Management by Aphorisms

Let’s face it, unless you have been unusually lucky, you’ve probably had at least one boss in your career who made all of their decisions (and probably issued most of their directions) by quoting proverbs, aphorisms, and outright old wives’ tales – many of which had no bearing on the situation at hand. Or, worse yet, they miss-quote those old sayings, resulting in a regular feature for Scot Adams’ “Dilbert Newsletter.” This leads a lot of managers to dismiss all such quips as belonging to those who lack the wit to craft their own gems of wisdom. Unfortunately, some of these old saws actually have a kernel of truth in them, and I thought it might be fun to take a look at some of them.

Let’s begin by considering the saying that might actually apply to this topic itself, a meta-aphorism, if you will: “If it’s stupid, but it works, then it’s not really stupid.” Any large organization will have one or more entrenched procedures, methods, or operating styles that make no sense to someone viewing them from the outside. Some of these may, in fact, be adaptations to long-forgotten market or operating conditions, and no longer applicable or even useful to today’s company. Others may simply be counterintuitive to the observer’s experience in other industries, other locations, or even other business models. The key point here is that no matter how poorly conceived you may find a given procedure to be, if it works acceptably – if it generates profits, prevents losses, promotes the company, makes the customers happy, or whatever – then it serves its purpose. You may be able to design a superior method – and as a manager it is you duty to try – but you should not assume that the existing method is without merit.

One that comes up a lot in large organizations is: “No one is a villain in their own mind.” It’s important to remember that, outside of bad movies and even worse literature, very few people actually go around attempting to do bad things and cause harm just for the fun of it. No matter how heinous the act, it is highly probable that person who is doing it is convinced that it is all for the greater good – of the company, of the country, or in extreme cases, even for the good of the people he or she is screwing over in the first place. At the very least, the villain you are dealing with will believe that they have a right to do what they are doing, that they are entitled to whatever they are taking, or that you should be grateful to them for their leadership, no matter how badly they are screwing everything up. It helps to remember that as you consider your strategy for how you are going to get them to do what you want/need them to do, instead…

One of my personal favorites is a quote from American author David Drake: “Never second-guess the man on the ground – especially when that’s you.” In any management position, you will eventually have to deal with a situation where someone has made a decision with which you do not agree. If you were present at the time, voiced your objections to that decision, and were overruled, you may still have grounds for complaint – particularly if you are being expected to clean up the fallout from that decision. But if someone else was the manager on the spot, the person who had to make the decision right then and there, without support or input (from you or anyone else), then criticizing their decision is nothing more than Monday-morning quarterbacking. It is, in other words, crap, and pretentious, self-important crap, at that. Maybe you could have made a better decision if you had been the person called upon to make it, and maybe you would have made the same one, but we’ll never know, because you weren’t there.

That goes double for questioning your own decisions after the fact. You were the man (person) on the ground when the decision had to be made; never second-guess yourself now that you’ve had time to think it over. This saying is also a subtle comment on the futility of complaining about things that have already happened, rather like “crying over spilled milk.” Or like another of my favorites: “The three most useless things to a pilot are the sky above him, the runway behind him, and whatever happened a tenth of a second ago!”

But that’s a post for another day…