You can learn from the best but there’s a lot to be learned from the worst as well. Here are a few suggestions to make sure your company will never succeed.

1. Keep staffing levels critically low.
2. Maintain an atmosphere of crisis.
3. Prioritize all tasks and projects equally.
4. Define “opportunities” in terms of additional work.
5. Criticism must be public to be effective.
6. Insist upon skill-sharing and cross-training without allocating time or reducing workloads.
7. Lavish praise on minor accomplishments.
8. Create a “culture of meetings.”
9. Silently live by the motto, “No policy is the best policy.”
10. Reward successful and overachieving employees with increased workloads; reduce the milieu of other staff accordingly.
11. Keep the rumor trade busy by not stating objectives.
12. Build dysfunctional teams by forcing motivated, knowledgeable employees to work closely with underachievers and the inept.

 

From: Ross Lonstein, “Management Techniques of the Bottom 95% of U.S. Corporations.”