From my book “You’re Looking Sane Today”. It was believed to be an invaluable addition to the Library of Congress. I’m not so sure.

Sanity in a career is generally believed to be useful. Not because it’s known to serve any actual purpose, but because it reduces the number of lawsuits and other frivolous brickbats common in most careers. What’s almost universally unrecognised about career sanity is that it’s a very high value commodity.

Careers and their related qualifications cause opinions and criticisms. These in turn cause friction and doubts regarding sanity leading to promotion of others and in some cases incarceration in the prison of somebody else’s choice. As career moves these events are of dubious value. Sanity is a much safer and far more productive option.

There are several basic forms of career sanity:

Avoiding those with opinions. These troublemakers never stay out of trouble. They get involved in the most ludicrous things. Some will have opinions about viability, others will criticize failures, and all will object to rationales of any kind. They’re just not nice people to have around. Far worse, they expect actions to be taken about the various subjects. These unrealistic views rarely endear them to management.

Avoiding commitment. A sane person doesn’t commit to anything unless absolutely necessary. Expressing any views at all will almost inevitably imply commitment to one side or another. The sane option is to express ignorance and ask for clarification. If the sky is said to be blue, ask for more information. Just remember to appear duly impressed when it’s provided.

Ignorance. It’s far better to be proven ignorant than to be proven knowledgeable in most situations. A person who’s ignorant can’t really be effectively blamed for anything unless they’re supposed to be aware of the information.

Deference. The simplest deference to another person will encourage them to believe they have your support. Deferring to the other person also very sanely puts the onus of action on them. There is absolutely no risk to you in deferring to a senior person or a person with recurring hallucinations regarding their own importance. You’ll be seen as an ally, and valued accordingly.

Agreement. Most business meetings, quite rightly consist of people spending several hours a day fearlessly agreeing with each other. This is actually a very polite as well as sane way to conduct business, with no adverse or negative reflections on anyone involved. Agreement can be used in all circumstances.

Sane career moves

Managing a career is very much like driving a car. You’re supposed to be on the road, in the right lane, heading in the right direction, and not being splattered across the landscape in the process. You’re also expected to be making progress in at least one direction, preferably the one you intended. This may seem unfair, but it’s quite normal.

The problem is that modern careers have a tendency to vanish into the opaque haze of passing moments. Career agility is now a survival skill, and therefore an appropriate skill for sane people. Industries, companies, and career practices change by the hour. Job design is now a cottage industry. People knit new job descriptions like cardigans made by outworkers. They’re unsightly, uncomfortable and they go out of style equally quickly.

C.N. Parkinson advised in Parkinson’s Law that the best career move was to become indispensable. This was a perfectly sane idea at the time, but the question now is “indispensable to whom?”  Being indispensable to someone who is themselves dispensable isn’t much use at all. The real question is “indispensable to what?”

Sanely, the answer is “indispensable to whatever makes the money”. In career terms sanity is based on other people’s valuation of your work. Unless you’re working for yourself and promoting your career yourself, sanity demands that you go where the money goes.

This is also good social practice. You become part of a group of dedicated, entirely selfish individuals working for their own ends. They will never question your sanity in doing the same- They can’t afford to. Your credentials, in fact, are improved by mixing with this group.

They are the epitome of conformist sanity:

• They’re all about money and self-interest, utterly predictable.
• They’re faceless. They marry their secretaries and become “the team”.
• They have no dissenting views about anything.
• They’re promoted as a group for the above reasons.

This type of career advancement also requires no effort of any kind. Your value is added to the group value, not subtracted on an individual basis, which is how most people get fired. A business can live without one person, but won’t easily dispense with a group, particularly at the points where money is made.

Managers tend to accrue around them the cooperative, obliging types. The managers consider them sane because they’re cooperative and obliging and make sure they stay around to maintain a comfortable working environment. The easy way to turn sanity into a working career asset is to simply choose how and where to be cooperative and obliging.

(This is what “cultural fit” really means. It has nothing to do with any form of culture. It’s entirely related to soothing the nerves of managers trained in the fear of failure.)

Senior level career sanity

It might seem that this pattern can go on forever, but at some point the sane person wants to be on top of the heap. This is the best defensive position for the truly sane. You can fire your problems and delegate them to others with impunity. Senior managers are in fact saner than all other forms of life, including butterflies.

The fact is that while the position of senior managers appears excellent, they’re actually much closer to real dangers than most. They’re in direct contact with real power, the real equity holders who actually run things. These are the directors of Big Capital and Big Influence. They can make or break careers like crunchy noodles.

Worse, from the perspective of senior managers, is that these real powerbrokers are all on the same page, all the time. Offend one of them and you antagonize all of them. They’re competitors in name only. They may run opposing business empires, but their interests are the same.

In career terms, the higher up the ladder you go, the fewer places you have to go to. Senior managers are dependent on the goodwill, and at the very least the non-hostility, of this cadre of saints at the top of the food chain. Therefore the sanity of the Senior Manager is very much an issue of appearing sane to a fantastically picky client base.

The Senior Manager is either at CEO level or only just below. Every move is subject to scrutiny. “Office politics” at this level is conducted mainly by assassination. CEOs rarely go voluntarily. They’re buried first, and then they go, spiralling down like shot sharks, trailing their blood in the water.

You can see where an oversupply of provable sanity might come in handy. In this area, sanity equates to credibility, and loss of credibility is certain death. Trust isn’t an issue. Nobody trusts anyone. Credibility means ability to deliver.

This is one of the reasons that otherwise perfectly ordinary people, in the name of their sanity and therefore their credibility, commit any act able to protect their positions. They’re too well aware of what will happen if they don’t.

Appeasing the Overlords of Ordinariness is the only game in this role. You need to be good at it, and you need to be saner than sane.

The rules of the lower echelons do apply- To a point:

• You can delegate the turkeys.
• You can take credit for anything.
• You can produce wonderful figures with someone else responsible for them.
• You can dodge all bullets from known risks.
• You can be a Sane Evangelist, counselling accordingly.

You cannot, however-

• Delegate upwards- That’s fatal. The Overlords of Ordinariness do not take risks.
• Try to avoid responsibilities delegated from above- It’s impossible, anyway.
• Dodge bullets from the real power holders.

Although Senior Managers are slightly better off in terms of having fewer risks than safe options, the risks are all lethal. Sanity dictates that a Senior Manager job should be seen as a career deal, not a coffin.

Your career moves at this point will seem familiar after you’ve made them- The high flyer, the Venerated Statesman of the Industry, then the surprisingly healthy retiree with a few millions/billions for those little pleasures.

Guess where the sanity kicks in.