Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

AP-level post today.

New Readers? Here go and read this post, then this one and finally this one. Be prepared for a Quiz tomorrow.

Damn! Throw out the Lesson Planner. Found a Post that sets up our discussion too damn good.

Today’s post: Workplace Conflict. (What is it good for…absolutely nothin’   say it again. hunh, good god.)

Warning. Very involved, quite rich content, this ‘Workplace Conflict’ scenario. May very well run to two, even three posts.

We do not insist that all workplace(s) are a battlefield. That in this environment, (not battlefield), there is a social dynamic quite separate and distinct from the activity, function or rational for a place where any number of people are engaged, (and paid to so engage), in a common purpose. Making widgets, shaping public policy, educating the young, administering to the old, judging behavior and satisfying the most crude impulses of Man. They can all be viewed as constituting a workplace. We are, of course, exempting the self-employed; independent contractors, entertainers, autocrats and most organized religious enterprises. (No, wait. We’re not exempting religious enterprises). ;p

We’re simply talking about where it is you are compelled/seduced into/converted and otherwise coerced to spending time with other people in a common, (if not shared), purpose.

(Damn! Just remembered; clarks don’t take suggestions all that well. The admonition at the top of this post, about going elsewhere to read a different post? Total catnip. ok, we can accept the inevitable. New Readers!! There is something call ‘the Everything Rule’ which states that, in the study, use and application of the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine, ‘Everyone does everything, at one time or another‘. Also, no, you can’t change your predominant worldview at will and this exercise in understanding the world around us and the people who make it up requires an innate drive (and enjoyment of) the use and misuse of one’s imagination. The Doctrine is a perspective. It is not the Answer. But it is a fun Question.)

OK here’s a RePrint post that sets us up perfectly(ish)

Read, take notes and come back tomorrow with questions. We’ll endeavor to comment on the old post with any helpful updates/definitions and modern applications to the Doctrine lexicon evident in that (older) post.

“Did you have to treat me oh so bad, all I do is hang my head and moan…tell me why” the Wakefield Doctrine and the workplace

February 9, 2012

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers )

So I was talking to a clark the other day, and the topic of rogers in the workplace came up. ( Regular Readers can jump down to the music video, as you know what is coming next. But when you are are through listening to the Beatles? be sure to come back here and leave a Comment ).  In any event, the situation we discussed was a fairly common one, i.e. the problems encountered when there is a rogerian manager in an office with clarks doing the support/administrative/clerical work. Nothing unusual there, rogers are people persons and clarks love to administrate¹ The trouble was, (in the situation we were discussing) was that the rogerian manager was being replaced by another rogerian manager. ( Did I mention that there were a lot of rogers in the workplace in question, other than these managers?  there were…) The clark I was talking to was excited and optimistic about the new manager coming into the office, mostly because (the clark) was being constantly harassed by the rogers that worked in the office.

Doctrine Note: In the workplace, rogers are most likely to be found as mid-level managers, they are the people who are there everyday to ensure the smooth-functioning of the organization whatever it might be. They, (the rogers), take their orders from someone else, usually a person not located in the immediate environment. rogers are found in these types of positions because they are the most socially adept of the three ( clarks, scotts and rogers ) and (they) have an innate gift of communication. rogers are naturals to an organized workplace, the more bureaucratic the better…they thrive in a setting in which there are rules and procedures and processes. And, if you did your research, you would find that the person who invented ‘the Memo’ was totally a roger!  I will even go so far as to say that an organized workplace, of virtually any size greater than three people, simply has to have a roger to run the system. We said run the system, we did not say to make the system or workplace run efficiently or productively.

While the rogers are at the heart of most organized workplaces, the scotts are usually ‘in the field’ or ‘on the road’ or somewhere that they don’t feel penned in…scotts as a rule are often great leaders and (are always) terrible managers, so you might find the CEO or President or Founder to be a scott, but never the Vice President-in-Charge-of-Ensuring-that-a-lot-pointless-rules-are-implemented-and-ignored. That is where rogers shine.  …and the clarks?  they are there, doing the actual work. clarks are the enablers and the facilitators and the people who will remind the rogers about the next visit from their scottian boss. Which brings us to the topic of this Post…the problems that clarks invariably encounter when working for and otherwise answering to a roger..so lets get back to the Post.

The problem (that we were discussing) was that our clark was being constantly told that she was making mistakes, and despite all efforts to correct the matter or even when there were no errors, the roger would find fault. As students of the Doctrine will be thinking at this point is, of course, ‘the only mistake that the clark made was to believe that the fault lay with her’.  Further compounding the problem was that  being a clark, our friend would spend most of the time after criticism trying to understand what she did wrong. This, of course made the likelihood of a genuine mistake almost inevitable.
From the Doctrine perspective, the primary advice was that, as a roger, the manager was simply lashing out²…being a bully. And that the ‘strategy’ that most rogers like to employ is to get everyone that they are supposed to be managing to be constantly ‘off balance’. As a result of being off balance and trying to understand why they seem unable to meet the expectation of their boss, most people, especially clarks will make more errors, which allows additional criticism etc. The more the people the roger is managing make mistakes, the better the roger  is made to look good in contrast.³ Or so is the worldview of the rogerian manager.

So my advice was: take some time to find the strength in knowing that she did, in fact know how to do her job. Then keep in mind that any interaction with a roger has the possibility of an attack (on her competency) and finally, when an interaction was unavoidable to remember the old adage, ‘the person who asks the questions, controls the conversation’.

Readers!!  You back yet?  Lets open the floor for Comments and Discussion.

 

1) because it lets us tell people what to do and it lets us organize things the way we want, without having to be directly and personally involved.

2)  lashing out – a term to denote the tendency of a roger, while seemingly engaged in a pleasant interaction (with a clark) to suddenly get nasty. almost always caught off-guard, clarks will tend to be thrown off-balance…which is, of course, the intention of the roger

3)  the rogerian principle is that if everyone under a rogerian manager is fucking up, then it does not matter what the roger is expected to do in his own job, he is constantly busy pointing out how much everyone is screwing up…most of rogerian managers’ time is spent pointing out the shortcomings of the people he/she is supposed to be managing

 

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