The Dead Sea Effect

Hat tip to "Dr. Dre" for finding this.

Bruce Webster's description of the Dead Sea Effect is remarkable because it's such common sense once you've read it, but then you stop to think: if it's that simple, why are large organizations so powerless to prevent it?

The theory goes something like this: as companies grow bad hiring practices and bad management breeds a culture of bureaucracy and stagnation that results in all the good people leaving and only the worst employees sticking around. The worse things get, the more the incompetent employees entrench themselves by latching on to mission critical tasks that will make it hard to get rid of them. In turn, it becomes increasingly more difficult to bring good people in, because as soon as they see what's going on they bail.

Bruce observed this in IT organizations, but I can tell you the Dead Sea Effect is alive and well in every department within my company, and probably yours too.