Chapter 35. Don’t Try Justifying Stupid Systems

I was traveling on the subway the other day when we encountered a problem. It was fairly simple. Someone had messed with a security door and triggered an alarm—or something. This brought the train to a standstill, probably quite rightly. But it did this in a very long tunnel. The train couldn’t move until the fault had been rectified, which involved finding the train manager and getting him to reset the triggered alarm. All fairly simple.

I was running very late for a meeting, so asked if there wasn’t a better system. The train manager spent about 20 minutes justifying why this system was the best for everyone concerned, him, staff, train authorities, everyone that is except me, the poor passenger. Much better if he’d just said, “Yes, it’s a useless system and I shall recommend we change it; thank you for your concern.”

And I bet you have a dozen useless systems within your organization—we all do. Best not try to justify them. If you can’t change them, put up with it, get on with it, but don’t try tricking the staff into thinking it’s all fabulous. It isn’t, and you lose respect and trust if you try convincing people that it’s fine when they know it’s not.

I’m not saying you should go round lamenting loudly everything that is bad about your company—far from it, that road leads only to ruin. Remember, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Just don’t try justifying something you know is stupid, especially to your team.