Six Silent Killers

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 4, 2014

We criticize all society when people are passive.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, The Face Behind the Face (1987)

This chapter is a departure from the others.  It looks at the problem in societal terms at the level of the company.  The theme is still that of the cage, but the cage now is one we cannot escape.  It is the cage of our passive over reactive society. 

The United States reacts to situations rather than anticipates them.  Action frequently occurs as the last resort.  America stumbled into World War II when Pearl Harbor was bombed.  An editorial cartoon in a 1989 newspaper reflected this reactive characteristic with the caption:

Japan Bombs Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941)

Japan Buys Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1989)

Money flooded the United States from Japan during the 1980s buying property and businesses from San Francisco to New York City.  

While America slept in 1957, Russia launched Sputnik to circumnavigate the globe in space.  What followed was a hysterical push to match and surpass Russia with the NASA Space Program.  Suddenly, we found our school system inadequate and our children slow learners.  New math was introduced and educators embarked on a frantic effort to make every little boy and girl a scientist.  Social skills were of secondary concern with little room for the arts.  School became a factory to produce scholars of the space race age. 

About the same time (1960), quietly and unobtrusively, Japan was discovering the efficiency of American management technology.  This technology was first offered and spurned by American companies with the adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”  No more idiotic cliché has ever been formed. 

Meanwhile, US dominance in automobiles, electronics, glass manufacturing, machine tools and home appliances was eroding.  By the early 1970s, more than a third of the US share of these products had disappeared.  Yet, it wasn’t until a television program on NBC in 1980, hosted by Tom Brokaw, with the theme “Japan Can, Why Can’t We,” that passive America got the message and countered with hysterical activity. 

Success of Japan can be traced to the strategies of W. Edwards Deming on statistical quality control and the use of Quality Control Circles (QCCs), J. M. Juran on strategies for solving chronic process production problems, and Peter Drucker on management strategies and techniques.  Overnight, every company in America wanted these tools developed by these long past retirement age management thinkers. 

It so happened, I was a management and organizational development (OD) psychologist at Honeywell Avionics, Inc. at the time, and was tapped to head its Quality Control Circle Program.  Quality Circles were designed to get workers involved in solving work related problems in small teams.  These teams would meet regularly to find ways to reduce waste, improve quality, and make more timely decisions at the level of production.  The bonus was improved group morale and individual motivation.

Japan possessed the “magic bullet” and America wanted to snatch it from her and regain industrial dominance.  It desired to do this without delay, disruption, or change, with the operational word, “change.”  

Missing was an appreciation that the Japanese and American cultures differed widely.  Group Think dominated Japan, while individualism the US.  Japan was still essentially a feudalistic state, only now the feudal lords ran the companies.  Japan, Inc., as the government was called, was totally dedicated in support of industrial development.

In panic mode, little notice was given this disparity.  America went thundering ahead with supreme confidence it would regain the edge.  What happened instead is now chronicled here.  Only one company is profiled, true, but the last quarter century has shown it proves the rule rather than the exception.  The cage of passivity still dominates American society.   

When good intentions go awry

Over my long professional working career, I have never worked for or was consultant to a company more employee-friendly than Honeywell, Inc.  That said what follows illustrates the pull of a passive society on a company and its workplace despite all the efforts to the contrary. 

Prior to joining Honeywell Avionics, I had been an adjunct professor in management psychology for several universities in their MBA programs, an OD consultant to Fortune 500 companies, a facilitator of executive development seminars for the Professional Institute of the American Management Association, and an international corporate executive first for Nalco Chemical Company working in the United States, South America, Europe and South Africa, and then later at Honeywell Europe, Ltd.’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium as Director of Human Resources Planning and Development, an organizational development (OD) position for Honeywell’s 13,000 employees in eleven countries transitioning from national postwar facilities to the European Economic Community (EEC).     

In the United States, the 1970s was a period when “law and order,” or being tough on crime was in vogue and a central theme of the US Federal Government.  This continued into the 1980s.  It was exposure to OD crisis management interventions as consultant to police, from Miami to Connecticut, along with my subsequent work at Honeywell across the United States and Honeywell Europe that ideas relating to workplace culture crystallized.  Six silent killers were apparent, identified not in a causational sense, but as symptoms of traumatic systemic organizational breakdown.

