WHEN we make it difficult for organization members to acknowledge their mistakes and have them forgiven, we have designed organizations that reduce risk taking, encourage lying, foment distrust, and, as a consequence, decrease productivity.
For example, in the U.S. military, officers are subjected to the "doctrine of zero defects."[39] Officially, the doctrine is designed to encourage double-checking of the operation and maintenance of inherently dangerous and easily damaged mechanical systems. The justification for a zero-defects policy in such activities as aircraft maintenance and nuclear weapons handling is obvious. But the doctrine has been extended — at least informally — to nonmechanical systems, so that officers who make significant mistakes of any sort destroy their long-term careers, because once mistakes are documented and become part of personnel files, they are virtually impossible to "erase." Therefore, any major mechanical, managerial, or social mistake becomes a constant impediment to promotion — particularly promotion to the higher ranks, where the competition is most intense.
Adherents of several religious traditions define grace as forgiveness raised to the highest level in the form of unmerited favor. Evidently, grace is not an integral part of the military's personnel system.
Because military personnel know that their careers depend upon error-free records and because they are aware that mistakes are unlikely to be forgiven, many officers "shade the truth" in their reports to superiors, learn to distrust one another, and become cautious and noninnovative in their approach to problem solving. The result is disastrous. As one officer said, "You show me an officer who hasn't made a mistake in a year or two and I'll show you a man who has been afraid to try anything."[40]
I would expand his comment: "You show me a manager, subordinate, teacher, preacher, student, parent, child, politician, or anyone else who hasn't made a mistake in a year or two, and I'll show you someone who has been afraid to try anything of significance."
The reluctance to forgive and the consequences of such reluctance are not unique to the military. Should you doubt the validity of that assertion, try to get an F expunged from your university transcript for the semester you lost interest in school because of a broken romance; or try to get a poor performance appraisal — written by an incompetent supervisor — removed from your company's personnel records; or try to get the record of your arrest for a minor teenage indiscretion removed from your police file after twenty years of exemplary conduct as an adult.
In fact, cautious inactivity occurs in virtually all formal organizations, because we generally have no processes, procedures, or policies for granting forgiveness. This is particularly unfortunate, since the ancillary effects of grace are risk taking, innovation, reality testing, and community building. It is interesting that although forgiveness is absent from the formal organizations in which we spend a fair proportion of our lives, it tends to be integral to the religious traditions that govern us outside those organizations. I think one can say, without doubt, that forgiveness — "the willingness to give up resentment ... or claim to requital" (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, 1969) — is one of the cornerstones of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. It perhaps receives its highest form of expression in the concept of grace. Grace, in turn, is defined by Merriam-Webster as "unmerited divine assistance given man for his regeneration or sanctification." And Paul Achtemeir calls grace "that which brings delight, joy, happiness ... the good fortune, kindness and power bestowed by the gods upon divine men, moving them to miraculous deeds."[41]
The need for organizational policies, procedures, and processes that facilitate forgiveness and grace became vividly apparent to me a couple of years ago when a neighbor, Ed, who is a commercial airline pilot, made a mistake when recording his work schedule in his calendar. As a result, he failed to show up to fly his plane on its journey from the East Coast of the United States to Bermuda. It seems that neither the ninety-odd snow-crusted passengers — primed for their February vacations in the sun — nor the airline's managers, who had to cope with the ensuing customer complaints, were exactly overwhelmed with gratitude for Ed's forgetfulness. In short, when a pilot doesn't appear in the cockpit at the appointed hour, it is considered "poor form" by almost everybody. Clearly worried, Ed told me about the event and about a rather ominous-sounding internal investigation that would take place the next day at company headquarters.
"Are you in serious trouble?" I asked.
"Very serious trouble," he replied. "I could get fined, reduced in rank, suspended, dropped in seniority, or fired. They can do damn near anything to me, and about all I can do is take it."
