PROMOTION
You either want it, or you don’t.
Look at your company long and hard and decide.
If you’re one of those people who want it, then go for it. Without people like you, companies would not grow or move forward. It’s a long hard climb; there will be setbacks and kickings, but good luck as you climb the greasy pole.
If, for whatever reasons, you don’t want promotion, then there are a number of precautions that you will need to keep consistently taking to avoid unwanted attention from your managers and, heaven forbid, the Human Resources brigade.
Whilst you need to be seen to be reasonably capable of doing your job in order to keep a roof over your head, wine in your glass, and food in your children (in that order) you also need to create a persona in keeping with your stated desire of avoiding promotion to senior levels, and all the pitfalls and heart attacks it can bring.
Whilst promotion brings increasing amounts of cash, enabling you to buy a bigger house, bigger car, and a better array of gadgetry, it can also bring increasing amounts of unpaid overtime, pressure, and health problems, or even an early visit to the local cemetery.
This guide is aimed at those people who have decided that they want a job, as opposed to a career path. I have no problem with anyone chasing promotion, but they should also realise that there are people who choose to go home, play with children and grandchildren, kick the dog, dig the garden, or write guides such as this one.
This guide is not definitive, as methods of avoiding promotion can present themselves at any point during the working day. They should either be grasped tightly and used or stored away for future use.
As you progress in your lack of career, you will build and develop your own “Unreliability Index” (UI)
MISTAKES
Make them.
Not often enough or serious enough to warrant disciplinary action, or being “let go”, but just enough to make people think “he’s ok, but he does make mistakes, and is not entirely reliable or consistent – we can’t afford that level of inconsistency in the new role”
You have to be careful here – timing is essential.
If you get wind of an upcoming project or promotion in a field you know that you could perform well in, then you may need to increase the frequency and depth of error in the short term.
An experienced “no hoper” (as other people may see him) can take this approach quite far, even to the point of “informal conduct” meetings at just the right time to ensure that his not being considered for the promotion is safeguarded.
This tactic should only be undertaken by the most experienced colleague.
Don’t forget to show the correct level of contrition
TRAINING & TRAINERS
Training should be kept to a minimum, and at a basic level.
The current trend of Life Long Learning (LLL) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is making this tactic a little hard to use, but not completely.
One way round it, is to go on a training loop, and keep taking the same or similar training courses as often as is sensible not to draw attention to the fact, using the pretext of not understanding some of the course elements.
With the advent of more teambuilding events based around joint and shared training, this tactic can be difficult to utilise as, on this type of training course, you are encouraged to share the problem with your co trainees, and there is always a smartarse who is able to demonstrate an easy way for you to grasp the principals of the course.
Along with Training, you get Trainers (or Facilitators as most now preferred to be called)
These are people who are reprogrammed every two or three years with the latest in Guruspeak.
They always tend to be on message with whatever the latest message is.
They are always up to date with the latest training techniques, which usually turn out to have been first tried out around thirty years ago.
Trainers should really be avoided, as there is a danger that their short-term enthusiasm could rub off, and you could find yourself learning techniques, which could assist you in a potential future promotion scenario (don’t forget that trainers always report your progress back up the food chain).
Trainers are also fond of arranging or encouraging Awaydays, which take you out of your normal place of work environment in an attempt to put you at ease and off guard, which circumstance could put you in a situation where you could dangerously think “I can do this, I want the responsibility”
Awaydays don’t take you out of the workplace, they merely move it to a hothouse environment
Treat Awaydays with caution, as they can damage your Unreliability Index.
TOE IN THE WATER
Have a go. If the opportunity presents itself for a short-term secondment or moving up to cover absence, go for it, and give your employer a chance to give you the chance to shine.
It makes them happy, and it’ll give you the opportunity to show to how much out of your depth you would be if you were given a permanent promotion.
TEAM BUILDING
Unless these events are held at an interesting venue, like a football stadium, indoor ski run or pub, they should be avoided wherever possible.
As with Awaydays, team building purports to get you out of the normal workplace environment – be warned, it simply moves it elsewhere, and remember, you won’t have the benefit of telephone calls or emails to distract you or interrupt the Trainers flow.
Should you become aware of an upcoming team building event, then hospital visits, unavoidable doctors’ appointments or pre booked holidays can all be useful in avoiding attendance.
Ensure that at various points during the event, you inject elements of misunderstanding of the direction the Company and Facilitators are trying to send you.
Misunderstanding will ensure that your managers will see you as a team player, but someone who misses key elements of the training, which has the advantage of enhancing your UI rating.
Events which employ activities such as quad biking, bowling, archery and clay pigeon shooting, may seem innocuous on the day, but remember, they are just a ploy to relax you, so that they can find a chink in your anti promotional armour.
Be wary.
WHERE YOU LIVE
Wherever possible, try and live off the beaten track, with minimum public transport. Living in out of the way places gives you reasons not to stay late. Excuses such as “I’ve got a long walk uphill when I get off the train”, “My last bus is at seven o’clock” or “my wife/husband/partner has the car today” mean that you cannot be relied on to work late (or start early)
Likewise, it can also be useful in a harsh winter, as you run the risk, albeit a slim one, of being snowed in. (although, if you live so far out in the sticks, how can your employers prove otherwise?)
Another element of living out in the sticks, is that you can become involved with various aspects of village life, meaning that you give your free time to home/village organisations, rather than to your employer.
If you give village meetings and events a higher priority than your employers, your managers will see you as not being committed to their goals and direction.
FAMILY
Following on from where you live, is your family.
Children and grandchildren are always useful for babysitting, school plays, taking little Wayne/Kylie to football /dance practice.
