The basic laws of Human Stupidity, and a warning for middle management.

[rockstar.esq]

It's been a frustrating week at work because I've spent nearly the entirety of my time trying to talk highly educated, credentialed people out of doing stupid things.

It has come to my attention that the cultural response to many derogatory terms has been to lump them into universal meaning, so they can be dismissed as dismissive, divisive, rude, or otherwise not germane to polite discourse.

So terms like stupid tend to get interpreted as meaning the same as uneducated, inexperienced, mentally deficient, or ridiculous.  In fact, stupidity is a property entirely independent of education, mental acuity, or character.  It's a field of special study by a gent named Carlo Cipolla, who wrote "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity".

They are as follows:

#1 Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation

#2 The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person

#3 A stupid person is one who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses

#4 Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.  In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

#5 A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

 Cipolla plotted a two axis graph which places Benefit to themselves on X axis , and Benefit to others, on the Y axis.

Intelligent people are in the positive quadrant of benefiting themselves and others through their actions.  Working Clockwise, we have people whose actions benefit themselves, but losses for others.  Cipolla identifies this group as bandits.  Next  Cipolla tells us we have stupid people, whose actions generate losses to themselves and others.  Finally, Cipolla gives us the helpless people, whose actions result in benefits to others, but never themselves.

Cipolla's entire construct is outcome based.  If you don't hit the mark, you're stupid, which doesn't seem very instructive.

However, I think there's a central point here that is instructive as to why we ignore negative feedback.

Take a simple example of a person trying something and failing.  Doesn't much matter what it is, the individual wanted to do it, and they failed.

Now it's pretty clear to me that this could be because they lacked skill, or they lacked education.  Could be they just made a mistake owing to form, or approach.  Maybe it was a moral failing, or a physical failing.  Whatever the cause, I believe this failure only has meaning in Cipolla's chart in the context of what happens next.

I argue that people who grind their way to success are intelligent, because their efforts constantly improve outcomes.  In essence, I'm arguing that we can't measure the outcome of their efforts, until the actor decides they're done trying.

That being said, the state of modern middle management leads me to conclude that a whole lot of common practices are trending at a negative slope towards Cipolla's definition of stupid people.

Here are a couple of examples to illustrate what I'm on about.  

A project manager in charge of building a huge high-rise building reached out asking for me to price the build-out of a tenant space in the building.  My competitor is working on the main building, but the project manager is concerned that their pricing for this work is too high.

After many rounds of pricing things in a myriad of ways, I won the bid, and was awarded the job.  This week, the project manager announced that they wanted to give a portion of the work back to my competitor who is working for them on the main building.  I provided the sum deducting the cost for the work in question. 

This sparked an entire week's worth of back-and-forth where the project manager demanded that I explain why my prices were always lower than my competitor's.  The project manager is swinging from palpable fear, to righteous anger as we gradually, and repeatedly proved what was always the case.  My competitor is overpricing the work.  

 

On another project we have had a catastrophic delay in getting some ridiculously expensive light fixtures.  What should have taken six months to get, arrived in eighteen, and even then, was piecemeal.  The job was long since concluded by then, so we had to provide temporary fixtures, and we had to swap everything out afterhours at premium labor prices.  The fixtures lasted less than 14 days before they started falling apart. 

This week we had a teleconference with all the people who've been playing keep-away from us for the last year and ten months.  As is typical for this kind of meeting, we received the invitation late the evening before the early morning appointment.  In keeping with modern management practices, this meeting was attended by high-middle managers who open with effusive promises to honor commitments to success.  This was followed the obligatory "they're just coming to this now", which inevitably leads to "I'll need to look into this further before I can offer any feedback".  The only things they do know is their many company policies, and established norms which just so happen to reject any and all meaningful remunerations for the damage caused by their actions, and/or failures to act.

 

Both cases are perfect examples of highly educated, intelligent people working as hard as they can to steer the course of events towards failure. 

My project manager client is struggling to admit that he's spent his career fostering working relationships where he's getting ripped off.  He genuinely believes it's not possible to build these jobs at market prices, because it would require him to admit that he doesn't know what he's doing.  He's stuck as a helpless person, and his ego is pulling him towards stupidity.  It's my hope that the financial considerations I've provided will force his hand to make an intelligent decision.  

Likewise, we have exemplars of higher-ups who sincerely believe it's a winning strategy to declare their perfect ignorance of all details germane to a dispute which has escalated to where it requires their attention.  These people are asking us to believe they're either profoundly incompetent, or entirely dishonest.  They're the very definition of Cipolla's fifth rule of stupidity, because they're the most dangerous people you'll ever encounter.

We're living through rule #4 with this guy for sure.  He's never going to be the solution, and none of our efforts with him will be beneficial.  

 

So what does all of this have to do with the thread title promising a warning for middle management?

I think we're living through a transformative time.  Credentialed, intelligent, experienced, and charismatic individuals in middle management are running aground because they maintain a bubble of professional isolation between themselves, and the outcomes of their actions.

