Kicked upstairs?

Reader question:

Please explain “kicked upstairs”, as in: “George Casey, after failing in Iraq in 2006, was kicked upstairs to be Army chief of staff.”

My comments:

When one does something wrong, makes silly mistakes or, as in Casey’s case, fails to perform a duty and then is “kicked upstairs”, one, well, wants to know where exactly “upstairs” is.

If your house has two floors, then upstairs is the second floor, or the upper floor. You go up there by climbing a flight stairs, hence the word upstairs – towards the upper floor, using the stairs.

Very often in an organization, management (managers/officials) occupies the space upstairs while ordinary workers work downstairs, where the dirty work (day-to-day humdrum jobs) is done. Check your own office to see if this is true, that the upper floors are occupied by the higher ranking officials.

Anyways, when people get promoted from a frontline job to a managerial position, they’re often said to be moving upstairs.

But to be “kicked” there?

Footballers kick a ball around for fun, and the very good pros are paid a lot of money for it, too. But for a man to be “kicked”? Ugh! Not a good feeling. You bet.

To be kicked upstairs, hence, entails a mixed feeling – on the one hand, one is being promoted to a higher position; on the other hand, one has to endure the pain of being “kicked”.

And that’s exactly what being “kicked upstairs” feels like – a promotion in appearance, but a demotion in disguise. In other words, to kick someone upstairs is to remove them from their current position, usually as punishment for incompetence or wrongdoing.

Once “upstairs”, they’re usually given a ceremonial post, i.e. a bureaucratic job, or a sinecure position. In other words, they’re given a prestigious title but are deprived of any real power or, worse still, subordinates to bully. Essentially, they’re asked to do nothing – obviously under the presumption that if they do nothing, nothing will go wrong. In the words of Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert strip:

“The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage - Management.”

An article from TVTropes.org says kicked upstairs “comes from British politics, where the ‘Upstairs’ in question is the House of Lords.”

“Being given a title like ‘Lord’ or ‘Baroness’ sounds a great reward for a career in politics – until you realize that it disqualifies you permanently from sitting in the House of Commons, where all the real decisions are made.”

The same article points out that the Japanese even have a word for people who are kicked upstairs, called madogiwazoku, or the “window gazing tribe” – meaning they have nothing to do but gaze out the window during office hours, “and wait to retire or die”.

Presumably that’s why George Casey was removed from the theatre of war and sent back to Washington, where he, as chief of staff, can gaze out the bureaucratic windows of US Army headquarters all day.

And wonder where it all went wrong in Iraq.

Or whether it ever went right.

Here are examples of other people getting similar treatment:

1. In rubber-stamp totalitarian fashion, the Parliament of Nazi-dominated Republic of Slovakia last week unanimously elected Premier Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest, to become President of Slovakia. Dr. Tiso was kicked upstairs to a post of greater dignity, less power, because the Nazis have begun to consider him “untrustworthy.” Simultaneously Minister of Interior Bela Tuka was promoted Premier amid rumors that he will soon be replaced by an even more pliant Nazi tool.

In Vatican City the news that a simple priest had become President—an event believed to be without precedent—was received with anything but rejoicing.

The Slovak stooge President must frequently dance attendance in Berlin upon his master Adolf Hitler who last week gave Dr. Tiso the Grand Cross of the German Eagle and whose Nazi regime the Pope sternly denounced. Moreover, Priest Tiso as President is directly represented in Moscow by his own cousin, Urano Tiso, Slovak Minister to a regime which the Holy See not only refuses to recognize but considers the personification of antichrist. To complicate matters still further, Priest Tiso as an ecclesiastic is responsible to his Bishop, but the Bishop under the Slovak Constitution has to swear allegiance to President Tiso.

- Priest into President, Time magazine, November 6, 1939.

2. When J.P. Morgan announced in September 2004 that it was acquiring a majority interest in Highbridge, the hedge fund had $7 billion under management. By the end of 2009, when J.P. Morgan bought the rest of Highbridge, it had $21 billion. Dubin, who has stuck around despite being made a billionaire in the process, just signed on for a second five-year term as CEO of Highbridge. He says it’s all because of Staley, who increased revenue at the asset management division to $7.97 billion, more than double 2001 levels.

There’s no question that J.P. Morgan Chase’s investment-banking business is the riskiest that the bank is engaged in. For that reason Dimon has made it clear that candidates to succeed him must have experience running the unit. By 2009, co-CEOs Steve Black and Bill Winters had turned around the business and steered it deftly through the credit crisis, putting it on track for a record year in both revenue and earnings -- $28.6 billion and $6.9 billion, respectively. But Dimon had decided by the end of the year that neither man was going to replace him. So he made changes. Black was kicked upstairs, Winters left the firm, and Staley was put in charge of the investment bank.

- The other guy you need to know at J.P. Morgan, CNNMoney.com, April 16, 2010.