Bad Boss but a Good Lesson

I worked at a place many years ago with a sociopathic boss. At first glance, he seemed normal, even friendly. You might think he just kept a distance between management and employees, kind of like in the military. No fraternization.

He’d wander though the cubicle alleys in the morning and again after lunch, greeting the workers who reported up through him, offering pleasantries, such as, “How’s it going?” “Nice day, isn’t it?” “Did you have a nice lunch?”

But if you ever made a mistake, he’d appear in your cubicle doorway and say, “Would you mind coming to my office?”

Once inside his office, he’d scream at you for ten minutes, calling you names, demanding to know why you did something so stupid, and threaten to fire you, over and over again. It was a demeaning, demoralizing tear down. He screamed loud enough so that everyone outside his office heard every insult.

Once he had exhausted his fury, he’d send you back to you cubicle to clean up your mess.

Then he’d summon everyone to a conference room for a team meeting where the demeaning, demoralizing questions would continue. But I learned a great technique from this that I’ll never forget.

In the conference room, he conducted a “root cause analysis,” digging down five levels to understand how the mistake was made. At the time, it felt like being on trial and being forced to denounce your coworker. After hearing how the accused had been abused, it was difficult to talk about where they screwed up.

The boss wouldn’t relent, and he’d keep us in that conference room until the root of the problem was fully exposed. His technique was to ask the “five whys.” Ask why the mistake was made. Ask what led to that mistake, and again why that situation existed, and so forth, until we were five levels deep.

By digging deep, we often uncovered multiple dysfunctions in our processes. He’d press even when there really weren’t anymore levels to question (sociopath gonna’ be a sociopath).

Despite hating the experience, and hating the sociopath, it was a useful lesson.

When you screw something up, take a moment to self-soothe and put out any immediate fire.

Once the immediate danger has passed, give the situation some root cause analysis. Ask why the mistake was made, and dig four more levels deep an what led to the circumstances that triggered the mistake.

This doesn’t have anything specific to do with creativity, but it is a way to improve your processes for making things and building stuff.