Holiday Disfunction on Capitol Hill...

For the last few days I have been thinking about the increasingly strange place of the public restroom in modern life.   After all, in a 21^st century heretofore characterized by people wandering around relentlessly focused on the tiny screen of their personal devices – cocooned in pixilated armor that shuts out everyone around them – it is worth considering the public restroom, where we engage in a semi-ritualistic and vaguely unsettling communal excretory function in a dizzying variety of settings, from the lobby restroom of the Fairmont Hotel to the ballpark to the skeeviest gas station restroom along the interstate.  Really; what else is there that’s like that? 

 But no; due to the ongoing toxic cock fight in our nation’s capitol, that profoundly important academic exploration will have to wait.  Instead we’re compelled to offer our opinion and commentary on the dramatic and largely imaginary impending confrontation with the dreaded “fiscal cliff”.    The combination of a snappy nickname with months of breathless hyperbole has everyone on edge; consumer confidence numbers were down over 6 points, which is a pretty significant drop, especially considering that most other economic indicators have been positive since the election.  The media has found this to be nearly irresistible – empty headed and vacuous as they are - and so the cable news shows are filled with quasi-experts of every stripe yammering away and offering their opinion, all accomplishing nothing other than to increase national anxiety. 

The one good thing to come of it is the further unmasking of the republican party, exposing them as the clueless band of obstructionist traitors they seem to have become.   Has there been one good idea to come from the right over this issue?  Is there any indication that they might pursue a different solution than that which they have been mumbling and nattering about for the better part of a year?  Do they pay attention to anything other than the marching orders delivered to them from the corporate bag-men and plutocrats controlling their agenda? 

I have been listening to John Boner for two years and he has had literally nothing of substance to say since the 2010 mid-terms.  For him to stand up in front of a forest of microphones and try to claim that they’re the ones doing all of the compromising and making all of the practical and substantive proposals and Obama is the one responsible for the impasse is laughably predictable because he totally lost control of his bug-eyed, frothing, tea-party infested mob who fervently believe that bringing the government to its knees is their holy and patriotic duty.  And if a few unwashed foreigners, old people and shiftless minorities have to suffer because of it, all the better.

For their part, the democrats continue to trot out two of the most demonstrably ineffective “leaders” in the House and Senate in modern history.  Harry Reid looks like a slightly addled and sleepy assistant professor of 16^th century Slavic languages, like he needs to be dusted off and pointed to the podium on the Senate floor where he gets all worked and says “Gosh darn it” and spouts other such inflammatory rhetoric while being completely ignored by 90% of his colleagues, who would rather play cribbage for cigarettes than listen to his jabbering.

 In the House they depend on Nancy Pelosi, possibly the most polarizing figure in an entire congress of loony, hallucinating reactionaries and partisan hacks.  Everyone hates her, probably even her own staff, and her effectiveness was amply demonstrated during the first half of Obama’s first term when she alienated virtually everyone in the country with her cartoonish liberalism and icy bitchiness.   Even Obama probably doesn’t want to take her calls.

In this muddle of self-interest, corruption and treacherous partisanship is it any wonder that nothing happens?   At some point Obama has looked around and said, “One more round of phone calls and that’s it – we can go off the god damn cliff for all I care anymore”.  

If the tea party rabble wants to bring down the government, Thelma and Louise-ing it off the fiscal cliff seems like a good start so why does anyone expect that any kind of deal can be struck that includes them?   Boner needs to man-up, tell them to kiss his ass, and make a deal.  Seventy-five percent of the country wants a deal that includes some cuts and some tax increases.  What is he afraid of – his legacy?  As it stands, his legacy is that he was a hyper partisan but fundamentally ineffective speaker who, when the country needed him most, ignored what was right to score cheap political points that ended up gaining him nothing.  Wow – how’s that sound for the old tombstone, Johnny?   

 If I was you I might think about doing something drastic and outside the box, like getting together with your soul-brother Mitch McConnell and inviting the little fuehrer, Grover Norquist, along with you.  Drop some ruffies in his scotch and leave him tied to the capitol flagpole with his pants around his ankles as a warning to the delusional tea party knuckleheads that they need to get in line and follow your lead.  That’s what leaders do, Johnny – they lead.  If it takes well reasoned convincing or a public flogging, your job is to cut a deal and move on, not to throw up your hands and head for St. Kitts for the holidays.

