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 21st 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.
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