What understanding Stalin should teach us to avoid
In Arthur Koestler’s classic political novel ‘Darkness at Noon’,
This whole episode has a resonance for us today that perhaps it didn’t have when the novel was first published in 1940, and it reminds us that Stalin, like a number of other leading Bolsheviks, was a great fan of the ‘scientific management’ theories of the American F.W. Taylor. If it’s an exaggeration to blame Taylor’s views (and generations of subsequent management consultants) for Stalin’s purges, then it’s not a very great one.
Stalin: The ultimate organization man
In an earlier article, I talked about Hitler as a Bad Leader. Stalin was a Bad Leader too, but of a very different type. Hitler was the driven ‘man of destiny’, the spellbinding orator, capable of inspiring blind loyalty. Stalin seems to have had few outstanding personal qualities: not a great speaker, little real personality, dismissed by the other Bolsheviks as a paper shuffler and a bureaucrat. He was both of those things, but he used his control of the Party itself—its personnel, its finances and organisation—to achieve total power, almost without anyone realizing.
Stalin defeated his rival Trotsky in endless committee meetings and in the production of long policy papers. In addition, as a good disciple of Taylor, Stalin was obsessed with control of everything and everyone, and understood that the ability to impose targets and objectives on others—no matter how unreasonable—gives you a control over them.
What he could not control he sought to destroy, if it was a threat. Otherwise he ignored it. This accounts for Stalin’s limited interest in foreign policy. He was happy to supply money and weapons to government forces during the Spanish Civil War, but preferred a Fascist victory to a left-wing government he could not control.
Unlike Hitler, who did not really need the Nazi Party and cared little for the German people, Stalin had no power-base except the Communist Party. He was the ultimate grey insider, who depended on control of an organisation for his power—no-one was going to follow him for his personal charisma: he had none.
Fear as the motivator
Like many Bad Managers today, Stalin believed strongly in fear as a motivator. He chose fear quite consciously, believing that it was the best way to get people to work hard and produce more. What cam to be known as The Terror was partly about the destruction of political rivals, and partly about preventing anyone posing a threat to his total control. But it was also a management philosophy, an attempt to motivate people through fear of the consequences of failure.
It didn’t work, any more than similar actions work today. Instead, it encouraged dangerous short-term thinking, the falsification of statistics and blind obedience even to silly instructions. It was also bad for the country. Even though the Soviet Union enjoyed an amazing period of growth and development before 1941, the achievement was much less than it would have been without Stalin’s management by fear and obsession with control.
Realist—or pragmatist?
Stalin seems to have realized by the end of the 1930s that his obsession with control and management by fear was destroying the foundations of his power. Unlike a modern CEO, he had no retirement plan or other job to go to. He concluded his pact with Hitler because he realized how weak the country had become. When war did start, Stalin was enough of a realist to reinstate sacked and imprisoned Generals and party leaders, and to take their advice—something Hitler never did. The idea that Stalin had a nervous breakdown when the Germans attacked is apparently a myth.
At the end of the war, however, he moved to reassert total control by terror again. Oddly enough, the experience of the war, where an entire population spontaneously rallied against the invaders and made huge sacrifices out of patriotism, didn’t seem to have taught him anything. Perhaps, like some modern managers, he was unteachable.
The gray accountant-from-Hell
If Hitler is the sick, demonic parody of a success-at-any-price modern executive, Stalin is the control-freak, gray accountant who turns up from nowhere and institutes a reign of terror in the organization. He’s the godfather of the new boss who tells you you’ll have to do more with a smaller budget and fewer staff—and if you can’t succeed you’ll be replaced. He is the patron saint of the guy in Administration who tells you that your business trip to New Zealand will have to include a twelve-hour stopover in Mexico City, because it’s cheaper.
Fortunately, we live in a world today without Hitlers and Stalins. However, we still live in a world full of Bad Managers, even if they ultimately do less damage. Do you suffer from a Bad Manager? If so, what type is yours?
Technorati Tags: bad managers, motivation by fear, unrealistic targets, organization man, control freaks, command and control leadership
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:23 am
It is true that many managers use fear to manage that which they in reality do not control. But it is probably not like Stalin a conscious choice. It is a choice by necessity, probably afraid for their own position, they use the same methods that are used to demotivate them. And we should not forget, that fear and using it to create compliance is what many parents apply in rearing there children. Fear is also one of the most used methods by teachers, who are not that well at managing the groups they teach. So using fear is also an unconscious choice, as it is the best unknown method of control, most people have suffered all through their lives.
That fear is the worst method to control and to prepare for the future is in modern management not important, as many managers are selected not on their ability to achieve, but on their ability to control. And as most bad managers change stations before, the effects of their behavior becomes clear, fear will stay the method of control for many a bad manager.
Next to that, we should not forget that a department often gets the manager it behaves for. So a department full of people afraid of change and afraid of the future, will get a manager that uses fear to steer the department.
And yes, I have had my share of managers who used fear to control. They micromanaged, made sure that nobody had a possibility to develop anything other then the knowledge they already had, they played people against each other. But those beneath those managers, also let themselves be used in that way.
So the answer to fear using managers, is courage. But that off course takes courage, and you do not get into a position where you can be controlled through fear, if you have the courage to follow your own road. And to learn to follow your own road, those who are part of your upbringing, must be willing to conquer their fear and become courageous. So they show you what courage is and what courage can do. It is only given a few people to live a life beyond their upbringing, that show that you are not the slave of your past. But how many of us are willing to let go of our past and live for the future without fear?
September 28th, 2008 at 8:50 am
@Norman Dragt. Thank you. I do very much agree. I often wonder, in fact, whether fear is used as a motivator by people who simply do not have the skills and capabilities to manage any other way. maybe it’s a sign of advancing age, but I really wonder whether today’s managers are anything like as well-trained as they should be. Too often they are trained in abstract theoretical models, including those or organisational management and behaviour, rather than actually how to do things. Fear is one of the few management techniques which is instinctive, and which somebody who is essentially untrained is likely to fall back on. (A good way to immunise yourself against the effects of modern management theory, incidentally, is to say three times “George Bush has an MBA.”)
September 28th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Yes, that last line is a good way to strike the fear of god in men seeking an MBA. But you might also want to say “Stalin loved scientific management”, as you pointed out so clearly. Maybe that should be the first line a student of an MBA should hear every day coming into the classroom and the last line when leaving the room.
Although I do wonder if people do not have the skills and capabilities, or that they lack the means to wake up those skills and capabilities all by themselves. So everybody can lead and lead well, but few can do so without someone showing them how. It is like reading and writing, nobody, except for a few geniuses, start to read and write by themselves, but almost everybody can learn it. And that is where today’s managers probably go wrong. They are thrown into the deep and unlit ocean of the department they are expected to manage, between the sharks of employees who want their position for breakfast, with all their fears and uncertainties. I would expect few men to be able to develop a good way of managing, if all they have is their fear to survive. Even though most of their fears are unreal and delusional.
And off course it is not only the fault of organizations, that they do not support new managers. It is also the fault of those managers themselves, that they do not seek help. But how can we expect people to seek help in the thick of the fight, if that help is not clearly available?