Where are the statesmen on The Hill – nodding off over Courvoisier and Cubans down at the club, waiting for someone to tell them to go back and get in their chairs?  How hard can it be?   Have these people ever negotiated anything?   Geez – it’s pathetic.

I’ll bet they have really cool restrooms though…

Institutional Stupidity and the Rise of the American Asshole

Institutional stupidity is the tendency for organizations to compartmentalize functions such that no one person or group is fully in control of the output of the organization nor does any one person or group completely understand how the organization works.  Instead each of these parts performs its task according to a set of process rules which – because they are isolated from the whole – are likely to be less efficient as a result.  Indeed, these isolated functionaries are more likely to inadvertently work at cross purposes to the most effective function of the enterprise.

The finest example of institutional stupidity is ubiquitous, on display all around us every day – automobile traffic.  Why do I say this is an example of institutional stupidity?   Think back to the last time you had to go to the DMV for a driving test.  Think about the questions; how far behind the car in front of you should you be when approaching a school bus on the side of the road with its lights flashing?  How many feet should you be from an intersection where you are making a turn before turning on your indicator?  This is an overwhelmingly technical approach to teaching people how to drive that completely ignores the most critical aspect of the art of driving.  It has no philosophical component – it doesn’t address things like common courtesy, cooperation, the big picture.  Instead it focuses on the almost useless minutia and technically “correct” way to drive without teaching the skill of driving.  Why is this?

When it comes to driving, the emphasis on tiny details results in millions of people who can operate a car semi-successfully but who are shitty and dangerous drivers and a menace on the roads; assholes, in other words – completely unconcerned about others, selfish and inconsiderate, as if they are the only car on the road.  Now multiply by 10 million. 

It is because, like so many modern bureaucracies, it is more important to them to follow procedures established by faceless superiors than to actually teach people how to drive.  I call this “window-washing syndrome” – the typical organizational focus on process to the detriment of accomplishing the ostensible goals in the most efficient manner.  In other words, emphasizing the washing of the window in tedious detail while neglecting the goal of actually getting it clean. 

Many mid-level management positions have been eliminated in the 21^st century wired world of commerce after being recognized for the useless drag on innovation and success that they are, bogged down in ass-covering and following procedure and letting the work of the enterprise suffer as a result.   How many times have you sincerely asked someone with whom you are forced to interact and negotiate, “Why do we have to do it this way?” only to be told, “Because we have to do it according to the guidelines” or some equally brain-dead explanation?   Not only is this thoughtless and lazy, it leaves the interpretation of these guidelines to drones and apparatchiks who may not be best able to provide one that is correct.

This fetish with process is rampant and is the single most common characteristic of organizations from Cub Scout troops to giant corporations.   The result is institutional paralysis and stasis if they’re lucky or an orgy of bad decisions if they’re allowed to run free.  The American car industry was, until recently, a fine example of this trickle down stupidity.  Hummers for the general public?  Really?  What were they thinking?  If decisions come about as a result of the Holy Process, then they are unquestioned by anyone and foisted on the public, often with great fanfare.  Where is the intellectual QA?  Absent, because nobody can be trusted to take one look at it and say, “Oh my god, no!”

We’ve just witnessed this at the University of California, an institution with a long and storied tradition of higher learning and one doubtless populated by professors worthy of the various Nobels and Pulitzers gathering dust in their offices but one also run by state bureaucrats plagued by the disease of institutional stupidity.  They have a university-wide logo, dripping with tradition, albeit, somewhat cluttered by modern standards of marketing design, what with the Latin, the candle, an open text book and so on.  So someone gets the brilliant idea to simplify it – a euphemism for dumbing it down – to an amorphous blob of blue and yellow which was met by nearly universal derision.  It was summarily withdrawn in a matter of days and the person or persons responsible for the decision are now hiding under their beds, confused and sucking their thumbs while the regents write the obscenely large check to the marketing design group who designed it. 

