Member-only story
“It’s common for people who lack power or status to suppress their dissenting views in favor of conforming to the HIPPO — the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. Sometimes they have no other choice if they want to survive.”
I got that from an article excerpting Adam Grant’s new book. I used to like Adam G. more — we write about similar stuff, but he’s significantly more famous than I am — but then I tried to email with him a couple of times, and he basically stiff-armed me, so I have less resonance for his stuff now out of spite and bitterness. That’s healthy, right?
I had never actually heard the term “HIPPO” until about 2014, when I think I was 33–34, so I had been working maybe 12–13 years already. At the place I worked in ’14, HIPPO was definitely in play. The CEO was this dude Matthew, who I’ve mentioned in other blogs before but won’t cross-link out of avoiding tedium. Matthew was Management By Shiny Object 101. The last person he spoke with, whatever they said to him, that was suddenly the new “strategy” we all had to follow; then it would change when he spoke to someone from IT, marketing, etc, etc. It was a roller coaster ride of nothingness. I eventually got fired, got divorced about 17 months after that firing, and am still a work in progress from things that commenced (or intensified) in that era.
