ST.R.E.A.M: Status Rules Everything Around Me

In the classic hip hop track C.R.E.A.M., the great Wu-Tang tell us “Cash Rules Everything Around Me”. Whilst it might sound like the song is glorifying money, it’s actually a commentary on how economic forces shape our life choices and opportunities.

In organisations however, we don’t tend to chase cash itself, because most of us are on salaries or wages that don’t directly connect to the things that we achieve day to day. And whilst we may strive for pay rises and bonuses, a lot of the time we do, however, chase status.

Even if we’re very happy in our current role and have no desire to climb the corporate ladder, status still matters. By “status” here, I don’t just mean formal rank, title, level or grade, but the informal economy of esteem, credibility, reputation and connection that exists within every organisation, including, and often especially in, so-called “flat” or holacratic organisations. Much of the time, it’s this, our informal status within the organisation – who we know, our reputation, popularity and what colleagues and peers think of us –  and our fear of losing it that shapes how we behave. Of course, status is not a single thing, and the same person may be relatively high-status in one interaction and low-status in the next.

Status is also a relatively transferable commodity between organisations, and influences not just our jobs, but our entire careers. What we’re known for, who can vouch for us, and how our past success is interpreted tend to follow us from job to job. They influence future opportunities and constrain the risks we’re willing to take. In that sense, our comparative status doesn’t just shape how we behave at work today, but the choices we make across an entire career.

And status isn’t just another form of power – though it certainly shapes it; status is relational and relative, much like the power gradient, and quietly but powerfully shapes behaviour. In organisational theory and economic sociology, status is treated as a signal that we use when quality or competence is hard to demonstrate and evaluate (which is the case for most real work in the real world). It’s why “looking busy” and “busywork” – sending lots of emails and having lots of meetings, is such a seductive trap – a “dangerous attractor” – because it’s often a lot easier to look busy, important and visible than it is to actually demonstrate high quality outcomes in knowledge work. What establishes status?

We can think of status in organisations being established via a number of factors:

1. Position – such as job title, grade, rank, level in the org hierarchy.
2. Performance – consistent and demonstrated expertise, track record of success.
3. Proximity – who we’re connected to, our perceived access to power.
4. Prestige – our recognition in the org, possession of symbolic and informal roles. 
5. Visibility of activity – the performance of work and “busyness” as a status signal

When weak signals of value exist, systems amplify signals of presence instead.

Number 5, visibility of activity, is the quiet and persistent drain on organisational effectiveness. A core problem in organisations is that most valuable, impactful work (and especially “glue” activities that help others have an impact) can be difficult to observe and hard to evaluate. So instead of focusing on actual value, contribution and impact we might be tempted to prioritise busyness, visibility and motion. Which makes appearing busy a locally rational status strategy.

ST.R.E.A.M. get the status

Dollar, dollar bill, y’all

We can use STREAM as a reflective lens on our organisations by asking questions like:

• “What gets recognised here?”
• “Whose work stays invisible?”
• “What stories do we tell about success?”

Organisational networks are status engines

One of the primary functions of an organisational network is to establish and consolidate status for those within it. “Merit-based” pay, Stack ranking systems, and promotion tournaments all act as status amplifiers. This is also one of the main mechanisms through which inequality reproduces itself over time: as Cecilia Ridgeway states, status concentrates where networks concentrate. But if demonstrating real genuine impact through our work is difficult, how do we otherwise gain status through this busywork?

There are a few ways to build status when “impact” (which is also often ill-defined and ambiguous) is difficult or impossible to demonstrate.

1: Attending and arranging lots of meetings. This signals our centrality and importance to others within the organisation. If we’re in meetings with higher-status people, we’re also “borrowing” status from them by association.

2: Sending lots of emails and messages. This signals presence, activity, influence and importance. And the common pattern of CC’ing widely isn’t just about self-protection or forcing action by copying in someone’s manager – it also marks the importance of the issue, implies authority, and most importantly, raises visibility. Copying in someone of a higher status can also signal our proximity to power. CC’ing is often less about information flow, and more about status positioning.

3: Being “always on”. Sending emails and messages late at night or at weekends signals our indispensability – “If I wasn’t here, this would all fall apart” – reinforcing a sense of personal importance within the system.

None of these behaviours are inherently “bad”. The point is that they’re often driven less by what the work actually requires, and more by the ongoing negotiation of status.

