SIX SILENT KILLERS: MANAGEMENT’S GREATEST CHALLENGE (1998): Everyone admits technology has made drastic changes in our lives and lifestyles. It has also drastically changed the way we do business with each other, which in turn means it has necessitated the change in the structure of organization and the way we work. But here is the problem. We have had major surgery to the organization in the form of downsizing and corporate restructuring, but we have failed to change the workplace culture consistent with these demands. Now most workers are better trained and educated than most of their bosses with specialized skills and knowledge that they, alone, can manage. But for all intent and purpose, the bosses still call the shots, still maintain the charade of performance appraisal, still conduct senseless department meetings, and still hand out assignments as if most workers were manual laborers and it was 1945. The consequence of this is not open rebellion. The consequence of this are six silent killers that are invisible to the eye unless you are looking for them, but are the equivalent of social termites destroying the infrastructure until it is too late for damage control. These killers are six passive behaviors: coming in late and leaving early and doing as little as possible to get by (passive aggression); doing nothing until told and then once completed waiting around for further instruction (passive responsive); always having an excuse why something doesn’t get done (“Not my job!”) or done on time (passive defensive); accepting assignment one never plans on completing, or if completing never on time (approach avoidance), always wanting to have what others have and be what they are instead of being content with what one has and is (obsessive compulsive); and always spreading misinformation or disinformation about the boss, colleagues or the company; withholding information critical to a task, or misusing company property (malicious obedience). In order to improve the situation, senior management was committed but not involve in the corrective process, turning it over to personnel, now called “human resource management.” The results have been devastatingly and critically inept programming workers from management dependence to a counter dependence on the company for their total well being. There is a way out of all this, which Dr. Fisher leads the reader, but not before taking that reader through the no man’s land unconscious incompetence (culture of comfort) through conscious incompetence (culture of complacency) to finally arriving at conscious competence (culture of contribution). Dr. Fisher claims that no matter the educational achievement most workers, because of this programming, display the emotional maturity of an obedient or devious twelve-year-old child suspended in terminal adolescence although possibly in the body of a fifty-year-old. He calls for the culture of contribution and workers with the adult maturity to complain frequently but politely when they encounter duplicity, chicanery, corruption, or malfeasance as well as counter productive behavior.

READERS’ COMMENTS

Billy G. Gunter, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology, University of South Florida: “Fisher gets his ideas and data directly from the workplace. He has worked inside the corporation at all levels from laborer to corporate executive status, and concludes, ‘we don’t know how to manage, motivate, or mobilize the workforce, and as a consequence we spawn six silent killers, which destroy the foundation and infrastructure of the organization from within without anybody noticing.’ In a thoroughly disarming and informative manner, Fisher explains these killers so sensibly that it is like a light bulb going off in your head. You find yourself saying, why didn’t I think of that? “

Anna Flowers, The Journal of Applied Management and Entreprenerism: “For many years, researchers and behavioral scientists have attempted to explain organizations by using psychoanalytical and other psychological school thought structures. James R. Fisher, Jr. follows similar approaches, but for this reviewer, with great insight, philosophical depth, and uncanny predictive truth. This book provides readers with an accurate development of organization USA over the past century, and those crucial factors that must be taken into consideration if organizations are to survive. Fisher’s vibrant explores the dominant cultures in the marketplace, the need for a new set of organization paradigms, incipient catastrophe, the six silent killers, the cultures of comfort, complacency, and contribution.

Dr. Fisher opens his heavily documented and self-experienced work with the dilemma that has spawned the six silent killers, and discusses why this new phenomenon is the latest and greatest challenge to management. He observes “professionals have more the mind of the artist, rather than that of the analyst, the heart of the creator than the discoverer, and more the soul of the rebel than the patriot.”

Six Silent Killers examines those areas that have created what Fisher calls “the new workforce that the post-industrial society has created.” He cites the six silent killers, which have evolved in organizations as a “reaction to the frustration with the growing breach between the role demands of modern workers and the self-demands of those in charge.”

Fisher six silent killers, “the manic monarchs of the merry madhouse,” are passive aggression, passive responsive, passive defensive, malicious obedience, approach avoidance, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

His poetic description indicates that these silent killers “eat at the sinews of organizations, and workers who display them have an amazing ability to appear as if performers when clearly they are not. They are caught in the crunch between hypocrisy and hype, turning their frustrations into deceptive devices. They are looking for leadership in a leaderless society. They are looking for direction when nobody admits to being off course. They are looking for real work in the chaos of activities. Wherever they look, they find confusion. Nobody knows who is in control or who has the power. Managers and workers alike, equally frustrated, spread these silent killers. Nobody is in charge. Management plays the role but has little control. Workers are reluctant to step up to the challenge of taking control because they don’t want the responsibility. So control and productive effort slip silently between them, covered by smoke and mirrors of frenzied activity.” (pp. 87, 88).