"My God, Ed, that sounds awful. What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to invoke the Asoh defense," said he, apparently assuming that I would know exactly what his intentions were. Since I didn't, I asked for a more comprehensive explanation, and that is how I learned the story of Captain Asoh and the concept of grace.
It seems that Captain Asoh — Captain Kohei Asoh to be exact — was the Japan Air Lines pilot who, on November 22, 1968, landed his DC-8 jet — with ninety-six passengers and eleven crew members aboard — two and a half miles out in San Francisco Bay but in nearly exact compass line with the runway. According to Ed's version of the affair, Captain Asoh landed the plane so gently that many of the passengers were unaware that they were in the water until someone pointed out a sailboat on the port bow. Ed further contends that Captain Asoh landed it so expertly that no one was injured, no one was bruised, and no one even got wet feet as the passengers were rowed in inflatable life rafts to the nearest land. Even the airplane suffered only minor structural damage, and it was salvaged before the ravages of irreversible salt water corrosion set in. Regardless of how competently he did it, though, the fact that Captain Asoh, a veteran pilot with approximately 10,000 hours of flying time, landed his plane two and a half miles out in the bay irritated a large number of people.
Shortly afterward, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) held a preliminary hearing to set the ground rules for what they and others assumed would be a minimum of six months of bitter, recriminatory testimony to determine who was at fault, who was to blame for the debacle. According to the story told by pilots, lawyers were leasing suites at nearby hotels in preparation for the "vicious battle" to follow. Newspaper reporters and TV crews were assembling en masse to cover the public hearings. Representatives of foreign governments were rushing to San Francisco to ensure that the interests of their citizens would be protected.
In short, the whole thought process and consequent investigative procedures were predicated on the assumption that the proceedings inevitably would be adversarial and that the task of finding the culprit (or culprits) responsible for the accident would be, at best, difficult or, at worst, nearly impossible.
Captain Asoh, however, was of a different mentality. He apparently failed to realize that most of us live by Ogden Nash's credo: "Never apologize; never explain." Captain Asoh seemed unaffected by the common assumption that forgiveness by formal organizations is unlikely and that any admission of fault, culpability, or wrongdoing is the preamble to personal calamity. Alternatively, Asoh may have assumed that everyone's interests in an organization are best served by actions that open up the possibility of graceful forgiveness and consequent reconciliation.[7]
Captain Asoh was the hearing's first witness. The eyes and ears of the world were focused upon him — including those of private citizens, angry passengers, representatives of pilots' associations, lawyers, newspaper reporters, and representatives of a variety of governments — and all persons present leaned forward and braced for the conflagration that it seemed would inevitably follow. Asoh took the stand, and — as the story goes — the investigator in charge opened the hearing with the penetrating question: "Captain Asoh, in your own words, can you tell us how you managed to land that DC-8 Stretch Jet two and a half miles out in San Francisco Bay in perfect compass line with the run-way?
Asoh's reply was, "As you Americans say, Asoh fuck up!"
According to the story recounted by my pilot friend, with those words, the hearing was concluded. All had been said that could be said, and nothing more of consequence could be added. Only "details" remained to be clarified.
Since my neighbor first told me the story, I have scoured newspapers, talked with three of the persons who investigated the accident for the National Transportation Safety Board, spoken with a representative of Japan Air Lines, and read the Aircraft Accident Report.[42] One of the NTSB investigators that I interviewed said, "Although I didn't hear him say those exact words, one might argue they in effect capture the essence of what he said," and another NTSB investigator indicated that profanity is frequently censored from the final NTSB public reports, but I found no direct evidence that the captain had described his role in the accident so colorfully.
Without such definitive verification, I have concluded that the story's memorable conclusion is clearly apocryphal. However, I am equally certain that the story itself expresses a broader reality that many of us wish and know to be true. For instance, Rod MacLeish, in a Washington Star article entitled "The Fine Art of Apology," conjectured that Richard Nixon probably would have completed his term as president if he had possessed the combination of integrity and common sense required to offer contrition that essentially would have amounted to invoking the Asoh defense.[43] Had Mr. Nixon actually invoked the Asoh defense, I doubt that any of us would ever have forgotten the press conference in which he did it.
