Bullshit doesn’t survive by accident.

It endures because modern workplaces unintentionally create the perfect conditions for it to flourish.
Three forces combine to sustain a system where optics overshadow outcomes. If Bullshit seems unstoppable, it’s because the environment keeps feeding it.

• poorly designed incentives
• fear-driven behavior
• deliberate ambiguity

A combination of them gives perfect fodder to the Bullshit to emerge and thrive.

1. Incentive Design: The Currency System

Organizations reward what they can see, not what they can verify. As a result, the currency of success shifts from value to visibility.

Professionals quickly learn that:

• Visible effort outranks quiet results. Work performed publicly earns more credit than work that delivers impact behind the scenes.
• Presenters outrun practitioners. Narrative fluency – decks, updates, confidence – often outweighs capability and execution.
• Influence becomes a performance. Those who signal authority appear more strategic than those who quietly solve real problems.

This has perfect ingredients to create activity inflation: more updates, more decks, more initiatives – more motion without meaningful movement.

2. The Fear Loop: The Psychological Engine

Bullshit relies heavily on psychological safety being absent. Challenging shallow ideas or questioning inflated narratives often feels risky. Silence becomes the safer strategy.

The cycle is predictable:

Ambiguity → Anxiety → Agreement → Amplification

• Ambiguity leaves people unsure of expectations
• Anxiety rises as no one wants to appear uninformed or oppositional
• Agreement becomes the quickest escape
• Amplification follows as repeated agreement makes weak ideas look widely supported

Leaders often reinforce this unintentionally. Praise for compliance, inconsistent priorities, or a lack of dissent-friendly environments strengthens the loop.

Over time, teams participate in rituals no one actually believes in – bound by shared discomfort rather than conviction.

3. Organized Ambiguity: The Oxygen Supply

Ambiguity isn’t a flaw; it’s often a convenient feature. It keeps responsibilities flexible, accountability negotiable, and expectations broad enough, leaving space for interpretation (and misinterpretation).

It shows up as:

• Vague mandates that justify any action and excuse any failure.
• Elastic priorities that shift with politics rather than strategy.
• Unverifiable outcomes framed in abstract terms that no one can challenge.

Ambiguity protects weak decisions, softens scrutiny, and keeps everyone comfortably aligned without genuine accountability. It ensures the system survives because nothing can be proven wrong.

The Intersection

Bullshit lives at the intersection of incentives, fear, and ambiguity.

Once these forces take root, nonsense gains momentum – and becomes a self-sustaining operating model.

Tomorrow morning:

• Ask: “What behavior did I reward last week – clarity or visibility?”
• Identify one place where ambiguity is protecting weak work and replace it with a specific expectation.
• Notice where fear is shaping silence and explicitly make space for a dissenting view.