I chose to
write about this today because I saw a poster ad for a new TV show the other
day that essentially says the following: ‘when you are faced with one of life’s
most important decisions, thirty heads are better than one’. There is a picture
of a young woman standing in front of a group of about thirty individuals, to emphasize the fact that no important decisions
should be made alone or in a vacuum. This does not resonate with me at all; I
think it’s quite ok to ask others for advice, but asking thirty people for such
advice seems a bit much to me. To then require that they help me make a crucial
decision that affects my life seems
untenable; it would never cross my mind to behave like this. An important
decision that affects my life is mine to make, and mine alone. Of course this
means that I alone bear the responsibility for a bad decision, but that’s the
way life works. One head or thirty heads cannot ensure the perfect outcome to a decision, because we don’t live in a
perfect world. There is no such thing as a perfect decision or a perfect outcome.
You take a risk each time you make a decision; you also take a risk in the
sense of knowing that you must live with the ramifications of your decision. It is possible to learn from
mistakes or bad decisions, although as I get older, I don’t look at my bad
decisions as mistakes; they were simply bad decisions that in many cases were
rectifiable. You are allowed in this life to make another decision to counteract
a bad one. Nothing is set in stone. We are flexible individuals who change and
grow with the years. If we stay fluid, we don’t trap ourselves in outmoded ways
of thinking and behaving.
I guess
what bothers me about this particular ad is the emphasis on group thinking. It makes me nervous,
because it seems to me that we are giving away our personal responsibility for our
decisions to others; we are in essence diluting
out our personal responsibility. We can always blame ‘the group’ if things
go wrong. In this way, we don’t have to feel bad about the outcome of ‘our’
decision. But is this a good thing in the long run? If we extend this type of
thinking to the workplace, what are the long-term effects? Who has the ultimate
responsibility? Should there be one person who sits with that responsibility?
President Harry Truman had a plaque on his desk that said ‘the buck stops here’.
I have more respect for that type of thinking than for a plaque that would say ‘the
buck stops here, but also in the next office, and in the office down the hall,
and in the office after that’.
There are ‘too
many chiefs and not enough Indians’ in modern workplaces. That may reflect to a
large degree the complexity involved in running modern workplaces in today’s
world, most of which are too large. But it’s gotten confusing—confusing to try
to figure out who you should talk to when there is a question or a problem. If
I want to or attempt to solve a problem myself, I am discouraged from doing so.
We are informed that there are others we should talk to—this or that office or
department that deals with this or that. So yes, I attempt to contact them,
in accordance with company policies. I speak to one person, who then refers me
further on in the ‘chain of command’. It’s often difficult to get an answer or
a solution to a problem, such that the problem or question is then put on my ‘to
do’ list (which is essentially my ‘must wait indefinitely’ list). In this way,
problems ‘go away’; there are no problems when you cannot get the answers. It’s
a type of contradictory logic that leads to an obstructional workplace. I’m
sure there are many such workplaces these days, characterized by multiple
levels of leadership, ‘team leadership’, group thinking, dilution of
responsibility, confusion as to who’s in charge, too much bureaucracy, and
systemic obstruction. Ultimately, these organizations will come to a standstill
after a while in terms of innovation and efficiency. If the problems arise from
the fact that most companies are too large, then I am all in favor of returning
to smaller and better-run companies, where it is clear to all who work there
who the leader is and where the buck stops. And I am all in favor of working at
a job that is clearly-defined and not to be shared with others; not diluted out
to the point that there is little point left in doing that job. ‘Too many cooks
spoil the broth’, as the old saying goes. It’s true.