I have observed that airline pilots throughout the world are familiar with the story of Captain Asoh and are willing — even eager — to recount his exploit at the drop of landing gear. A short time ago, I happened to sit next to an off-duty airline captain who was flying across the country to attend his daughter's wedding. Upon learning of his occupation, I inquired, rather tentatively, "I'm a university professor doing some research on the possible role forgiveness plays in organizations, and I wonder, have you ever heard of someone in your profession by the name of Captain Asoh?" In a loud voice, audible throughout much of the airplane, he shouted, "Asoh fuck up!" Consequently, throughout the remainder of the flight, we were treated as semiperverts by most of our fellow passengers, who were on their way to a national convention of a fundamentalist Protestant church. They were apparently unaware that the storied Asoh — like the storied Jesus — was known for his commitments to forgiveness and, especially, to grace.
During the past few years, I have recounted the glorious story of Captain Asoh to managers from businesses, churches, academic institutions, and governmental organizations, and I have found that, apocryphal or not, the story has made Captain Asoh an instant folk hero of near-mythical stature. Although he is from another culture and was employed in a business with which most managers have little inside contact, his story has spoken to them.
Likewise, in my talks to managers, I have been impressed by the large number of people in my audiences who already know of Captain Asoh and also have heard the rumor that he committed suicide in the ultimate act of penance for his transgressions. Some have even reported reading newspaper articles describing his tragic act of despairing self-destruction. In fact, so many have reported his unseemly flight into that Ultimate Bay of Water — some with graphic descriptions of hara-kiri more reminiscent of Sbogun than the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle — I felt compelled to check the validity of their reports with officials of the National Transportation Safety Board and Japan Air Lines. Some with whom I checked reported being aware of the rumor, but I was assured by all that Captain Asoh is alive and — contrary to our belief that organizational forgiveness is not possible — that he continued to fly for Japan Air Lines until his retirement a short time ago.
Regardless of his present employment status, Captain Asoh's spirit is still "flying the plane" for those who revere a symbol of reconciliation. In fact, given its durability and the character of the rumors and embellishments that surround it, the story of Captain. Asoh runs the risk of falling into the same category of myth as the saga of Babe Ruth, who may or may not have "called his shot" prior to hitting his famous home run; the historical accounts of the Danish king who may or may not have offered to wear a yellow arm band as a means of defying the Nazis' attempts to deport Danish Jews; and the legend of Davy Crockett, who may or may not have died heroically in combat at the Alamo. Ultimately, I am saying that the story may not be factually true — but if it's not, why did we construct it, why do we want to believe it, why do we delight in it, and why do we say, "If it's not factual, it damn well ought to be"?
Whatever the facts of his statement in the hearing room, the truth is that the words attributed to Captain Asoh clearly touch, in a very powerful way, the nerve endings of a lot of people who live in a wide variety of organizations. Why is that so?
As I set about to answer my theoretical question, please keep in mind that I am discussing the Captain Asoh of the aforementioned story and not the Captain Asoh described in the Aircraft Accident Report (op cit.), although I suspect that the real Captain Asoh possesses many of the characteristics we attribute to him in our story.
Captain Asoh expressed — in unequivocal, unambiguous terms — the truth as he knew it. Faced with circumstances in which many of us find that deception is the norm, he didn't lie. In accordance with Sissela Bok's definition of lying, he didn't make a statement with the express purpose of misleading another person or persons.[44] How refreshing!
