Bulldozer00's Blog

If you are indispensable, you’re unpromotable. – Unknown

I don’t know who said that quote, but it’s pretty true, no? Some people and groups, especially bureaucrats and those in overhead middle management and staff roles, either wittingly or unwittingly do everything they can to make their jobs so complicated and unfathomable that no one else can do them and the org that employs them would be temporarily hosed if they left. It’s the familiar “truck number of 1” syndrome.

The problem is that both managers and “regular” employees in unenlightened borgs collude to make it so. Managers want efficiency to keep operating costs low and employees want a comfort zone that minimizes the chance of them making visible mistakes. Specialization breeds specialization over time until a brittle bucket brigade of one-dimensional, highly interdependent, change-averse “parts” is set in stone.