My first OD laboratory was Honeywell Avionics, Inc., Clearwater, Florida, and the times, the 1980s.  These were the Reagan years in which the defense industry was booming.  Honeywell Avionics was enjoying a fair share of that Department of Defense (DOD) business.  The facility with a complement of some 4,000 workers of which more than 1,000 were engineers and scientists, 2,000 support professionals, another 600 blue collar workers in production and model building, the balance managers and supervisors. 

The workplace was on a beautiful college-like campus of several hundred acres, a stunning complex of gleaming immaculate sun baked buildings of white stucco surrounded by landscaped grounds, a sculptured lake, graceful trees, a recreational facility, jogging track, tennis courts, soccer field, handball courts, and a gymnasium including a weight room.  It was a veritable recreational playground with a manager or supervisor for every ten or twelve workers. 

Immediately following the Viet Nam War, cultural dynamics were quite apparent.  The nation had moved from double-digit unemployment and inflation during the Carter Administration to almost a wartime economy in the Reagan Administration.  In Russia, it was driving the Soviet Union to point of bankruptcy, while in the United States inflation had tumbled to the low single digits while employment boomed.  All of this benefited Honeywell Avionics. 

As planned, this economic boom ultimately spelled doom for the Soviet Union, as it collapsed at the end of the 1980s, accompanied by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, and the dissolution of the Democratic Republic of East Germany.

It was in this euphoric atmosphere that I joined Honeywell in 1980 observing behaviors that were at once disturbing and confirming based on my earlier work as a consultant.  

Minority/Majority Study

Workplace culture was first to be my focus, as I was asked to conduct a motivational study of African American professionals to determine what motivated them and why.  Honeywell Avionics only had about 50 black professionals in a community of 3,400 professionals and managers.  So, it was a very manageable project. 

Extensive interviewing along with Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor Analysis was used in this evaluation.  Herzberg’s Two-Factor Motivation Theory compares “Hygiene Factors” (work climate considerations) with “Motivators” (the job itself) in terms of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. 

Hygiene Factors relate to the work environment and include such considerations as company policy and administration, supervision, working conditions, interpersonal relations and support, as well as money, status and security.    

Motivators relate to the actual job and include a sense of achievement, recognition for accomplishment, desire for increased responsibility, and wish for challenging work, opportunity for growth and development, and high expectations on the job.

When the study was completed, it was evident that African American professionals were mainly motivated by hygiene factors and not the work itself.  This registered little surprise to senior management when the results were presented.  I found this unsettling and asked if I could take a stratified random sample of the majority professional population to make a comparison.  This was granted.

A sample of some sixty professionals, including engineers, was picked at random and the results were surprisingly comparable if not identical to the results of the minority professional population.  In a word, hygiene factors dominated.

One thing was clear.  The majority professionals, like the minority professionals, enjoyed the work surroundings far more than the work.  This surprised senior management.  It wanted to know what it meant.  It was then that my detective work commenced.

Pervasive nature of culture

Human Resources were generous in their support providing data.  Managers and supervisors allowed me to sit in their monthly meetings, strategy sessions, performance appraisal critiques, and to conduct interventions of my own. 

Another opportunity for unobtrusive observation was provided as I directed the activities of 100 Quality Control Circles of more than 1,000 employees, mainly of hourly workers.  These workers defined, discussed and brainstormed on work related problems. 

The problems discussed were essentially hygiene factors, as QCCs had no input into decision-making policies, for example, such as number of workers that might be assigned to a project.  The success of these circles could be attributed to hourly workers treating them as mainly smoke breaks, but also enjoying the attention, while being content to redesign their workstations or change the lighting.  It was the Hawthorne Effect all over again, similar to the Elton Mayo study in Chicago in the 1930s.

This was not the case with professionals.  Quality Circles were never taken serious by them.  If anything, they resented being treated like children to make inconsequential decisions.

Juran had an explanation for this.  He claimed that QC’s dealt with the “trivial many” instead of the “vital few” problems of operations.  Professionals could see this.  Yet, there was irony to the obstinate stance as they, too, enjoyed the happy playground that this workplace had come to be viewed.

Out of this came my three dominant cultures.  It seemed apparent that culture was not accidental or incidental, but basic to behavior.  That is, this workplace was a social club that they were paid to attend. 

