On Wednesday, 18 March, 2020 05:24, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 03:43:37AM -0600, Keith Medcalf wrote:
So you failed because you did not require the person making the decision to take responsibility for their decision. That is, your organization has a severely flawed process wherein the "R" for making the decision is not the same person as has the "R" for the repercussions.
The use of "you/your" here and throughout is misplaced and inappropriate.
It is the "Royal You". However, you can replace that with generics if y'all wish. The point is that the root of the problem is the failure of the organizational decision maker to take responsibility for their decision. As a business person (now retired) once told me about the things he sells in his shop, "I will not sell that here because in my opinion it is crap. If you want that, you can go to the shop next door. They will be quite willing to sell that crap to you, but don't come complaining to me when your failure to take my advice comes back to bite you in the ass."
Also: this not an isolated or unique experience. It's this way pretty much everywhere in the US now. And I can disapprove of it, you can disapprove of it, we can all disapprove of it, but like I said, until money is completely removed from the calculation, this is how it will be. Critiques of process and role and organization and everything else are interesting, maybe even correct -- but will change nothing.
Yes, it is generally an USian problem. While I cannot speak to its prevelance in the US I can attest to the fact that USians try to bring this philosophy with them were ever they go and that such thinking has to be repelled with large bats. I have had to deal with such things several times and my response is quite simple: My name will not be associated in any way with that stupidity other than complete opposition to it. If you want me to sign off on it, then I will not. And if you decide to do it anyway then do not ask me to have anything to do with the mess that ensues because the only action you will get from me is "told you so -- you made your bed now go sleep in it". Generally the encroachment of ill-conceived plans is staved off until the resistant retire leaving the inmates in charge of the asylum. -- The fact that there's a Highway to Hell but only a Stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.