Creating Unhappiness is Ineffective

In finding the core of "creating unhappiness," the concept is essentially a form of top-down workplace bullying.  The manager institutes a bullying style to get an employee to leave.  It is easy to identify because anyone who has ever been on the outside of some clique or social group has experienced it. A group of girls refuses to let you sit at their table at lunch. Friends invite everyone to the party but one person, or they refuse to show up to her party. Work colleagues go through someone's desk, rummage through their purse, and file complaints to management. When examined in this manner, "creating unhappiness" is nothing more than petty, passive-aggressive, bullying behavior.

At the root of this problem is that the department director was creating chaos within her division. For months, she encouraged and allowed other managers and staff members to be distracted from their work and their duties in order to bully this person out of the department. Imagine now the scenario in the workplace. The target comes to work in the morning. The manager and three other employees have spent 30 minutes of their day discussing how they are going to sabotage or create unhappiness in the employee.  That is half an hour of lost productivity already. That time could have been spent developing strategy or their own talents and skills rather than trying to diminish someone else's talents. A couple hours later, the manager and the three other employees enact their plan. Time to enact the plan takes 60 minutes.  Later that day, they meet in the copy room and discuss how their plan is working.  They are pleased with their results. The meeting that started as a 15 minutes break turns into a 45 minutes discussion. Hoping to win their boss' favor, the three employees separately plan a prank on the target. The planning and the prank takes another 60 minutes out of their day. 

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In one work day, sabotaging the target and creating unhappiness for her takes 180 minutes or 3 hours out of the other employees' productive time. That is at least 3 hours of productive time lost for four employees, the three employees and the target, for a total productive time lost for employees of 12 hours in one day. The area manager lost 2 hours of time. The total is now up to 14 hours in one day. The department director herself lost 30 minutes of her day. That is a total productive time lost of 14.5 hours in one day. In one work week, that is 72.5 hours of productive time lost  by that work unit. Put another way, the work unit was wasting almost 2 full time equivalents (FTEs) on creating unhappiness. Not a very effective or efficient way to run a department. 

It's no wonder that this director felt that she was "constantly putting out fires" and her department always seemed rushed and stressed. In fact, they were rushed and stressed because her unspoken personnel policies were wasting others' time and resources. Furthermore, the method was causing staff to feel demoralized and unhappy. Certainly, time spent creating unhappiness in one person also made the people causing the unhappiness unhappy. Perhaps the employees had internal conflicts where they felt what they were doing was wrong, but they had to do it to please the boss. They may have felt their behavior was unprofessional, inappropriate, immoral, unethical, and possibly illegal. They may have wondered if their area manager or department director had any integrity at all. Even worse,what if they were next? Who was going to be the next victim of this ploy? Employees productivity lowered, deadlines were missed, work was shoddy, and good employees began to leave. This kind of negative atmosphere persisted for months, even years. 

In this scenario, the target did end up leaving the department. Collateral damage included the loss of two other good employees, one within the area, and one outside who was indirectly affected by the others' behaviors. The manager also left within two years. The department director remained in place as she could repeatedly show positive results, spending many nights working into the early hours of the morning, but she could never seem to move beyond that position.She was wasting her own resources of time, talent and energy by engaging in these behaviors. She remained in the same position for 15 years without promotion, although she regularly wondered why.

Creating unhappiness was doing nothing but creating chaos. As Peter Drucker states, management should be boring. An effective manager should go to work every day and know exactly what is going to happen without any surprises. When and if a crisis arises, then the department director should give that her full and undivided attention. Time, talent and money do not need to be wasted vetting out bad employees. If an employee is truly a bad employee, then the department director or manager should carefully document it. However, if the department director or manager is going to document the efforts of one employee, then the efforts of all other employees in the work group should be documented as well. If an employee is truly a bad fit, the employee will find her way out the door on her own. There is no need for creating unhappiness, creating chaos, creating drama, or lost productivity.