These bubbles of gatekeeping, risk-aversion, and cowardice are transformative devices that render all outcomes to loss, thus making all management an exercise in stupidity.

It's possible that my project manager client will survive the next round of cuts because he finally stumbled upon the ancient concept of competitive market pricing.  That of course assumes that he'll concede to the "risk" of going against his misinformed instincts.

The lighting manufacturer is teaching everyone in the market to avoid the toxic, costly nonsense of doing business with them.  It likely hasn't dawned on this individual that we have ready access to a great many purveyors of equally overpriced, underperforming, ugly minimalist light fixtures made by sad people in slow factories.  I'm confident that we can present options that won't result in several years worth of embarrassing failure for the design professionals to consider.  

Sure the design teams are getting kickbacks from this guy to pick his sad lights.  But then again, maybe even Architects will look deep into his unblinking reptilian eyes, and see that his stupidity is as deep and vast as the regret they have for pursuing their soul- crushing vocation.  I figure I've got a one in ten shot of talking them out of the stupidity. 

For myself, I'll be asking questions before I bid on anything with this foolish manufacturer listed.  If we're not allowed to work around them, we'll avoid the jobs altogether.

 

 

[Charles R. Stevens]

And how thick is the tome that lists people not to do business with? Mine is taller than I am. 

 

it includes chapters of “types” to avoid as well. 

[George N. M.]

I generally agree with Rockstar but I think things are more nuanced that what he sets out.  Yes, there are stupid people out there and some of them are of actual low intelligence.  But often it is often the situation that someone does not recognize that they are making sub optimum decisions because they either have other factors working on their decision making or they do not recognize their own shortcomings in a particular field.

For example I have known very good attorneys who were babes in the woods about many other things.  I known one whose opinion on certain legal issues I value highly but if it were raining soup he'd go outside with a fork.

In Rockstar's example of the folk from the company with expensive but defective light fixtures their representative may have been told by his higher ups, "Give nothing away and just play for time and sting them along for as long as you can."  He probably knew full well that the fixtures were a POS but, for whatever reason, did not want or could not admit that.their product and business practices were very substandard.  Often, when I ran into this sort of thing as a lawyer I ended up saying, OK, we can resolve this the easy way or the hard way.  Either you do X, which you know is the right thing to do, or we can go to court and you can spend lots of money on your attorneys only to have the judge tell you to do what I am asking you for now.  I get paid the same either way."  That approach oftem but not always, worked pretty well.  But I always made sure beforehand that it was a threat that my client would back up.

We have all seen either others or ourselves make "stupid" decisions in relationships.  That can be driven by hormones, unrealistic expectations, or some illogical need.

A "stupid" decision or course of action may seem counter productive to a neutral outsider but may make perfect sense to the person in place.  If the person's goal is to stay on the right side of his or her boss and keep their job then any thing that furthers that goal is logical even if it does not.  In business not every positive outcome can be measured by the ultimate bottom line.  There are often unknown agendas and motivations which seem illogical but are real nonetheless.

As an attorney, particularly as a prosecutor, I have seen lots of folk dealing with their own "stupid" decisions.  Some of them did a risk/benefit analysis and came up with the wrong answer.  Some of them gave into an impulse and didn't consider the potential consequences.  And, some were classically stupid.  When I was doing child protection cases it realized that the common thread that ran through many people who were not "minimally adequate parents" (a really low bar) along with obvious things like mental illness and various chemical dependencis is that al lot of them just weren't very bright.

Humans are very conradictory and contrary animals who often do not act logically and do not make optimum decisions for themselves, others, their emplpyers, etc..  We are often surprised and respect someone who we see consistently making good, logical decisions for themselves and others because it is an uncommon trait.

One of the things I like about being older is that I seem to make fewer "stupid" decisions.  Whether that is the result of life experience or "wisdom" (maybe they are the same thing) I don't know but I do like not having negative consequences happen as often as they did many years ago.

GNM

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning,

A Fact of Life. "Normal", is a setting on the Clothes Dryer. Nothing more!!

Neil

[Charles R. Stevens]

“You have to be young and dumb to be old and wise” eh George…

older I get the more I think you should be licensed to reproduce. As you say, minimally effective parenting is a low bar o obtain. Then again, have you seen the people with drivers licenses?!

[George N. M.]

Charles, unfortunately we saw some parents whose only definable skill was fertility.  It was sad, though, when we saw people who loved their kids as much as anyone and "minimally adequate" parentling was just beyond their abilities.  Almost all our cases involved neglect rather than abuse.

An argument can certainly be made for a parenting license.  With a driver's license you at least have to have a Learner's Permit.

GNM

[Charles R. Stevens]

Parenting is stressful. I have come to realize if you think you’re doing it right you probably aren’t. If you worry you are doing it wrong, you’re in the right track. 
lot corse buy the time you figure it out your out of a job, lol

then again, I have found that the first 18 years were the easy part. 
 

to quote my mother, “pregnancy is an illness you catch from men, it lasts for 9 months but the complications go on for ever…” a wise woman