Due to the nature of my role as an internal OD consultant, I was in constant communication with all levels of management and operations on a daily basis.  Moreover, I saw the effect over time of how the behavior of new hires changed to be consistent with the dominant culture in whatever the function, discipline, department or plant – there were seven plants on this campus.  With apologies to Adam Smith, culture appeared as if an invisible hand that touched and directed everyone to think and behave in a similar fashion.

Coming to Honeywell when I did, and realizing the up tempo fervor after the Brokaw program on NBCTV (“Japan Can, Why Can’t We?”), I was able to observe Human Resources (HRs) interventions and strategies first hand in terms of what I called “consciousness or awareness levels.” 

The three levels observed were: (1) unconscious incompetence, (2) conscious incompetence and (3) conscious competence. 

Level (1) was associated with management dependence, (2) with counter dependence on the organization, and (3) with interdependent management. 

Based on the minority/majority study that senior management found surprising, there was however attitudinal evidence with level (1): “It's management’s problem. Managers get the big bucks. Let them solve it!” 

The role of management had gravitated with level (1) to that of surrogate parent to the worker.  This culture was given the designation, The Culture of Comfort.

Given this disposition, and in an effort to combat it, HR produced brochures, interventions, campaigns, slogans and videos with flashy themes such as Quality Management, Quality Circles, Total Quality Management, Total Employee Involvement, Job Fairs, new Benefits Packages, internal training programs in Stress Management, Time Management, Team Building, and on and on in the interest of creating the incentive for these employees to work smarter and harder. 

Instead, it appeared to insulate workers from the reality of the situation at hand – that is, competition from abroad and threat to their security – drifting them to counter-dependence on the company for their total well-being.  

Level (2) is therefore designated, because of these pusillanimous attempts, as conscious incompetence.  A problem was recognized and dealt with but clearly with negative consequences. 

Inadvertently, these interventions produced a dichotomy between performance and pay, work and results.  Level (2) could be seen as bribing workers to behave productively. 

Workers responded by acting as if spoiled children in an environment of permissive paternalism, suspended in terminal adolescence in learned helplessness.  Workers brought their 30-40-50-year-old bodies to work with a 12-year-old mindset.  This culture was designated The Culture of Complacency.

Companies have survived more than 100 years, Honeywell included, because the Pareto “80-20 rule” was sufficient as well as necessary to preserve the company’s survival.  With Pareto, 80 percent of the real work is accomplished by 20 percent of the workforce. 

This 20 percent existed at Honeywell Avionics, but was surreptitiously hovering closer to “90-10,” as Honeywell, while having a cadre of brilliant program managers, outstanding engineers and planners who thought nothing of working seven-days a week on a program to be certain that it met all criteria of quality and schedule, passivity was still transparently pervasive. 

The “90-10” crowd extended to proposal teams, who worked unselfishly with no certainty that the proposal would win, and often didn’t.  These men and women paid little attention to the hype around them, had little regard for what was in it for them, and paid little heed to praise or flattery.  They were too busy, too involved, and yes, too dedicated to the work at hand to be concerned about petty issues.  They were residence of level (3) in conscious competence and paid little or no attention to HR interventions.

Whereas all the motivator are “outside” workers in level (1) and level (2), all of them are “inside” at level (3), as these workers are self-managers, and display the behavior of mature adults with a job to do.  This culture is designated The Culture of Contribution.     

In psychoanalytical terms of Parent/Child/Adult, we have:

Level (1): Unconscious Incompetence – Paternalistic Management (The Parent)

Level Two: Conscious Incompetence – Permissive Paternalism (The Child)

Level Three: Conscious Competence – Interdependent Management (The Adult)

Level (1) workers reside in The Culture of Comfort.  Management makes all the decisions, and workers are programmed to be management dependent as pleasers of their bosses.  They behave with the obedient disposition of a 12-year-old.  Motivation is by fear, money, security, comfort, protection, and CYA and SYA games.  Behavior is that of the “victim,” passive responsive, complaining, cover-up, selfish, low risk, and negative attitude.  All controls are directed from outside the workers such as rewards and punishments, persuasion, stated expectations, direction, and demands.  Workers make no decisions as management displays the role of surrogate parent to workers as dependent children.

