Pournell’s Law
In 2006, the coalition forces in Iraq were losing.
The insurgency had forced the coalition to invest too much resources and time into defending the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who were in Iraq to seek out, engage with, and destroy the enemy.
Force protection had become its own mission.
In other words, the United States had prioritised using its troops to defend its troops.
You see this in many bureaucracies - particularly in their head offices. Over time, the office grows so much it needs resources just to support its existence. It becomes an organisation within an organisation - with its own hierarchy, policies, and personnel looking inwards to their navels, and insulated from the very organisation it is meant to serve. It snowballs, and is difficult to stop once started. If left too long, there is a generation of workers who only know the head office and how to serve it. If they shift their focus back to the bulk of the organisation, the head office will collapse. This is how they justify themselves.
This phenomenon has been called ‘Pournell’s Iron Law’ after the writer Jerry Pournell who coined it:
In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
Inexperienced bosses address this simplistically by programming token visits ‘outside the wire’. They may also bring in the non-head office workers to participate in decision making committees. But the outsiders are always outnumbered and intimidated and end up simply advocating for their piece of the organisation. They don’t have the strategic perspective nor incentive to do otherwise. Worse is when the outsider representatives end up dictating to the entire organisation, or at the very least fettering decision making as the head office bosses naively give them too much power in a vain attempt to shift mission focus.
Resolution of this problem begins with good leadership. The first job of a leader is to define reality. The leader begins by identifying those functions that need to be grouped in a single ‘head office’ location, and those that can be performed ‘in the organisation’. This can be achieved either by moving roles out to where the work is done, or training the real workers in those functions. For example, instead of having all the compliance people in head office, put them out in the organisation. Not only do they gain a better operational perspective of the value they can add, they are also more visible to the operational decision makers, who are more likely to call on them than when they sat behind desks in the ivory tower.
There will be resistance. If there isn’t - then the workers would have resolved it themselves.
That’s what leadership is: taking people where they otherwise would not have gone.
Hard Deck.
If you’re a pilot, the ground is a disinterested third party.
At least the aviator has an altimeter, an artificial horizon, their eyes, and in modern aircraft, a robotic ‘Terrain! Terrain! Pull-Up! Pull-Up!’ cockpit warning.
What is the decision-maker’s equivalent warning of approaching doom?
Do what pilots do - and create a ‘hard deck’.
The ‘hard deck’ is the height below which pilots don’t fly as it simulates the ground. For example - no dogfighting below 10,000 feet. This allows a large enough ‘fudge factor’ for a pilot to fly above ‘the ground’ - while avoiding the uncompromising response from the ‘real ground’ if the pilot should accidentally break the hard deck.
Have a policy template response of ten working days to any inquiry or complaint - but make it your practice to respond in seven, or even five. The ground is ten - while your hard deck is whatever timing you decide. If an unexpected issue arises that means you can’t respond by five, or seven, then at least you’ve got three days before you come up against your promise to the third party.
Or do the reverse. Instead of declaring a longer time, declare a shorter one. You know a person will take up an hour of your time. Set aside half an hour for them, forcing a hard deck on them to have themselves better prepared. You know you need to get back to that complainant in five days - tell the subordinate you need their response in three - and give them a hard deck.
By setting and sticking to your decision hard deck - you reduce the likelihood of spearing into every decision-maker’s enemy:
Inaction.
I’ve Never Worked in a School.
I walk past about fifty school students sitting on the grass in the shade beside the river.
A teacher or someone teaching them, sits in front, holding forth.
He’s still talking when I return fifteen minutes later.
The students face him - attentive - their backs to the gleaming river.
Outside. Sunny day. Green grass. Gentle breeze. River. Cityscape. Beach sand.
Who is holding the student’s attention?
The person talking.
A religion teacher developed online learning.
It was an animation of a religion teacher in a classroom teaching religion.
The students sitting in their seats behind desks.
The lesson consisted of the animated teacher asking the animated students questions and an animated student raised their hand and answered and the animated teacher corrected them, in the voice of the real teacher dubbed in.
With literally the world of the past and the present and the future - real and imaginary - available to him to use to teach - the teacher reproduced … the classroom.
The Master’s Tools
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
- Audre Lorde
If the bosses genuinely wanted [insert aspirational slogan here] they would make it so.
