The Early Worm Gets Eaten

While reading about the recent healthcare debate I came across a newspaper article in which a public official who should know better was quoted as saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” I thought back to my years as an executive in the high tech industry, where at least once a week someone (usually an engineer) would come over and offer a pithy maxim as advice for how to run the company. The “definition of insanity” maxim was particularly popular. I heard it many times from many people, as if it were somehow true. I’d usually listen politely, but if the person was being particularly tiresome I might respond with, “Ah, but practice makes perfect.”

The problem with trying to lead a company by way of pithy maxims is that maxims are simplistic. Life (and management) isn’t. For example, take the old homily, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Would you really want to fly an airline that practiced that philosophy? No matter what trite maxim you quote, someone can always come up with another that espouses an opposing view. You say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it;” I respond with “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Engineers in particular seem enamored with the simplicity of maxims. (Being an engineer myself, I can say this with some level of authority.) It has to do with their technical backgrounds. The laws of physics are immutable. Why shouldn’t the laws of management be the same? But the problem isn’t limited to engineers. In today’s Twitter-dominated, soundbite driven world, devoting more than a sentence or two to a problem is an anachronism. When it comes to management, everyone seems to remember only the first half of Einstein’s famous maxim, “Everything should be made as simple as possible. But no simpler.”

Engineers are also prone to what I might call “Management by Comic Strip.” Walk through any engineering department and you’ll see a wealth of strips, usually Dilbert, cut out and pasted prolifically around the cubicle walls, ready to be waved in front of any hapless manager who walks by. Now I have to admit that Dilbert is probably my favorite comic strip of all time. Scott Adams has a knack for extracting humor from situations straight out of today’s management headlines. But I never confuse a good chuckle with good management. Laugh at the joke and then move on to solve real problems with real thought, not throwaway comedy lines.

Unfortunately, many people with no management experience don’t think that way. To them, truth is staring them right in the face directly from the pages of the funny papers. Sadly, Dilbert has done more to set back the practice of management than Enron, Lehman Brothers, and AIG combined. I’ve actually seen people with excellent potential decline management positions because they didn’t want to be the butt of Dilbert jokes. Get real, folks. Dilbert is an amusing cartoon, but that’s all. It’s no substitute for sound judgment, and those who wave it around as the answer to your company’s problems do you no favor. When a company starts basing its decisions on comic strip wisdom, it’s time to join a new company.

Scott Adams has the luxury of creating humor in three panels without having to worry about long-term impact; real managers don’t have that luxury. But to the non-manager, answers are simple. To coin my own maxim, “No decision is ever too difficult for the person who doesn’t have to make it.” (To which the astute reader could counter with General George Patton’s maxim, “Any decision today is better than the perfect decision next week.”)

Of course managers haven’t helped their cause by creating their own litany of maxims. “Innovate or die.” “Only the paranoid survive.” “Work smarter, not harder.” (If that last one were true, Wally would be the most valuable engineer in the whole Dilbert strip.) In my experience, a manager who cites such drivel too often does so because he doesn’t have any real insight on how to manage. But since management maxims are lampooned everywhere from Dilbert to the Colbert Report, there’s no need for me to dwell on that topic today.

For your amusement and enjoyment, here are a few trite maxims along with their equally trite counter-maxims. Next time someone spouts one of these as if it were an indisputable truth, feel free to respond in turn with your rebuttal. And if you have others, send them to me at steve_hinch ( at ) annadelpress.com:

1. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
but
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

2. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
but
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
or
Practice makes perfect.

3. The early bird catches the worm.
but
The second mouse gets the cheese.

4. Haste makes waste.
but
He who hesitates is lost.

5. All good things come to those who wait.
but
Time and tide wait for no man.

6. Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.
but
Penny wise, pound foolish.

7. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
but
To err is human, to forgive is divine.

Don’t be afraid to push back on the maxim moralists. Declare a moratorium on maxims or a maxim-free work environment. When someone touts a maxim as the answer, don’t let them get away with it. Take the time to probe what they really think. You’ll both get much more useful insight into an issue by having an intelligent discussion about it rather than relegating it to a duel of maxims. And above all, remember that managing by maxims will doom you to failure. After all, let’s not forget that if the early bird gets the worm, then the early worm gets eaten.