Social Glass

Barry Schwartz, an economist who studies how human psychology is linked to economics and author of The Paradox of Choice, recently spoke at Ted about how process has replaced wisdom.  His thesis is (and I’m paraphrasing), that process exists because policy makers don’t trust “doers” to make the right decisions.  Process curbs risk and act as an insurance policy.  The result is less catastrophe and more predictability.  But process also assures mediocrity.  It denies the people who execute processes the freewill to improvise based on immediate circumstances.
Barry tells the story of a father who takes his son to a baseball game.  During the game the son says that he’s thirsty.  So the father goes to a drink stand and buys two cans of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, unaware that this drink has alcoholic content.  He returns to his son and the two start drinking the “lemonade” together.  A concerned fan notices and calls security.  Security calls the ambulance who rushes the boy to the hospital to remove the alcohol from his system (it turns out the boy had only very minor traces).  The police meet the father at the hospital and arrest him.  Social workers place the kid with foster parents for a few days.

The father then has a hearing before a judge.  He asks that his son be allowed to return home.  The judge agrees, but only if the father moves out of his home and is accompanied by social workers on scheduled visits.

And along the whole journey the security guards, parametics, police, social workers and judge each apologized to the father for doing what they had to do.  But they had to follow procedure.

Wisdom, commonsense, would have ended this madness at the baseball game.

Now, I’m not saying we should do away with structure that promises some sense of predictability and repeatability.  But I like the word “framework” instead of process.  To me, frameworks provide basic direction to a group, but allows said group the freedom to make micro decisions.  It’s like saying “go northwest and you’ll get there”, instead of giving turn by turn directions.

I struggle, in my work life, with finding a balance between providing enough structure that the team arrives at desired destination while fomenting the talents of each team member in order to get there in the most efficient manner (and just where is “there”?).  But I’ll favor the wisdom of my team over regimented process any day.