If the bosses genuinely wanted to change their organisation - they would have done it.
Unless they were recruited from outside (which poses its own obstacles to change - see below) - the bosses became bosses by exploiting the organisation as it is.
The outfit is the way it is - good or bad - because the bosses want it that way.
The outfit rewarded the bosses by promoting them based on their contribution to the culture the organisation claims to want to change. The outfit recruited the external candidate thought best to make a change or maintain the status quo.
Having built careers that pay for their lifestyles and status on managing an organisation into whatever exceptionalism or malaise now afflict it, the bosses lack the skills and experience and tools to change it, even if they wanted to. So they maintain the status quo they inherited, affirmed them, and learned and profit from.
The new boss from outside will be opposed and undermined by the overlooked and aspirational and often bitter unsuccessful candidates for her job. Their future depends on them protecting the status quo because their ‘corporate knowledge’ is the only advantage they have. If the new boss changes the culture as the new boss intends to, they’ll be left with nothing. Some will switch sides. Others will white ant.
Sure, let’s look innovative and agile by saying we’re innovative and agile.
But at the end of the day - which was the same as yesterday and the day before that - the outfit is exactly the way the bosses want it to be.
A Metaphor for the Tough Days.
Aircraft take flight by powering into the wind.
A metaphor for the tough days.
Devil Spotting.
“What do you think the devil’s going to look like if he’s around? … Nobody is going to be taken in by a guy with a long, red, pointy tail!”
- Aaron (Albert Brooks) in Broadcast News
It’s easy to spot the devil in our workplace.
They’re the ones applauding mediocrity.
Minds Made Up.
I once worked for a company that laid off a third of its staff in a morning. HR told some staff to go into Room 1, and the others to go into Room 2. Room 2 staff were given letters summarily dismissing them.
One woman from Room 2 chased the retreating HR person and pointed out the envelope with her termination letter wrongly described her position. The decision stood - and she still lost her job.
HR routinely operates by stealth. Secretly searching and gathering and reporting.
Summarily executing. While the bosses look away.
‘We can’t risk the punter finding out and getting upset/taking stress leave/upsetting other staff/sabotaging the business,’ they say to justify this behaviour to their bosses. The bosses readily - too much so - agree.
Nonsense. The truth is almost always the twin sins of incompetence and laziness. Best not alert the punter (who was ‘our most important asset’ at our last offsite team building day, remember?) lest they complicate things by giving us a better argument. Or worse - embarrassing us (and our cowardly bosses) by proving we (and our bosses) are wrong.
Minds that are made up don’t care to be confused by facts.
Lure.
Easy things lure us away from better answers.
- Dr. Daniel Dennett, cognitive scientist and philosopher.
The moment you hand someone power, you relieve them of the effort and anxiety and learning and humility and intelligence required to seek the better argument.
It takes an exceptional boss not to routinely lazily deploy that power.
Arguing with The Boss.
When you’re in a company, and especially if you’re a leader, it’s important to farm for dissent because it’s not normal to disagree with your boss … “My job is to please my boss,” as opposed to we want people to feel “My job is to help Powder or Netflix or Pure Software grow. Sometimes, if to help them grow, I’ve got to be willing to argue with my manager,” and that’s okay. And so because it’s difficult, emotionally, in most companies to disagree with your manager, we call it farming for dissent. And we have managers do things like, ‘What are three things you would do differently if you were in my job?’ I would regularly, every 18 months or so, do that with 50 top executives and have them write down what would be different … And that was an example of farming for dissent … To disagree silently is disloyal.
- Reed Hastings, former CEO of Netflix.
I think it’s safe to say that there’s no need to farm for dissent in any workplace.
Dissent grows wild and falls to the ground, ripe, plump, and juicy in every office, cubicle, assembly line, and staff room.
It isn’t dissent that needs farming.
It’s good, smart, confident bosses.
Bad Workers Make Bad Bosses.
We respect good bosses because we’ve had bad bosses.
We know being good means the boss keeping their positional power gun holstered - choosing instead trust, patience, and other ‘soft’ virtues. We know that takes courage. We respect the good boss and feel grateful for her faith in us.
Which may explain why good bosses can appear weak to the bad worker.
