Promotion at random

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Reality TV competitions, like BBC’s Traitors and Netflix’s Squid Games offer an interesting insight into group dynamics. They pit competitors against each other in a game of competition of ostensible strategy, but where the competitors know only general objectives ahead of time (survive to the end to win the game) but not specific rules (the nature or success criteria of the challenges and tasks they will face) and some of these rules are disclosed late, never disclosed, or change without warning. They are in a situation of uncertainty, not risk. This means from their own perspective, their success comes down essentially to pure chance. They may as well be in a pure lottery. They are at the mercy of the game; they have no idea whether their individual tactics will help or hinder them.

This never occurs to any of the participants, who carry on as if they can solve a problem. Even after the faithful have ejected 8 of their own against just one traitor — even when players they profess to be convinced are lying turn out not to be — it never occurs to anyone to just draw lots. With 4 traitors in 22 they are doing (slightly) worse than they would expect to at random.

The same group dynamics exist in the workplace.

If you can influence outcomes with certainty, it informs how you “play the game”: being political may pay off — forming and then tactically defecting on alliances, exaggerating your role on things you did do and seeking credit for things you did not — even if this risks destroying short term local relationships with people you are outcompeting.

But if you can’t influence outcomes — if the rules are shifting and unclear, then this sort of gamesmanship never pays. You are better to let the river take you where it will, but build enduring and healthy relationships around you in the meantime. They might help where the river takes the whole organisation, as it will be a stronger, higher-trust group, and better prepared to react to the unexpected.

In the workplace we think we know “the rules of the game”, but the game is complex, the rules are opaque, and they change has the external environment and internal personnel and management change. From where most of us sit, the “rules” may as well be random.

I suspect this is what propels the experimental finding that organisations that promote people at random do no worse than those with extensive performance appraisal processes.

Curiously, “the rules being random” may be a better outcome either way, if it leads to staff prioritising cooperation, collaboration, informal relationships and trust.

See also

• The Peter Principle
• Performance appraisal
• Force-ranking