 Level (2) workers take residence in The Culture of Complacency.  Management through human resources (HR) attempted to use incentives to generate the desired behaviors, only to find workers wholly counter-dependent on the company for their total well being in arrested development as pleasers.  Here motivation is reliant on hygiene factors such as security, group feelings, good times, caring management, perks, and cosmetic interventions, while behaviors displayed include  CYA and SYA games, crisis management, confused priorities, nobody in charge, passive defensive, non-responsible, we/they polarity, no risks, selflessness (victim complex), and appearing busy.  All attempts to change the culture are outside the workers operational domain, further isolating workers from reality and the state-of-the-company.  The company indulges workers’ every whim as the spoiled child with permissive parenting paternalism.

Level (3) is where The Culture of Contribution resides.  Management is not separate from but integral to workers in interdependent management.  Workers here are motivated by challenging work, opportunity to fail, right to an opinion, right to challenge management, right to be wrong, opportunity to deal with what is wrong, not who is wrong, to focus on problems, to focus on work itself, have creative license to put their stamp on their work, an opportunity to own what they do, a chance to take calculated risks and understand they also own the consequences, to be doers.  Behavior displayed is that of victors, purposeful, confident, cooperative, enjoying the pleasure of work, being creators, completers, bottom line responsive, loving the role of pioneer, being proactive and selfish.  Workers conduct themselves as adults with the maturity, discipline, resilience and humor of that disposition in the mutual best interest of worker and company.

As the years rolled by, evidence mounted that comfort and complacent behavior were increasingly dominant, in management and workers alike, in the form of six silent killers (see Six Silent Killers: Management’s Greatest Challenge, 2nd edition, 2014). 

After recording behaviors in scores of notebooks, these behaviors were considered the equivalent of social termites, destroying the organizational infrastructure from within, unseen, silent only to be observed when it was too late for damage control.  

The Six Silent Killers

These behaviors were (1) passive aggression; (2) passive defensive; (3) passive responsive; (4) approach avoidance; (5) obsessive compulsive and (6) malicious obedience.

Passive aggression: Workers constantly coming in late and leaving early and doing as little as possible to get by.

Many went to the Recreation Center on campus at lunchtime and played basketball, handball, lifted weights, or jogged, and spent a leisurely lunch often returning to work two and one half hours later in the afternoon.  These same individuals would be seen at quitting time the first out the door. 

Contributing to the idea that work was not that important, in some departments’ lights and computers were turned off, cleaning crews showing up before quitting time, which told workers to go home, giving tacit approval to leaving assignments due unfinished.

Passive defensive: Such behavior was common during the minority/majority study.  It was also apparent in company interoffice memos to which I had access.  The memos were often clear in either Cover Your Ass (CYA) language, or redlining the work of subordinates in Show Your Ass (SYA) display.  The buck would certainly not stop with them.

Such activity often proved prescient as it covered possible vulnerability.  One engineer manager remembered could produce on demand a memo of any contingency exonerating him of involvement.  It was comical, but unfortunate that a brain so enterprising could be so inefficiently employed.  It was also unfortunate that he was not the exception. 

Passive responsive: Often, because of these long lunch breaks, and because of late arrivals and early departures from work, many workers were not responsive to the work at hand.  They couldn’t do anything because they weren’t there. 

If they were there, and it was the boss who was playing hooky, they would stand or sit around waiting for him to arrive.  Meanwhile, they would do nothing. 

Another expression of this behavior was displayed in meetings.  It was not unusual to attend a meeting in which none of the principles were in attendance.  These principles were responsible for the work at hand and were in fact the decision makers.  Even so, they might send someone to represent them.  It was not unusual that that replacement in turn would send a third replacement.  As a result, those in attendance not only had no authority to act, but little understanding of what was going on.  This behavior bleeds into the next. 

Approach avoidance: This was displayed so often that it would bring a grimace to my face as workers volunteered for assignments they had no intentions of completing or completing on time. 

Like the third substitute of the meeting previously mentioned, it soon became apparent that 90 percent of the meetings were routine and established by custom or a set schedule.  They had little to do with actual work.  Rather than do something about these unnecessary gatherings, it was easier to send substitutes. 