The good worker knows and responds to the virtues of the good boss.
The bad worker exploits them.
Often the bad worker has never had a bad boss, so doesn’t appreciate and value the trust of the good boss. The bad worker cannot succeed on their merits, and therefore must exploit the ‘weakness’ of the good boss.
The bad worker’s exploitation of the good boss is why we respect the courage of the good boss.
The bad worker’s exploitation of the good boss is why we have much more bad positional power bosses.
And why bad workers make bad bosses.
What Do You Think?
‘Let’s go around the table and hear what everyone thinks is the issue and what we should do about it.’
When the boss opens a meeting with this line or something similar, you know it’s going to be a good use of everyone’s time.
Not so when the boss opens with ‘Here’s what I think. What do you think about what I think?’
Could it Be That ..?
Apparently there’s evidence that evidenced-based teaching isn’t working.
I’m not a teacher and have never worked in a school.
So with that caveat - could it be that the reason is that we are not meant to tailor lessons to a class of 32 ten year olds, or a more elite group of six ten year olds, or even to a partnership of two ten year olds?
Could it be that teaching is best delivered on what each student needs?
The Law thinks so. It says the job of each teacher is to deliver each student an ‘educational programme’. It defines ‘educational programme’ as (words matter):
an organised set of learning activities designed to enable a student to develop knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes relevant to the student’s individual needs
Note those words:
designed (tailor made)
a student (singular)
develop (verb - active - evolving)
relevant to … who? …THE (singular) student’s
individual (singular, unique)
needs.
How do you research and provide evidence of what works for every one of the four million Australian school students? Or the 750,000 (I’m making it up) ten year old students? You’d need four million research papers.
Again - I’ve never worked in a school.
Pharisees.
It’s hard to relate to most of the historical figures of the Gospels. Tax collectors. Lepers. Samaritans.
The Pharisees are timeless.
Their hypocrisy, legalism, defence of the status quo and emphasis on outward appearances of faith are alive and well in our churches.
Different Trench. Still a Trench.
Australian troops set sail in 1914 for the trenches of the European battlefield.
Then somebody had the great idea of breaking the bloody stalemate in Belgium and France by landing those forces on the shores of the Gallipoli Peninsula and driving northward. Brilliant in its conception.
Six months later those soldiers were dying in trenches in Türkiye.
Unless an organisation is creative, brave, and honest enough to be better - any innovation, change, or strategic direction project - inevitably ends with the troops doing what they know best: sheltering in a different trench, but still a trench.
Welcome to Freedom.
We grow up learning that if we do this, it leads to that, and if we do that, it leads to this, and this, and this … and … success.
Our story is one of causation in which we are at the helm of our ship of Life, steering a course to better shores.
It’s ingrained in us from the moment our parents pin our crayon scribble on the fridge door. When we’re flipping burgers the boss incentivises us with Crew Member of the Month awards. Everything leads to something better.
It’s reinforced in every year of school - literally - that we progress to. If we do this - then we get to Year 2, 3, 4, 5 … 12 … Uni … job … promotion … pay rise … Masters Degree … promotion … head hunted … promotion … Doctorate …
Such that if (more like when) we tap the accelerator and … nothing … When we land that great client and the other bloke gets the promotion … When we do that course that says Leadership means doing X and we do X and … nothing.
Our first instinct is to think - what did I do wrong? Why didn’t I get the mid-life equivalent of Crew Member of the Month?
Welcome to Adulthood. Welcome to Freedom.
Once the initial shock passes (it may take a while) - we should realise that there is no law of the universe that says my work, my efforts, my integrity, my honesty, my … anything … automatically leads to a reward - or causes anything. (Admit it. You always expect something.)
You do good things for their own sake. Nice to get an attaboy from the boss or a client or that woman in the other department who benefitted from your cleverness. But don’t expect it. Don’t assume it. Most importantly, don’t interpret the silence or even criticism as evidence your work isn’t good. Or that you’re no good.
You do it because it’s what you do. If it’s acknowledged - Bonus.
If it’s criticised - Learn. Then do it better.
Whatever you do - don’t hand your happiness or sense of progress as a human to someone else to decide.
Just do good work because you’re a grownup now.
You Want the Curious and Malcontents.