The inherent scarcity of status

Status is, by its nature, scarce in organisations, and scarcity invites competition. Unlike money, we generally can’t make the “status pie” larger – it is inherently relational and zero-sum it exists through comparison to others. When our real contribution or impact is ambiguous, slow to show up or difficult to demonstrate, competition shifts away from outcomes and towards appearances. Busywork is usually not plain old laziness or inefficiency (although it can be at times); more often it’s status-seeking under uncertainty and scarcity.

“Positional goods are scarce by nature because their value depends on their relative standing.”
— Hirsch, 1976

From an organisational perspective, as Alvesson and Spicer describe in “A stupidity‐based theory of organizations”, this dynamic drives a number of antipatterns to effectiveness – administrative and communication overload, meeting inflation, slower decision making, risk aversion, over-documentation, and ultimately, productivity theatre. Essentially, organisations often optimise for what can be seen, rather than what actually works.

Status and Psychological Safety

Now, to connect this with relational economics and psychological safety, and think about how to mitigate the negative effects of the STREAM effect, it helps to remember that psychological safety is significantly about the anticipated status costs of interpersonal risk taking. The more weight that status carries in an organisation, the more energy people will expend protecting it.

We can’t get away from the need to build and consolidate status – it’s how almost the entire work system is designed, from our first job to our entire lifetime careers. But we can change the environment in which status-seeking plays out. We can change the substrate in which these behaviours emerge, making alternatives to busywork easier and more effective. 

One lever is to make the connection between work and impact clearer and more direct. For many people, particularly in knowledge work, impact is diffuse, delayed or hard to see. The clearer the line between the work we do and the positive impact it has, the less likely we are to engage in performative work. 

A second lever is to provide other meaningful routes to status that don’t rely on performative busyness or “impact theatre”. This could include establishing and recognising Communities of Practice, encouraging interesting side projects, or valuing impact beyond the organisation itself, such as work in the local community or with charities. Those lower in the power gradient often pay a higher status tax for mistakes. This also means that, as a leader or someone with higher status, it’s possible to “share” some of that status to those who need it, through sponsorship and advocacy.

A third, and arguably the most critical level is to reduce the status penalties associated with learning, dissent and error. In high-STREAM organisations, people may not primarily fear being wrong, but they certainly fear being lowered in status. If asking for help, admitting mistakes, or surfacing problems damages our reputation, then no amount of exhortation about “speaking up” will work.

STREAM is a pattern, not a pathology

It’s a description of the conditions under which certain behaviours become increasingly rational. STREAM behaves differently across domains, but the pattern seems robust: where work is hard to evaluate, status substitutes for evidence. In healthcare for example, the stakes are often immediate, and authority gradients concentrate status risk at handovers and interfaces. In another domain such as academia, status stakes are highly reputational and career-defining, and output, visibility and prestige can become proxies for quality.

It’s important to be careful here: status is not a lever that leaders can simply pull, nor a variable that can be directly tuned. In complex social systems, status emerges through interaction, narrative, and relationships, not policy or proclamation.

What certainly helps is actively reshaping the status economy by publicly rewarding learning and candour, not just impact and success, and ensuring that status does not accrue solely to visibility, but to those who enable others to perform.

Psychological safety, in this sense, is more than a group norm, it’s a property of the status economy of the organisation. In the vast majority of organisations, Status Rules Everything Around Me.

References and further reading:

Alvesson, M. and Spicer, A., 2012. A stupidity‐based theory of organizations. Journal of management studies, 49(7), pp.1194-1220.

Anderson, C. and Kilduff, G.J., 2009. The pursuit of status in social groups. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), pp.295-298.

Frank, R.H., 1985. Choosing the right pond: Human behavior and the quest for status. Oxford University Press.

Hirsch, F., 1976. Social limits to growth. Taylor & Francis. https://archive.org/details/sociallimitstogr00fred 

Nembhard, I.M. and Edmondson, A.C., 2006. Making it safe: The effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 27(7), pp.941-966.

Podolny, J.M., 1993. A status-based model of market competition. American journal of sociology, 98(4), pp.829-872.

Ridgeway, C.L., 2014. Why status matters for inequality. American sociological review, 79(1), pp.1-16.

Ridgeway, C.L. and Markus, H.R., 2022. The significance of status: What it is and how it shapes inequality. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 8(7), pp.1-25.