Schools are also fertile breeding grounds for institutional stupidity, where teachers – for whatever reason – teach their students how to pass tests rather than how to learn; how to get to the next level without learning much of anything useful on the journey.  Thus we have high schools churning out waves of ignorant, illiterate graduates, all of whom feel that they not only have to go to college, but that they are entitled to do so.  College professors then discover them sitting mute and glassy-eyed in the back rows of classrooms across the country getting “C’s” if the curve is distorted enough or failing miserably if it isn’t. 

Somehow four or five or six years later they emerge with a diploma, dumb as a bag of hammers, and they’re now proliferating into low level jobs in retail and customer service or, if the know someone, at the DMV where this cycle of inbred stupidity flourishes all over again.  They can’t think – all they can do is go down a list and check off those things they’re supposed to do until it’s time to go home and they can get in their cars, crank up their Rhianna CDs and drive home like assholes. 

Why are the people who wait on us in stores and businesses everywhere so terrible at their jobs?  Because they’re stupid.  And deep down they know they’re stupid; they watch Jeopardy and can’t answer a single question.  Knowing that they’re stupid and lots of people are smarter than them pisses them off.  At the same time they feel they deserve better or are too good for the job because – after all – they graduated from college.  They are intellectually lazy, arrogant, dismissive and contentious – assholes, in other words.  Voila!  The cycle is complete. 

Perhaps it’s because of the economic chaos of the last five or six years, but it also seems that everyone is really, really angry.  I was in line the other day when the local post office opened – there was a queue of maybe ten people waiting.  The door was opened by a grey-haired Filipino guy who took his place behind the counter and started waiting on us.  After five minutes another guy in line started muttering darkly, then louder and louder until he was yelling at this poor civil servant – himself a long-term captive in a fortress of organizational dysfunction – who tried to explain that he couldn’t call anyone to help him at the counter, as he was the only counter-person there.  But the angry, entitled guy wouldn’t hear it, and continued to demand that he get someone up there to help him.  A couple of times he could see someone moving around in the back and he yelled at them to get out front and “wait on us”.   Clearly, this guy was an asshole – a self-important nihilist slamming his way around the world with no thought other than what’s important to him.  Humility?  Too threatening.

In August I had a – thankfully – negative biopsy.   I have insurance with a major provider and, other than waiting somewhat anxiously to find out the deductible damage, I figured the professionals at the insurance company and the hospital would take care of the details.  Three and a half months later it is still as tangled as a plate of spaghetti.  I got a letter from the insurance company telling me they were trying to get the hospital to provide documentation that the procedure wasn’t for a “pre-existing condition”.   I thought that was odd given that it was a biopsy – by definition that seemed to eliminate the possibility of it being pre-existing.   When I asked the sweetly drawling customer service rep about that she said, “We’re not sayin’ it is – we’re just askin’ if it is.”  Ah, well that clears it up then, doesn’t it?  And when I asked her why they had to go through this exercise, she said, “Well sir, that’s just what we have to do.”  Is there a tiny spark of intellect in there anywhere?  I didn’t detect one.  

In organizations, they say, shit rolls downhill, meaning the top of the house makes a decision or approves a change and it proliferates down the food chain to the lowest level employees.  But it becomes like that parlor game – I think it’s called Chinese Whispering or something – where each person whispers the same thing to the person next to them in turn and everyone laughs when what comes out at the end is nothing like what goes in at the beginning.  Ha!  That makes for a fun drinking game but is less amusing when applied to corporate governance and organizational behavior.  Shit not only rolls down hill; it gets stinkier and stinkier as it gets closer to the bottom until those charged with implementation are holding their noses and vomiting in the street. 

Rigid adherence to process has evolved in some less-than innovative organizations until it entirely pre-empts thinking.  People not used to thinking regularly, then, can’t be trusted to think for themselves, take responsibility, or make decisions and so more box-checking processes evolve until no one understands why anything is being done anymore – they’re all just doing it and going home.  

We wouldn’t presume to offer a prescription for this daunting problem, as the drones are firmly entrenched with no sign of relinquishing their mindless hold on the cultural and business institutions all around us – or even recognizing that this crushing stupidity is a menace to American civilization as we know it.  Instead, now that we’ve got our blood pressure under control, we are inclined to instead pass along the ubiquitous advice of the English when faced with intractable difficulties; keep calm and carry on.   And don’t let on that you know anything is wrong.