You want some followers drifting or wandering off the path you’ve plotted for them with (ideally) you up front.
You want the curious, the malcontents, or the creatives or the simply distracted followers deviating off road.
You want some stragglers lagging off the pace.
You want some of those people rejoining your line of followers mindlessly strung out behind you, quietly affirming for everyone to see by their return from their exploring that yours is the better route. Or perhaps jogging up to you up there at the front of your procession of disciples and saying ’Hey boss! Good job! We checked out some other paths, and reckon you’ve chosen the best one!’ Or maybe even ‘Hey boss! We found another way we reckon you might be interested in!’
You have then given those people - and yourself - the greatest gift of Leadership:
Choice.
You are only truly a Leader if people choose to continue following you. You are only truly a Leader if you give that choice - with the authentic, sincere desire that those who leave you are better off for it.
When that happens, you transform from a ‘You Must Follow Me Because This is the Way’ leader into ‘This is the Way Because You are Following Me’ one.
Which will you choose?
Leaders Need Rebels.
You don’t pull over for a police officer because of their leadership.
You don’t pay your water bill because of the leadership qualities of the CEO of the water utility company.
You didn’t attend school for a dozen or more years because the government led you.
You didn’t sit up straight with full body listening because your teacher was a leader.
A person with positional power doesn’t, by definition, get people to do things the person otherwise wouldn’t because of their leadership. This is one of the great myths of organisations who bang on about the subject, even christening roles as ‘leadership positions’.
If Leadership is persuading a person to do something or go somewhere they otherwise wouldn’t have done or gone - then Leadership most often appears in opposition to, or the absence of, positional power.
Sure, a person holding positional power can still display leadership qualities. Just as a person can ignore the lift to their tenth floor office and choose to take the stairs. Or cycle to work instead of driving. Or wake up at dawn and go for a ten kilometre run. The longer a person seeks or holds positional power, the more any leadership muscles or tendons they may have had, atrophy. Why make all the effort that fills libraries of books on Leadership - when you can just tell people what to do?
Anyone can direct a person whose mortgage or ego or sense of self-esteem relies on being paid this fortnight.
Which is why people with leadership aspirations, or who hold positional power yet consider themselves leaders, should welcome the Rebel.
The Rebel - the person who says ‘Your way is wrong - mine is better’ - is like weights on the gym floor. The Rebel is the resistance that builds leadership muscle. The Rebel forces the leadership aspirant to draw on deeper, more nuanced dormant strengths - or to begin doing the reps to build them. The Rebel speaks the words most others are often thinking. The Rebel reveals the weaknesses and flaws and inefficiencies in the path the aspiring leader wants others to take. The Rebel asks ‘Why?’ If you can’t answer in a way that leaves the Rebel at least to ponder, you have no business calling yourself a Leader.
If you don’t have a Rebel - you should create one. Like the Catholic Church did in the advocatus diaboli - the devil’s advocate - whose job it was to argue against canonisation of a candidate for sainthood to reveal any flaws before the crowd did.
Sure, I don’t want a Rebel in the cockpit of my international flight. I do want them in the seat controlling the flight simulator.
Rifle Fires. Rifle Stops.
Rifle fires. Rifle stops.
Cock, lock, look.
Rounds in the magazine. No rounds in the chamber.
Release the action and continue firing.
This drill was known to the soldier as ‘Immediate Actions’ or IA. It was designed to teach how to instinctively identify and remedy a weapon stoppage.
Habits, routines, customs and rituals are springboards for creativity, innovation, and improvement.
They are the beginnings - not the ends.
They need practice and maintenance as much as a soldier needs to rehearse IAs.
But a soldier’s job is not to execute drills. A soldier’s job is to engage with the enemy.
Beware the ritual keepers who are put in charge.
They will fiercely resist progress and those who seek it as enemies of tradition and thus threats to their power and ego.
The Logistics of Leadership.
Each soldier in the D-Day landing in June 1944 required ten tonnes of supplies and an additional tonne for every month they were in action.
(It’s said that amateurs talk strategy whereas professionals talk logistics.)
The further we venture from home, the longer our supply lines, the more we rely on others to supply us with the essentials of life, or we must resort to hunting and foraging for ourselves.
This is why many bosses never grow up and leave home, and punish those who dare attempt to draw them out.