There are only four types of officer. First, there are the
lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm... Second,
there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent
staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered.
Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones. These people are a
menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for
everybody. Finally, there are intelligent lazy ones. They are
suited for the highest office.
— General Von Manstein on the German Officer Corps
I recently came across this quote in a book that my good friend
lent me. Notwithstanding the context in which the statement was
made, it suggests that all people can generally be nicely
pigeonholed within a matrix of four categories defined by two
variables: diligence and intelligence. For the more visually-adept
who want to picture this in matrix format, if each individual in a
population were to be represented by a dot and the two dividing
lines of the matrix represent continuums of diligence and
intelligence respectively, the aforementioned matrix would comprise
four shades of circle with their umbrae smacked right in the center
of each cell of the matrix. Next, the statement proposes the right
thing to do with each of these four segments of the population to
increase productivity and generate value. My purpose in writing
this article is to offer my assessment of the statement and to
suggest improvements. As I concur that people can generally be
divided into four categories as such, I will not comment further on
that assertion but use it as my premise.
Before I go into any analysis of the statement itself, I contend
that the statement is applicable in not only the military context
but also any other organisation, commercial or otherwise. Indeed,
any organisation that needs to achieve certain objectives requires
some form of management strategy to ensure maximum utility of its
human capital. However, the statement should not be misapplied to
casual congregations where there is no need to achieve any
obligatory set of objectives, such as a barbecue party or a fun
fair.
Next, in order to effectively apply the management strategy
propounded by the statement, several prerequisites need to be
fulfilled: practical and reasonable metrics have to be put in place
to measure diligence and intelligence, the organisation’s
objectives need to be examined to produce a list of the necessary
types of personnel (roles) needed to attain those objectives, the
necessary diligence-intelligence balance needed for those roles
needs to be ascertained, and an assessment of whether the right
people are currently occupying the right roles needs to be
conducted. Also, just to complicate things further, I put forth one
more attribute that I believe is necessary to consider before any
human capital manipulation can be effected: obedience.
In the execution of the first prerequisite, it is important to
measure the relevant attributes of the individuals using
contextually-suitable methods: test scores, past achievements,
referrals, anecdotal evidence, general impressions, etc. Place each
individual into the correct cell (use a table now that there are
three variables). It is important to note that while diligence and
obedience are general attributes, intelligence is not in that a
competent person might have been misjudged as stupid simply because
she was put in the wrong role. Therefore, it is vital to assess
contextual intelligence, otherwise known as competence. Put the
person who is incompetent at what she is currently doing but would
be competent in doing something else in the intelligent category.
However, if she is good at something that your organisation does
not require, put her in the stupid category. On a side note,
obedience should be taken to mean a lack of leadership
tendencies.
The fourth prerequisite, whether the right people are doing the
right things, is the starting point for the actual application of
the statement. I find that while the statement offers sound general
guiding principles, it makes for a rather rigid and sometimes
absurd guideline to be applied in a variety of practical
situations. I will adopt an attribute-by-attribute approach in my
analysis of the statement:
1) Intelligence
The statement suggests that the stupid and lazy should not be
tempered with. I find that, apart from the military or any other
context where mere numbers constitute a competitive advantage over
the competitor, a stupid and lazy member needs to be eliminated
immediately, even if she is obedient, because she would be
subtracting value from the organisation, most likely in the form of
her compensation or time spent to train or motivate her. These
individuals subtract value from the organisation even if they are
paying to participate in the organisation.
The stupid, hardworking and obedient member is slightly better;
she might have some minor ancillary utility. She should be
maintained as long as her cost of maintenance does not exceed the
value generated by her minor ancillary utility.
The stupid, hardworking and disobedient member is possibly the
worst permutation; she has no clue whatsoever but enthusiastically
wants to lead others and inadvertently makes a mess out of things.
This sort of behaviour not only creates a lot of waste but also
dampens the morale of the organisation. This group of individuals
needs to be urgently removed.
Generally, stupidity should not be acceptable in any
organisation that wants and needs to succeed.
2) Diligence
The statement further suggests that the intelligent and lazy
should be the top leaders. From what I understand, this sentence
was not meant to be a joke. My view is that laziness is not to be
taken to mean plain sloth-like behaviour but an innate preference
to think rather than to do. This sort of laziness is highly valued
if the individual is adequately intelligent — he would be suited
for the difficult thinking roles, such as strategic planning.
Naturally, some degree of disobedience needs to be present (and
hence, tolerated) in these individuals.
On the other hand, an organisation also needs its members who
are diligent, intelligent and obedient because they are in all
likelihood the core creators of value within any organisation. They
should be recognised and rewarded as often as possible for their
diligence, intelligence and obedience — ideally, a differential
reward system should be implemented to create competition to
enhance these attributes.
3) Obedience
In the eyes of authority, obedience is an essential quality that
determines how effective an individual will be in fulfilling her
role in the organisation, particularly if the organisation has
objectionable objectives. The scientists of the Manhattan Project,
who developed the atomic bomb, are a good example to illustrate the
importance of obedience in the successful attainment of
organisational objectives. In general, disobedient individuals who
possess intelligence should not be disposed of, but measures must
be put in place to placate them. While it is impossible to
eradicate disobedience directly, any extra benefit conferred on
these people will help to reduce resistance.
As an afterthought, it is also vital to eliminate all people
with questionable levels of integrity, regardless of their other
qualities. Warren Buffett once said something along the lines of
“when I hire people, it is vital to look out for integrity,
competence and motivation, and if the employee has no integrity,
you better hope that he does not have the other two”. Dishonest
members with shady intentions need to be thrown away as fast as
possible.
In conclusion, human capital management is basically the art of
manipulating other human beings. Those who succeed in this field
are, ironically, those who are inhumane enough to be able to see
people as mere aggregates of certain attributes in order to form
objective decisions on how best to utilise these people to achieve
the desired end goal.
RETARDED_MORON
NUS Faculty of Law (Class of 2012)