This was equally true of weekly staff meetings, some program manager meetings, performance appraisals, compulsory company meetings, or meetings in general.  Despite this, 80 percent of a professional’s workday was spent in some kind of meeting.  This left little time for work with those with the best of intentions.

Paradoxically, program managers and their staffs who were on top of schedule, within costs, and meeting all performance criteria seldom met.  Programs that met none of the above met all the time with copious reports, which seldom got to the core of the issues. 

Then there was the matter of performance appraisal.  This was the biggest charade of all.  Thousands of hours were devoted to this process when its only function was ritualistic, to process the paperwork for salary increases.  Of the 3,400 professionals, 15 percent were likely to be hard chargers setting the curve, and another 15 percent dragging their feet.  That would suggest that 510 professionals (15% foot draggers) would display some performance deficiency requiring attention.  In one performance appraisal cycle, 3,389 received increases while five were downgraded and six were determined to “need improvement.” 

Approach avoidance was also displayed in workers with substance abuse problems or heavy smokers or drug users.  It often showed up in absentee reports or inability to make meetings.  Some heavy smokers had trouble wheezing from a meeting in one plant to another.  Typically, there wasn’t much time between meetings held in different plants on this far-flung campus.  So, they would just give up, and not attend. 

What perhaps irritated nonsmokers the most, going from plant to plant, was seeing the same people always outside smoking.  Some reported to me they had colleagues who had to have a smoke break every 30 minutes, which would leave little time for productive work. 

Another aspect of approach avoidance behavior relates to anachronistic reporting.  There were statistical summaries kept on about everything, and now with the computer, little need for them to be bound and distributed, yet they still were.  Some of these reports were never read, not even filed, but simply stacked on the shelf to collect dust, until the next report was produced and distributed to some 1,000 people with a similar designation. 

The alarming thing was not that they were produced but that the principles participated in the collection of the statistics that were recorded because people in their positions always had.  This tied up technical publications with work and expense that had no audience. 

Obsessive compulsive: Workers displaying this behavior have obsessive ideas that result in compulsive actions.  They are obsessed with what they don’t have and someone else does rather than being content with what they have and are.  They see the grass always greener on the other side of the fence. 

They compare and compete as an art form; always seeing the job of their colleagues better than their job; always seeing them treated more fairly than they are treated; always feeling the victim of discrimination; always believing they are being pulled down and held back, when they are the only ones guilty of this.

So many poor performers display this behavior.  It plays havoc with managers, especially at performance appraisal time.  Obsessive-compulsives are not interested in where they need to improve.  They want to know how big a raise they’re going to get.  They know the squeaky wheel gets attention so they are noisemakers.  It is easier to placate than deal with them, and so they always seem to survive.

There is a rather constant gauge of organizational life with these obsessive compulsive foot draggers.  They are always a day late and a dollar short of doing anything constructive.  It is unsettling to witness this squandering of talent. 

With every redundancy exercise, they are still there.  The company goes through reengineering, and they survive the new design.  A good part of the business is sold off, and they remain.  They are constant churn candidates, going from department to department, always with glowing reports from their old manager, masking the relief at getting rid of them.  No one knows what to do with or about them.  They have been known to circulate like this over a career lasting as long as forty years.

Malicious obedience: This is perhaps the most damaging of the six silent killers, as intellectual capital has become more important and critical than anything else in the conduct of business.  Angry workers with intellectual capital understand their power and can compromise the company in devastating ways.  They can orchestrate failure and smile with secret glee – “I don’t get mad!  I get even!” 

One time a chief engineer came up to me after a talk, and said, “You’re a psychologist.  Can I trust you?”  I reminded him I was not a clinical psychologist, nor was I a lawyer.  I was a consultant, but could refer him to someone.   

Not dissuaded, he asked, “Can I talk to you as if you were my priest?”  I smiled to myself, OD was a lot like being a blend of priest and policeman.  I confessed this to him. 

“You’re trusted around here, so, I’m going to take that chance.  I’ve got to get something off my chest.”

I studied him without saying anything and could see he was hurting.  “Let’s go to my office,” I said finally.

He unloaded something that had bothered him for a number of years.  Before he was a chief engineer, he was the lead engineer on a major proposal.  It was a time when job security was touchy.  The contract was for nearly $100 million over multiple years, giving him and his colleagues’ job security for several years.  But his boss who didn’t like him, had passed him over for chief engineer.  He suspected it was in part because he was Jewish.  “There are not many Jewish engineers around here,” he offered. 

