Setting up to fail is a phrase denoting a no-win situation designed in such a way that the person in the situation cannot succeed at the task which they have been assigned. It is considered a form of workplace bullying. There are also situations in which an organization or project is set up to fail, and where individuals set themselves up to fail. The first known documented use of "set up to fail" was in 1969 in the United States. In the workplace Setting up to fail is a well-established workplace bullying tactic. One technique is to overload with work, while denying the victim the authority to handle it and over-interfering; another is the withholding of the information necessary to succeed. If a person puts another individual (usually a subordinate) in a stressful situation in which failure is almost certain, this may be an aspect of bullying wherein the outcome can then be used to discredit and blame the victim. Sometimes, this may involve the bully covertly sabotaging and undermining an objective that may have otherwise been achievable. This type of bullying may be the result of the projection of the bully's own feelings of inadequacy onto the victim. There can be cases where an employee is set up to fail because the stated goals of the task are considered harmful to the organization; an internal investigation is one example. Institutions may protect themselves by "going through the motions" of a sham investigation in which the findings conveniently fail to find any evidence of wrongdoing by the authorities involved with setting up the investigation. Another case where employees are set up to fail is one in which new employees, or redundant employees, are considered harmful or a threat to other employees, resulting in their efforts to sabotage others work to maintain their positions if a future reduction in force is anticipated. Bigotry Minorities seeking positions in society are often set up to fail in the face of covert institutional racism or sexism – something feared for example by the first Black US naval officers. Concurrently, individuals from the larger group can be set up to fail during implementations of workplace programs in color consciousness. Families Parents may have excessive expectations for their children's academic success for instance, thus setting them up for failure by hoping they may solve their parents' problems for them. The result may be to create a