. Ask hypothetical questions and request the team add responses to the briefing. You can even cut and paste “suggestions” based on random images and articles you find on the web – just email them across with the command that they are included.

Then discard the report at the last minute and meet with “the minister” without the team. Present a different problem to the minister, with similar symptoms but a completely different root cause. Highlight that it is urgent, especially because you fear the team will waste time and money and make the minister look bad.

When you do this you should be able to gain some irrelevant, yet urgent, directive from the minister and hit the team with it. They will now need to implement the wrong solution rapidly, virtually guaranteeing regret.

Of course, again you might be nice, in which case do not do those things. Instead, have the team pause for a cup of tea to clarify what they think they should do. Seek broad feedback and analyse effectively. It will take longer than people want but regret lasts longer than analysis in almost any project I have dropped the ball on.

Low regret all round but still a chance for mischief

It may not look like it, but I have left the best till last. In almost every corporate failure I have read about, people were distracted by needless minor things while core issues went unchecked. Even in history, Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned and people shuffled chairs on the deck as the Titanic sunk.

So there is a great deal of harm that can be done in frustrating people and delaying action on minor things.

Start by asking for a briefing on every minor decision that is made by the team, or give briefings all over the place when you make minor decisions.

For fun though, try these tricky mind games.

Testers have often been both annoying and surprisingly sensible on many of my projects. So call them together and ask for their advice on everything, ask them detailed questions and show appreciation for their answers. Then when they are finished, simply discard all their advice and announce the opposite of what they recommended. If you can thank them publicly for their input then all the better. You will laugh and laugh when you see the quiet rage in their faces and with luck they will inflict that rage on hapless developers, doubling the disappointment across the team.

If that doesn’t tickle your fancy then ask people to hold off acting on simple things while you ponder it. Tell them you will “get back to them soon” so they can’t move forward but don’t give up waiting. A variation on this is to say you will have to run it past “randoms” or random people the team can’t check with. That way you can waste more time talking about every issue than acting on them.

Being nice here though is a real blow against systemic stupidity, so be careful here if your intent is evil.

A simple approach is to just delegate without strings. Don’t ask questions or even state your own opinion. Just tell people you trust them and you are happy with their proposal.

The alternative is to make a decision yourself, in which case make the decision emphatic and clear and make it immediately.

These approaches have surprising power but I suggest backing them up with demonstrated trust. When things go wrong, which they will take the hit for the team or state that you have the team’s back and that we will learn from minor hiccups. State this often and never get into gossip or blame, just keep moving and focusing on the next thing rather than the last.

Also, when thing go right, which they will say thank you or talk behind people’s backs. It may surprise you, but commenting on how people are taking action and making their own decisions always seems to bring both them and your karma.

So there you go. A very long article, but I enjoyed writing it even if I didn’t really think it through at the start.

I guess a far shorter version would be this – if you understand the risk of regret, then you can use this to unleash great evil or even good with relatively little effort. The decision is yours.

Posted by James King
Copyright © James King