I asked if his boss was still here.  “No, he died.  And that is why I finally want to talk about it, I could deny all this and he couldn’t do anything about it.” 

I asked him if he had ever told his wife this story.

“Not on your life!  My wife wouldn’t believe I was capable of this.”  I nodded for him to continue.

Then he told a horror story.  He had worked hard on this proposal, but was fuming for being passed over for promotion to chief engineer.  He was given a token raise no more than foot draggers.  If this were not enough, his boss brought up petty things.  I said, like?  “Such as I was always doodling at my desk instead of working.  But I was thinking.  Everybody knew I had the finest engineering mind on the proposal team.” 

Then he got a glint in his eye.  “I finally figured out the key to winning this proposal.  It was simple, economic and could easily be installed in a four-phasic multiple system that would maximize power while reducing torque.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.  “By putting this in the proposal, the evaluation team would see its potential.  The contract would be ours!  I knew I had hit on something very important.”  He laughed.  “It wasn’t Nobel Prize stuff but it was goddamn good!  Anyway, I wrestled with it, outlined it, and knew a preliminary test would prove me right.  But then I thought, if we win the contract, everyone will be happy, especially my boss.  He’ll get all the accolades and probably promoted to director (engineering), and I’d still be here!”  Then added, “That would not be satisfactory.” 

I wanted to say, so what did you do but remained silent.  He anticipated this, saying, “I buried the goddamn information.  I never told a soul.”  As if he couldn’t let go of it, he continued, “I never submitted my findings.  It was never included in the proposed.”

Then he smiled again.  “Years later Linton Industries came up with a gadget similar to mine but much more cumbersome, more expensive, too, but it got the results I expected.  To make a long story short, we never got the program.  Several of my colleagues were furloughed, some for quite a while.  I stayed in place for another ten years.  All that time I felt tremendous guilt.  Not until today did I fully understand the nature of what was driving my behavior.” I didn’t say anything. 

“So, I bet you wonder what I’m going to do now that I’ve told you.  I’m a chief engineer.  I have a good job, good benefits, make a good living.  My kids are now all in high school, and I have a wonderful wife.  I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.  I’m going to resign.  I’m going to see if I can find a better fit for my skills elsewhere.  I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time.  Now I know I have to.  It’s the only thing that makes sense to me now, thanks to you.”

And he did just that.  I’ve lost track of him, and have no idea where or with whom he went.  He would be retired now.  Only in his forties then, a sad story of malicious obedience.

There are other ways of showing malicious obedience as well.  The person who spreads disinformation on colleagues, superiors, or on the company knows a little schedenfreude delights most of us.  We are inclined to believe the worst with no evidence in support of the rumor because one is guilty until proven innocent.  It has hurt many people’s careers.  

It is also evident of people walking off with company property from stamps to staples to laptops, or spending most of the day on the Internet as personal entertainment or doing personal business.  Some people think nothing of destroying company property to get back at the company. Then there are those who damage equipment so that they can draw overtime pay to fix it.  This same behavior is displayed when workers steal ideas or original work from colleagues and pass it off as their own to win promotion

These are the six silent killers, behaviors in tone and temper that are indirectly influenced by the dominant corporate culture.  It is well to keep this in mind:

The function of work is dictated by the structure of work.

The Structure of work determines the dominant workplace culture.

The dominant workplace culture determines the prevailing norm of workplace behavior.

That said there is not a company that does not have these three corporate cultures.  Those that survive and prosper have a sufficient amount of The Culture of Contribution to ensure this.  Imagine if such a culture could raise the bar from Pareto’s “80-20 rule” to save even “70-30.”  Imagine how productive an environment. 

Nor is there a company that doesn’t want to believe The Culture of Contribution dominates.  Such a company prefers to think its people are responsible, upfront, accountable, but are they?  The architect of company culture is a not workers in the trenches, but senior management.  If a company is floundering, if the work isn’t getting done, if quality is the rhetoric but schedule the demand then the cage is in evidence.  It is a daunting task for a company in a passive mode, as Yevgeny Yevtushenko reminds us: 

We criticize all society when people are passive.

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