Chapter 104. Don’t Cut Corners—You’ll Get Discovered

Maybe you make airplanes—are you going to cut corners? Maybe use substandard metal in the wings? Replace the engines with junkyard replacements? I don’t think so. You’d get discovered pretty quick. Hey, there is an increasing trend of taking managers to court if they have been responsible for injury to anyone using one of their products which has been found to be faulty (by way of design or manufacture or cost cutting). Quite right, too. If we were all made to be personally responsible for what we do in our working lives, maybe things would get a whole lot better. Rant over.

Maybe you don’t make airplanes. Maybe you don’t make anything. Maybe you just program computers. Nice and safe. Can’t hurt anyone there can you? No? Sure? Think things through. Work out worst-case scenarios and be prepared for the fact that whatever we do as managers, we are responsible for someone or something that could get damaged, hurt, wounded, upset, impaired, killed—you name it.

Cutting corners ain’t worth it—you’ll always get discovered. I know you can get caught between the devil and the deep blue sea at times, with your boss telling you to do something and your principles telling you it is madness, but you need the job and the mortgage has to be paid, and it’s easier to shut up and pretend it’s all all right. But it ain’t. You’ll get discovered.

And you have to move heaven and earth to prove to your boss that cutting corners is a real waste of time. The old, “But what would the media/auditors make of this if they got hold of it?” argument often works wonders. As does asking about what insurance we carry or how the legal department has viewed this cost-cutting exercise. If you get told, “I haven’t bothered running it past them,” you can clap your hand to your head and shriek, “Oh, no, I’m working with a mad person.” Using humor can get someone else to realize they have overstepped the mark and need to think.