After a substantive analysis of organizations and managers and worker, which represent the residue of an obsolete culture, Fisher explores the cultures of comfort, complacency, and contribution. He suggests that modern organizations should develop the culture of contribution, which represents “an entirely new landscape for doing business, a new visage and frame of reference. It is the land of growth and contribution.”

This book is written with sincerity and passion, evoking incredible syntactic imagery and stimulating thought. However, it is more an analytical approach in understanding the cause and effect of American Society and its organization than the process of solutions. It is optimistic, perhaps simplistic in the actualization of coping behaviors for survival, but it is very deep in ferreting out those hidden factors (subconscious) that impact behavior without an explanation as to why this kind of behavior occurs.

James R. Fisher, Jr. has succeeded in writing a book, which is a valuable contribution to the fields of psychology, philosophy and business. He provides insight and important issues in contemporary society that allows readers and organizations to understand, prepare for, and survive in the new millennium.

The Wall Street Journal – Across the Board Magazine: One of the hazards of modern life is that its sheer speed forcibly filters out those wonderful moments many previously used to digest a good book. Such reading is in contrast to ingesting an author’s words via the kind of rapid scanning needed just to get through the information flood that engulfs us each day. But it’s not just verbal overflow that has kept thoughtful, even meditative reading to a minimum. Starting somewhere around the days of the One Minute Manager, many authors started reducing the intellectual weight of their books, so as to keep (they hoped) their invitingly simple-to-read books near the top of the pile. Jim Fisher is simply not that kind of author. An industrial psychologist with 40 years of corporate experience, he has written several books; more than likely most managers have read none of them. They are heavyweight reads utilizing a wide range of reference and examples. In sum, you have to work to read them, the payoff being (even if you don’t agree with him!) a full and complete connection with another mind’s thoughts about work, managing, and leading. Why, then, would Fisher’s latest book, Six Silent Killers, merit your attention? Well, this time Fisher seems to have found the magic balance between buoyancy and density. Yes, there are still the voluminous references, and Fisher is not afraid to cite Charles Dickens, Edward de Bono, Deepak Chopra, and Douglas McGregor, all in the same chapter, but he has thrust them into an argument that is simple and well-framed. So, almost 300 pages from the preface, it’s really hard to get lost in this book. Upset, maybe, but never lost . . . In short, trying to keep Fisher’s six silent killers from killing further will be tough work. No wonder he calls Chapter 10, “The Difficult Agenda Ahead, or When the Simple Is Complex.” Still, Fisher refuses to discount his estimate of the overall workplace problem with pat answers designed to sell books. Fisher’s assessment that changing the contemporary workplace will be tough does not, however, lead the book to a cheerless ending. Six Silent Killers ends with a single-point call for change on the part of management. In a brief afterward, Fisher calls for new initiatives to build greater levels of trust in the workplace: “Workers don’t trust management. Management doesn’t trust workers. And neither workers nor managers trust themselves.” His sentiments come at the very end of the book and are explored less than the book’s other topics. One suspects that the author intentionally planned a “sun just coming up over the horizon” wrap. Thus, when he endorses “soft approaches to hard problems” in the very last paragraph, most readers will be saying: “Over? So soon?” Yet, upon reflection, Fisher’s closing words are a capstone to a well-reasoned, well-documented study of how people think about working and managing today. Invest the time, really read the book, and you’ll probably agree that the central reason for an unhappy workplace is some well-defined “killers.” And ever so handily, Fisher will lead you to one more (albeit unstated) conclusion: that there’s a seventh killer somewhere here. It’s a management profession failing to move forward with the times that talks endlessly about “vision” and “empowerment” while refusing to loosen “the command-and-control screws” even one turn. Fisher seems to end his book precipitously, but only the manager who reads it can write the next chapter.

Glenn V. Wilson, restaurateur. In this book Fisher presents models for three phases of cultural development: Culture of Comfort, Culture of Complacency, and Culture of Contribution. Six “productive” organizational activities commonly initiated by senior management are dispelled as “unproductive” to a contributory culture. Fisher goes on to acknowledge that just as termites destroy a home, “social termites” (employees with destructive behaviors) destroy and undermine an organization’s infrastructure. Managing these covert destructive behaviors (Six Silent Killers) are one of management’s greatest challenges. Fisher doesn’t pull any punches in this book, and I like that. His brilliant and succinct writing style makes this book an absolute must for anyone who: a) makes decisions about employees (hiring, firing, performance assessments, etc.); b) can’t put their finger on employee challenges; and c) for those looking to improve productivity and well being in the workplace. As I was reading this book, I realized that three of my six employees in my restaurant business were clearly “social termites.” I was working hard but getting nowhere, spending all my time putting out fires. This book provided me with the insights into employee behaviors, which I was then able to take action on. Sales are up, customers are happy; other workers seem to enjoy their work more, leading to improved productivity. I no longer spend all my time putting out fires. I now spend my time managing a “successful, creative business, and leading the ENTIRE organization, not just an un-chosen few. I wish I had this book 30 years ago, but grateful that I have it now! Thank you James R.