For managers who report that deception is rewarded in their work;[45] for the 69 percent in a national poll who said that "over the last ten years, this country's leaders have consistently lied to the people";[46] for those who read and believe a newspaper column saying that "ninety percent of testimony by executive branch witnesses is removed from the precise truth in degrees varying from the most subtle unconscious nuance to the greatest and most deliberate distortion";[47] for those students in Harvard Business School who reported about a classroom exercise, "It seemed as if everyone was lying";[48] for those who have read and find plausible the work of Wilfred Bion, who contends that some forms of mental illness stem from the learned capacity to lie;[49] and for those who have digested the work of Chris Argyris, who asserts that valid data is a requirement for personal growth and organizational effectiveness[50] — Captain Asoh's comment must provide welcome, albeit vicarious, relief. In short, when one is starved for truth, the truth is especially friendly.
Truth is friendly because it provides the basis for human connection. It relieves our alienation from one another. It serves as an antidote to anaclitic depression, a form of melancholy caused by being psychologically separated from others upon whom we lean for basic emotional support.[51] And it reduces the probability that we will experience marasmus, the mental and physical "wasting away" that results when anaclitic depression is not relieved by attachment to others — an attachment that our relationship to truth facilitates.
Paradoxically, a small percentage of the population finds Asoh's truthful statement a source of threat, rather than a source of delight, reassurance, and security. For a long time, I have wondered why, and I think I now understand the reason. If Asoh had the courage to tell the truth and cope with whatever consequences resulted, the rest of us are confronted with a similar risky choice. We could be expected to tell the unadorned truth rather than lying when we are faced with answering important questions in our organizations. In the absence of the possibility of forgiveness, that is a risk many of us would prefer not to take.
Therefore, I suspect — although I have no scientific proof to verify my suspicions — that the persons made most uncomfortable by the mythic Asoh's assault on deception are the ones who also believe that Asoh committed suicide. In other words, if others will not destroy Asoh for us when he tells the truth, then we must believe that he destroyed himself. Believing that, we are released, at least in our minds, from the responsibility of speaking the truth when life offers us the same opportunity. Sadly, we also are released from sharing in the delight of interconnectedness.
In what may appear to be another paradox, Asoh demonstrated a sense of humor and an appreciation of the absurd. These qualities not only were useful, but they also — unlike many other approaches to coping with life's problems — were healthy. George Vaillant, who did a long-term developmental study of the coping mechanisms of men, describes humor as "one of the truly elegant defenses in the human repertoire." Vaillant calls humor "one of mankind's most potent antidotes for the woes of Pandora's box." Although Vaillant conceded that humor was difficult to define, he described it as the "overt expression of ideas and feelings without individual discomfort or immobilization and without unpleasant effect on others," which, in turn, "lets you call a spade a spade.... [L]ike hope, humor permits one to bear and yet focus upon what is too terrible to be borne,... humor never excludes other people[52] [emphasis mine].
In a similar vein, Norman Cousins contends that humor has a healing quality to it. Cousins claims that he literally laughed his way out of a crippling disease his doctors believed to be irreversible and probably fatal.[53]
Whatever scientists or literati may tell us about a sense of humor, intuition tells me that it is important to individual and organizational effectiveness. I have never known a competent manager, leader, subordinate, colleague, teacher, preacher, parent, politician, or coach who didn't have a sense of humor or an appreciation of the absurd. Have you? Oddly, though, expression of humor is frequently discouraged in organizational settings. For instance, Michael Maccoby found that 53 percent of the managers he polled thought that a sense of humor was important for doing competent work, but only 14 percent of those managers felt that it was stimulated by work.[54]
Taking Maccoby's findings together with Vaillant's, you are left with the conclusion that in order to succeed, managers must give up one of the truly elegant means of coping. Or, as I said earlier, bullphrogs frequently die laughing, but steerphrogs seldom laugh. They just croak.[8] Captain Asoh was certainly no steerphrog; and we love him all the more for it.
Humor and absurdity also bind us together. If we can't express healing humor while at work, we can at least be grateful to Captain Asoh, who allows us to do it vicariously.
A hoary homily of management is, "you can delegate authority, but you can't delegate responsibility." To the best of my understanding, that bureaucratic aphorism means that you are responsible for your own individual performance. In addition, though, you are responsible for causing your subordinates to perform. If they perform competently, you are the cause of their success. If they perform incompetently, you are the cause of their failure, too.
