Its Not What We Do Here

"It's not what we do here."
I have always been astonished to the extent that people just "go along" with the status quo. Whatever has been done in the past, that is what shall be done in the future, no matter how foolish or misguided. In the case of low level clerks and shop floor hands, this is understandable. How are they to know? But they do.

Once, as a manager, I discontinued a task that no longer had a valid reason for being done.
The clerks turned to me and said:
"We often asked each other why that task is done, clearly no one needed it."
"So why not say something?" I asked.
The reply:
"Well, we are only clerks, no one asked us, and what do we know about management decisions anyway?"
They knew more than management it seemed.

And so it goes. We have always done it this way:
Always filed the yellow flimsy carbon copy (that nobody ever retrieves).
Always advertised in the newspaper (readership has declined 50%).
Always sent out catalogs.
Always answered the phone with a automated attendant.
Always filled orders in 6-8 weeks.
Always closed for inventory for three days.
Always, Always, Always done it that way.

And now I come to discover that "always done it that way" extends to technical and scientific areas as well. My studies of engineering have led to a greater understanding of the properties of materials. It happens that in a previous job I was involved in product development, acting as liaison with a manufacturer of machinery of which we were a distributor.

The manufacturer decided to expand their offering, to make larger machines than they had before. They proposed to use the manufacturing technology and materials that they knew and simply make larger products. Intuitively, having been a woodworker, I felt that simply scaling up a design could lead to problems. There are frequently other considerations.

I broached my concerns, but the manufacturer's management and marketing team assured me that they had decades of experience and that the plan would work fine. As it turned out, they were wrong. The materials and techniques that they employed with small products simply did not scale up well to larger ones. The new larger machines were simply at the boundary, or a little past the boundary, of what would work using those materials and technology. These problems contributed to the ultimate demise of that company.

Now, having studied the technical aspects, I can see what the problems were from a material science point of view. But what is curious is "why". The engineers at the plant were well trained and experienced, graduates from Swiss and German technical universities. They certainly knew what I have recently discovered, it is not new information. Why did they not raise these points? How did this occur?

It happened because engineers and scientists, doctors and lawyers, clerks and craftspeople are all subject to the pressure of their bosses. Someone in management said "We want to do it like this." Managers, bosses and owners are not used to being questioned, certainly not by the people that work for them. Sales and marketing people are smooth, well spoken, confident and convincing. Those who are charged with doing the work cooperatively work with the parameters given, even if they think the parameters are foolish.

Keep that in mind the next time a doctor, technician, mechanic, or clerk tells you something that seems a little odd.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." 
- Upton Sinclair