Abdication Creep

 

Where someone in authority, or with seniority, abdicates responsibility to a third party to manage work on their behalf, because:

 

1. They are afraid to take responsibility when things go wrong.

2. They don't have the management skills to lead the work themselves.

 

Abdication creep ensues when they realise that somebody needs to manage the third party  (or third parties) and they then employ a fourth party to do this (and so on)

 

What separates this from outsourcing, e.g. due to a need for additional management resources, is that hopedonkeying is a factor and the ultimate and unspoken aim is to avoid exposure of shortcomings in management experience or skill

 

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The Dependency Dam

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An artificial barrier created by an entity to fully control a resource, for the entity's own benefit, that would otherwise have been freely accessible to the owners, users or typical beneficiaries of that resource.

 

The connotation is negative, in that it is implied that control of access to the resource has been usurped from those who should have free and fair access or control

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Examples of Dependency Dams:

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1. Political parties wedging themselves in between the people and the levers of power

2. Companies put themselves in between the consumer and what the consumer wants, e.g. how a supplier of operating systems could make it appear, to most consumers, like they were critical to the operation of a computer

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The Hopedonkey

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The notion that a 'great idea' can simply be assigned to someone else for completion with either minimal, or even no management or adjustments

 

Derived from the term ‘scapegoat’, originally being an actual goat that a religious leader would attach the sins of the people to. The goat would then be sent to wander in the wilderness of salt flats until it died, thus supposedly absolving the people of their sins.

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A hopedonkey is similar, except that it is a metaphorical donkey that someone of seniority or authority attaches their big ideas to. The donkey is then sent out to wander in the organisational wilderness without any further useful input, thus supposedly absolving the originator of the idea of their responsibility or accountability (but not the credit if, by some miracle, the donkey comes back having done all of the hard work).

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The initial intentions for scapegoat and hopedonkey are different, but the outcomes are similar. Scapegoating is also often an outcome of hopedonkeying.

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There are many reasons or causes for ‘hopedonkeying’, which may be separate but are often combined:

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1. The originator (of the 'big idea') thinks that it is good enough to simply have what they think is a fantastic idea, but has no comprehension that it needs to be actually managed to a successful conclusion. They just fire off the suggestion or order to their minions.

2. The slightly more enlightened idea originator who realises that the idea needs managing so delegates this to a third party, but still doesn’t realise that the third party will still need managing (see ‘Abdication Creep’)

3. The originator instigates the idea and then avoids all contact with it until it is determined whether it was a success or failure. If it’s a success, it was ‘their idea’ and if it was a fail, there is little evidence they were working on it.

4. The originator is ignorant of the fact that ‘great ideas’ are dirt cheap on their own or that everyone has already had the idea and discounted it as impractical – ability to achieve successful implementation of even a trivial idea is often much more valuable

5. The originator hasn’t thought things through fully nor employed anyone else to think things through

6. There are no useful feedback loops. Because the originator only has a glowing and extremely superficial view of their own great idea, it is impossible for them to devise measures of tactical success or failure, or any other kind of appropriate monitoring, so that adjustments can be made as the work moves forward.

7. There is very little in the way of practical detail; the originator is merely passing their dream off as an achievable goal or realistic vision.

8. The 'big idea' is based on dogma so there is no apparent need, to the originator of the idea, to think it through, because the underlying principles are 'right' in their opinion, even if they are massively generalised or from a completely different and irrelevant epoch.

 

Examples of hopedonkeying:

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1. Football manager (shouting at team): ‘You need to score more goals’.

2. Father (to son): ‘You need to pass your exams if you want a good job’

3. Managing Director (to their public sector organisation): “I aim to make us World Class/Excellent/World Leader/etc”. Glib platitudes like these are an indicator of ingrained establishment hopedonkeying, particularly if not backed up with any practical, available plans as to how this will be achieved.

4. Politicians:  Politicians are possibly the greatest perpetrators of hopedonkeying. E.g. very seldom do they have the expertise needed to fully understand complex technical matters except at a superficial level, so they employ specialist consultants and thinktanks