Re: Bottom 10 percent -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 12:40:02 03/24/08 Mon
Author: CS Holden
Subject: Re: Bottom 10 percent
In reply to: Katelyn R. 's message, "Bottom 10 percent" on 13:28:57 03/21/08 Fri

Your dad's story reminds me of the old joke about running from a bear:

Q: What should you do if a bear attacks us?
A: Outrun your slowest friend.

In a business setting, the chances of outrunning and being outrun get higher. Especially since everyone is competing with everyone else by acting similarly, tensions get high and a kind of paranoia can set in. The boss who fires the bottom 10% has created a punishment for poor work rather than an incentive for excellent work. Even if the boss also creates incentives, though, I'm not entirely convinced that the result is better work. Because of the competitive nature of business, even the best workers can find themselves outcast. The best workers can be pharmakons: they help the business succeed, but they also threaten not only their co-workers but their bosses. This is even more prevalent if the excellent worker is a new worker. "He doesn't know how we do things here," co-workers whisper behind his back. "He better watch himself." So instead of imitating him in the spirit of improving their own work, they imitate him so they can topple him at their first opportunity. Morale drops. People get cynical about work. The pharmakon may find himself working extra hard to compensate, and thus tries to cure the poison he appears to have created. When it becomes clear to the powers that be that the excellent worker is bringing down the branch, he is either transferred, promoted out of the pool, or in rare cases even fired. Poor pharmakon worker.

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Replies:

Re: Schools: Bottom 10 percent -- Cs Holden, 12:45:14 03/24/08 Mon