As evidence of that policy, I point to athletic coaches who routinely are fired if their teams don't win. Teachers, too, are held responsible for what their students learn; if they don't cause their students to learn enough to make certain scores on standardized tests, the teachers are fired. Regardless of their professions, leaders are held responsible for causing their subordinates' performances.
In very concrete terms, if subordinates perform well, the manager gets a bonus. If subordinates perform poorly, the manager gets fired, generally with the explanation, "You failed to motivate your people." The manager's job, then, seems to be to alter the subordinates in some way.[9] A disproportionate number of management education programs are designed to deal with leadership rather than followership. If organization members can be seduced into believing that leaders are more responsible than followers as causal factors in organizational success, then followers don't have to behave responsibly toward their leaders, toward one another, or toward their tasks as they go about their work. Subordinates are treated as nonentities. Given that, is it any wonder that followers become apathetic and nonproductive in any organization that denies their unique contribution?
For me, the subtly malignant consequence of accepting responsibility for others' actions is best demonstrated by the relationship between students and teachers, because it is a relationship most of us experience during our lifetime. Specifically, a common maxim implanted in the heads of many teachers is, "If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught." Subjected to close scrutiny, that maxim involves a very perverse logic, because it implies that the basic responsibility for causing the student to learn belongs to the teacher. Like the management example, if the student does incompetent work, the teacher is assumed to be the cause and is held accountable for the student's incompetence. Following the same rationale rigorously, if the student does competent work, the teacher must get the credit for causing that, also. Thus, the student doesn't exist, except as a rather inanimate receptacle (some might say a chamber pot) for the teacher's competence or incompetence.
Is it any wonder that, relegated to being the effect of someone else's cause in the Great Classroom of Life, so many students become alienated and rebellious? Likewise, is it any wonder that, faced with such alienated rebelliousness, so many teachers burn out — also feeling alienated, rebellious, and guilt-ridden for failing to fulfill their responsibility to cause their students to perform at a level that either the teacher, the student, or someone else believes to be acceptable?
Likewise, politicians are held responsible for causing the behavior of their constituents. (The fact that we have destroyed, either metaphorically or actually, most of our presidents since Teddy Roosevelt, says much more about us than about the presidents we destroyed.) Thus, if the economy suffers from inflation, the president is held responsible for causing it, and we either oust him from office or take his life.
Parents — not God's providential will, the vagaries of the universe, genetic predispositions, or free choice — are considered responsible for causing their children's behavior. If their offspring behave badly, parents are made to feel guilty for their parental incompetence.[10] The list of supervisory responsibilities is apparently endless.
The relationships between managers and subordinates, teachers and students, elected officials and constituents, and parents and children have been called asymmetric relationships. These relationships are asymmetric because the distribution of powers and responsibilities is often lopsided in one direction or the other. (Remember, whining and passive aggression disproportionately confer power to subordinates, so power is not always lopsided in favor of the top dog.) When the participants in asymmetric relationships connive for the authority figure to assume all the responsibility, the leaders and followers are engaging in mutual destruction. To characterize such fruitless behavior, I have coined the term parabiotic. A combination of the words parasitic and symbiotic, the term describes a. comfortable, mutually destructive relationship — as when two leeches attach themselves to one another and proceed to suck one another dry.
Captain Asoh had the courage to pull the two leeches apart — by assuming responsibility for his own actions, nothing more and nothing less. In Argyris's terms, Captain Asoh "owned up."[55] He didn't blame the managers above him at Japan Air Lines; he didn't blame his flight crew; and he didn't blame the air traffic controllers. Nor did he absolve any of those parties of their particular responsibility when he said, "Asoh fuck up."
