The politics of mean.

Since mid-1990, there have been many signs that politics - especially relationships between middle management and the troops - have changed from annoying but rarely lethal to Mean, as in ornery, ugly, and sometimes downright grisly. Part of this has to be recession-related, but part comes from top management's attention having been diverted to survival issues. The loser has been the individual contributor in the organization. In laying out the reasons for this distressing turn of events, the author provides clear-cut advice on how to overcome it.

When the hospital decided to cut four positions in marketing, the department manager made very interesting choices. Two top performers were tossed in along with two who clearly could have been fired for cause. No laws or organizational guidelines were violated, but the survivors got the message: He or she who doesn't cheerfully work overtime or do anything else the manager wants will compete for space atop the exit list, regardless of performance.

Human Resources was surprised by a rumor that the director of housekeeping had hinted there would be no raises in 1993. Unofficially, the guideline was for selective raises in the 3-5 percent range. The manager had decided that "team players" would get 5 percent, the rest nothing.

Industry is no different from health care. The vice president of a credit card operation used the excuse of a layoff to get rid of two of his better educated, harder working subordinates. As he saw it the last thing the company needed was people with potential and the last thing he needed was competition. What would keep his boss from replacing him with someone younger and more ambitious? Why take the chance when the opportunity to limit his boss's choices had presented itself?

When two department managers began to sabotage each other, their boss didn't notice, but their subordinates did. The managers were playing the new version of "Who's the fairest of them all." If it meant more effort, stress, and wasteful activity for the troops to make the, manager look good, so be it.

All of these examples point to a new meanness in the way in which middle management conducts business on behalf of organizations. Consider the way layoff candidates are chosen. The surprise is not that middle managers use the process to rid themselves of potential rivals, conduct vendettas, exact revenge, and increase control and fear but that they've met so little resistance or even concern. Human Resources is overloaded with paperwork and new regulations and has the thinnest staffs in 50 years. They have little time to ride on middle management.

Concern about employee feelings was jettisoned along with loyalty years ago. After five years of fear and sacrifice, if top management doesn't rein in and redirect middle management, good employees will bolt at the first sustained improvement in the job market. This is not idle speculation. A labor shortage is coming, and there is always a shortage of competent, hard-working people, who are in demand everywhere. What will be left will be candidates for refilming the bar scene in "Star Wars!"

To ascertain if the politics of mean is at your office or clinic door, or already on board, listen to the grapevine below middle management. What are workers talking about? If you can't do it personally, engage some trusted long-term subordinates who won't sugarcoat the message. What you need is word-for-word repetition. Ask your secretary what he or she hears. Here are some signs that destructive politics are rampant.

Guerrillas are at play. A political guerrilla is someone who knows the organization so well he or she can put a rumor into play that has enough truth in it to seem plausible. Guerrillas are usually long-term employees who have grievances against the organization. They are average or above average performers who spend at least as much time on politics as they do on getting results. Some managers refer to them as the untouchables.

Part of any manager's role is to control the guerrillas, often by confrontation. "Jack, I understand you've been saying we're about to have another layoff. You should know it's not true." The troops see or hear that Jack's been caught, and they disregard the rumor. If middle management doesn't monitor the grapevine, and many right now aren't, political ugliness escalates.

Management has succumbed to short-temperedness. How else to explain shorter trial periods and faster firings. Regardless of company policies, it's not difficult to let a new hire know that if he or she doesn't produce immediately, it's over. Firing decisions are even made in advance of an evaluation. "If Shirley doesn't get the result in six weeks, she's one." Shirley is unlikely to file a complaint or even talk to personnel. She's been laid off from two jobs in the past three years. The last thing she'll do is wait to be fired.

Don't think exclusively about medical workers. A director of manufacturing in South Carolina failed to let his middle managers know that poking the line workers would not be tolerated. He's up to his eyeballs right now in a union organizing campaign. Unions are the troops' ultimate judgment on how they're being managed.

Restate your expectations. Does anything really go now? Is riding roughshod over ethics really the only way to get the job done? Rein in managers who justify any/every kind of unfairness-or what the troops see as unfairness - in the name of quality or customer satisfaction. Ask your sources about worker satisfaction - up or down - at least as often as you do about customer satisfaction. They are inseparable.

Challenge every management strategy that uses fear as a motivator with average and above average performers. Let managers argue that only fear motivates and then ask how they plan to use fear to hold on to the stars, especially younger workers who are the company's future. Here's why. Younger workers have cut consumption by staying or moving back home. Cut consumption by 30-50 percent, and your job security worries are cut accordingly. Mom and Dad won't let Junior starve, so why should he put up with gratuitous mistreatment at Worldwide Widgets. In December 1991, Monev magazine devoted considerable space to families who've cut consumption at least 30 percent. It may take the fortysomethings more time to cut expenses that much, but cut they did. Look at the continued depression in retailing.

Reject the very idea of a bogey who's the real cause of the deteriorating political climate. Middle management has many. Have you noticed that every meanness, every bad management decision, every miscalculation is caused by an outside force - never by what managers are doing. Shades of poltergeists and medieval dybbuks! In some hospitals, it's the union. In others, it's the suppliers. "There are no good/cheap/reliable vendors in our industry."

In some, it's the customer. "We have the most difficult customers (patients) in the world, and nobody could satisfy them, but I expect you to do it anyway." Others claim that they can't get good employees because "the industry is mature and nobody wants to go into this business." You name the industry and there is an outside devil. If all else fails, there is the government. Proclaim that your company is henceforth free of bogeys and that all who work there must accept responsibility for everything, from what they do to how customers receive the product or service.

Reinforce the message that middle management and the troops are partners, not enemies. Put it in skywriting, broadcast it, but leave no doubt of your commitment. The real danger in meanness isn't employee unhappiness, it's malicious compliance. All those people sitting around licking the words off their job descriptions can sink a Fortune 500 company quicker than foreign competition and a stockholders' revolt together.

More attention to the grapevine and worker attitudes and more accountability for middle management behavior can change the political climate. You won't get the politics of Kind, but you can save your stars, and the company's future.

Marilyn Moats Kennedy is Managing Partner of Career Strategies, Inc., and a longtime member of the College's faculty.