Elderly relatives can also be used to avoid staying late at work, for similar reasons, although I’m not sure about the football practice element.
Using the elderly as a means to enhance your UI may seem somewhat churlish, as it would usually mean that they’re either ill or damaged in some way, but judicious and selective use of this facility can be spread over a long timescale.
Either way, using your family in this way enhances your UI, as your energy is directed towards your family, not your employer.
MEETINGS
Meetings are an opportunity to display your UI in public. Not enough to make you look stupid, but enough to put you on the wrong side of promotional prospects, and quite often with the added benefit of external witnesses.
Ask simple questions time and again, get hold of the wrong side of simple arguments.
The level of meeting dictates the level of naiveté of your questions.
You need to be able to demonstrate that you understand about 80% of what’s going on, leaving 20% of unreliability to spread around as (or if) required.
Meetings tend to be controlled by one or two loud voices who love the sound of their own noise. Let them – these are golden opportunities for you to keep your head below the parapet and let others display a high profile.
Never initiate a meeting, as this points you out as someone who wants to make your mark. Try to miss or not be available for around 25% of meetings you are invited to. (Remember, you have a UI to cultivate).
NB As a last resort, falling asleep is generally not a good option, but it is an option.
MISSION STATEMENT
If you work in a company that is going down this unfortunate route, there are few options.
Embrace it wholeheartedly; it has too important an effect on your salary to hope it will go away.
Don’t rubbish it or decry it in public; this will be seen as blatant heresy, and heresy can be expensive.
If the Mission Statement is a simple one: “We’re striving to be the best in our field”, go with it. There’s no mileage in not understanding, accept it and move one to other tactics.
If, however, it is a complex statement, which seems to run on and on and on, with pages and pages of back up paperwork to explain it, then it can be a rich field of opportunities for maintaining, or even enhancing, your UI.
There will be numerous sentences, paragraphs, statements and bullet points for you to fail to understand, that the more confidant “No Hoper” could use this one area alone for a number of years.
One sure way to perhaps permanently damage your promotional prospects is to understand “The Mission Statement” to such a degree as to be able to reduce it down to a simple, logical statement.
Your managers will have put a lot of, as they see it, hard work into this, and for an upstart to simplify it down into an understandable format, marks you down as being a smartarse, and nobody likes a smartarse.
It can also be classed as heresy.
HERESY IS EXPENSIVE
Heresy of any description is a sure-fire way of damaging your promotional prospects.
Being openly critical or sneering of your employer’s rules, ideas and goals is all well and good, but it can be an excellent way of ensuring that your employment is a short one.
The use of heretical thought should be looked at along the lines of planting a seed, to come to fruition at some undetermined future date, and should be used with extreme caution.
Remember, you are trying to avoid promotion, not join the ranks of the unemployed – you still have mouths to feed.
Toe the party line and listen to the boss.
Read corporate directives, don’t hint, “can’t give a toss”
The Emperor’s new clothes insignificantly pall,
As you gaze with silent rapture on your mission statement wall.
For if you don’t join in, and just sit there looking pensive,
At pay rise time you’ll find heresy is quite expensive.
They use words like “engagement” “enhancement of your skill”
But fail in “Team respect” and they circle for the kill.
Put not your trust in princes, or managerial favour,
Keep looking over your shoulder and be wary of your neighbour.
Be careful, tread on eggshells, take care what vibes you give,
Or at your pay review, you’ll find heresy is quite expensive.
JARGON
Learn it all, understand it thoroughly, but don’t use it.
Those who use jargon are, quite often, managers who may not fully understand it, but use it so as not to look out of touch. They will see your lack of buzzwording as a demonstration of your lack of drive, of being out of touch with what are perceived to be the latest innovations in management techniques.
Your knowledge of, but not using, jargon gives you the edge in fighting off promotions. Your managers will write you out of the promotion channels because of your lack of innovation, and as you really do understand all their techno babble, you will be able to see far in advance, any possible promotion opportunities, and put measures in place to avoid them.
You will find that you will be constantly updating your buzzword vocabulary, as new words and phrases are being created daily.
If you find that, sadly, you must use jargon, then use something that is at least a year out of date (you will automatically be corrected, with much amusement).
Not using, or using out of date, jargon will have a modestly favourable impact on your UI.
PAPERWORK
A difficult one to use, but it can be used
The main area of use of paperwork is in failing to complete it in time, completing it incorrectly, or not completing it at all, it’s as simple as that.
The main reason for including this section, is as a warning; look up the food chain and see how much more paperwork, reports and red tape is generated the higher up you go. Do you really want to be involved in all that?
Paperwork is like an inverted pyramid; if you think you’ve got paperwork problems, look up the food chain.
McKEAN’S FIRST LAW
Your ability to do your job effectively (A) is directly proportionally to the inverse of the volume of paperwork generated. (Vp)
The more time you spend chasing non-relevant paper around the company, the less time you spend actually doing what the company pays you for.
DIRECT APPROACH
Of course, there is always the direct approach; when it is suggested that you be promoted, simply say, “No thanks, I’m happy where I am”
Your managers will fail to understand why anyone would turn down a promotion with their company, and as a consequence, they will remember you as the one who did.
You should, therefore, only need to say this once.
SUMMARY
These measures and tips are, by no means, a definitive set of guidelines.
New attempts to get you promoted are being developed daily, and your armoury against promotion must also grow on the same daily basis.
At times you may be tempted, or even succumb, to the promises of managerial dizzy heights.
Be on your guard at all times, you have a duty towards perceived mediocrity.
Your UI must be protected – go for it.
THE LAST RESORT
If all else fails, and stopping short of physical acts of violence against your managers, you can always resign, and run away to join another circus.