Accepting such a limited but realistic view of responsibility, Asoh again provided us with vicarious enjoyment. That enjoyment stems from seeing the possibility of being responsible for our own actions, whatever their quality might be, while at the same time being freed from the belief that we are responsible for causing the choices and actions of others — a responsibility we know, deep down, that we can neither accept nor fulfill.
Vaillant describes altruism as "getting pleasure from giving to others what you yourself would like to receive."[56] Through his implicit assumption that forgiveness and even grace were possible, Asoh provided us with the opportunity to meet our needs for altruism. Along with humor, altruism is one of the mature adaptations to life. As such, it provides a welcome alternative to its opposite — getting pain from taking from others what you yourself would rather not receive.
Whatever it is called, the expression of altruism is not only an experience that is existentially satisfying. It is also, as Edmund Wilson describes, a requirement for the survival of one's culture.[57] In fact, Wilson asserts that altruism is transferred genetically from generation to generation and that such transfer occurs because it has survival value. In more specific terms, cultures whose members express altruism in the form of forgiveness and grace survive. Cultures that lack the capacity for altruistic forgiveness and grace die.
Captain Asoh, in his statement of pithy reality, threw himself upon the mercy of the court and, by doing so, offered us the opportunity to express our innate altruism. Although we may not be aware of the reason for the pleasure we receive from his act, we are grateful to him for it.
Finally, Captain Asoh offers those of us who live much of our lives in unforgiving, zero-defect organizations the hope that divine forgiveness, in the form of grace, will be woven into the everyday fabric of organizational life. Someday, for example, organizations will
Provide routine means to wipe the slate clean periodically, removing adverse personnel actions from employees' files[11]
Celebrate formal ceremonies of grace, designed to release members from the condition of eternal punishment so characteristic of contemporary organizations
Provide training programs that reacquaint and instruct us in the fine art of apology and in the more difficult art of learning to accept apologies — with grace
Then organizations will discover other ways to make forgiveness and grace — in both a secular and a spiritual sense — an integral pan of our bureaucratic lives.
When that happens, the cloud of anaclitic depression and marasmus that hangs over our nonforgiving organizations will lift. Then we will emblazon in stone across the entrance portals of our places of work the good captain's immortal words, "Asoh fuck up" — not as an obscenity, but as a prayer that affirms both the best of our humanity and our potential for that which is truly divine.
[7] Japanese organizations have what I call ceremonies of wa ("harmony") to facilitate such reconciliation. In these "ceremonies," individuals who have made serious mistakes apologize for their actions and other members of the organization accept their apologies, restoring harmony by wiping the slate clean. See R. Whiting, "You've Gotta Have 'Wa.'" Sports Illustrated, 24 September 1979, 59–62+, for an example of that approach to improving organizational climate.
[8] For those who weren't reared in Texas, a steer is a castrated bull, and one way that managers are castrated (or involuntarily have their tubes tied) is to take away their sense of humor. Bullphrogs (managers with their sexual capacity intact) frequently die laughing, but steerphrogs seldom laugh. Steers don't have a lot to laugh about.
[9] I am always impressed by the word alter when used in the context of management and organization. I suppose one can make an argument for altering dogs and cats. One even might make a case for altering a rhinoceros if one has uncommon courage or limited mental acuity. If you alter people, though, you sterilize them — turning them into steerphrogs.
[10] I think it is very fortunate that parents are made to feel guilty or incompetent as the causes of their kids' problems. Otherwise, we psychologists and psychiatrists wouldn't have anyone to sit in our offices and purchase conversation for fifty-minute hours.
[11] An example of such a routine process may be found in a recent contract negotiated between the Hotel Owners' Association and members of the Restaurant Employees' Union in Washington, D.C. According to the Washington Post:
The contract change that brought the loudest response, besides the pay increase, was the Union's demand that disciplinary write-ups be destroyed after 18 months. No longer, Richardson explained to an excited crowd, could supervisors keep critical write-ups hanging over employees' heads forever. (P. Earley, "Hotel Employee Union Ratifies New Pact," Washington Post, 18 September 1981, B1)