If you follow financial news, you’ve heard of the “inverted yield curve,” which is … well, who cares what it is. Let’s jump forward to something new and much more relevant: the inverted learning curve.
Are there jobs where the longer you do them, the worse you get at them? Yes. Is “manager” one of them? What got me thinking about that possibility was an e-mail from Steve Duran in Albuquerque, N.M., who wrote this in response to what I had to say about “the accidental jerk”: “My wife and I enjoyed your article, as we both have worked for jerks. It has been our experience that those who have been bosses for several years become more arrogant as time goes by. They become ‘royalty.’ Oh yes, they may ask for input, but they really don’t want to hear what one has to offer. Instead, they make one feel small and insignificant. Both my wife and I have chosen to fire the boss and move on.”
Job Hazard
This is an example of the management learning curve becoming a slippery slope. However, to be accurate, the inverted learning curve isn’t just a manager’s phenomenon — it’s a hazard in any job. Take for instance a recent flight I was on, one featuring flight attendants who were the original models for the witches in “Macbeth.” Yes, that would mean that they actually knew William Shakespeare, and were old and nasty then. These airborne “weird sisters” certainly seemed up to the physical parts of the job, such as gaining sufficient velocity with the drink cart to sever elbows and ankles. No, it wasn’t that they’d lost a step; it was that they’d lost a smile. They couldn’t fake it anymore. They looked down on their customers and sighed with that “Here we go again” malevolence of the closed mind. I don’t know if flight attendants have a mandatory retirement age, but they ought to have a mandatory retirement attitude.
The poet Stanislaw Lec once wrote that “Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.” Likewise, it’s easy to be upbeat and warmhearted when a job is new and every task an exploration; what’s hard is holding on to the spirit of adventure when it’s the thousandth trip down the pass — now that requires character.
No Thought
We all hear a lot about “burnout.” And I believe that happens. However, what is more common is “burn-in.” That’s the term used for computers that have the ghosts of messages past on their screen; it’s why screensavers were invented. With employees of all kinds, and especially with managers, they get burn-in from having repeated themselves so often that the soul disengages.
In the case of the weird sisters on the plane, it was rules that had been burned in. For instance, one passenger was boarding with a small carry-on suitcase, a purse and a plastic bag. The total volume of stuff was less than average, but it was THREE ITEMS! When one of the sisters stopped the passenger and told her brusquely about her THREE ITEMS!, the passenger said merrily, “Oh, I got some souvenirs in the airport.” The attendants lectured her and told her she’d have to check one of the THREE!. The befuddled passenger finally replied, “The souvenir bag will fit in my carry-on.” To which the attendant replied with contempt, “Show me!” So this poor woman, a moment ago so carefree, was down on her knees, stuffing her scorpion paperweight into her luggage, while passengers backed up, whereupon a second weird sister told her she’d have to go out in the jetway to do her repacking. The THREE! became two, and she boarded, fuming.
In the case of managers, it’s bureaucracy that gets burned-in. They start saying, “I’ve heard it all,” which is the first baby step to arrogance, followed by various versions of “It might work, but we’d never get approval” or “Just do it the way I showed you.” Such bosses have decided not to experiment, which means they’ve turned anti-learning. They’re burned-in, and it can take years before they realize it, years before they realize they’ve started the slide down the learning curve that eventually will lead them to wonder if they’re burned out.
Dale Dauten is the founder of The Innovators’ Lab. His latest book is “(Great) Employees Only: How Gifted Bosses Hire and De-Hire Their Way to Success.”
