The human species is both blessed and cursed with an impressive power of recall.1 Recall allows us to review the past, searching for wins to replicate and losses to learn from. When we contemplate the present and future, sequences — the order of things — are difficult to ascertain or predict with any accuracy, but in scanning the past we can often easily see connections that escaped us at the time. We may notice that action B resulted from action A or that more activity in this particular venue at a particular time would have prevented this particular outcome. The power of recall is an important and mostly positive skill, but recall can also cripple us with regret and the subsequent need to overcompensate in future endeavors.
By recalling past information we can discern patterns (another human skill) and sometimes predict future events based on present choices, which generally is a good thing. Recognizing patterns kept our ancestors safe and fed by allowing them to understand when and where predators tended to lurk and when and where prey was likely to be about. Similarly, pattern perception teaches us to stay off Facebook when our boss is most likely to to stop by or to know which day of the week the grocery shelves are best stocked.
A problem arises, though, when we rely too much on that 20-20 hindsight and try to control, rather than just anticipate and perhaps shape, the present and future with what we have learned. Because we like to find patterns we imagine design even when none is there. We shake our fist and wonder, “Why does it only rain on weekends when I plan to barbecue outside?” Or, we discern figures in random clouds: “Look at that! It’s a donkey!” These patterns are, of course, nonsense, driven by wishful thinking and psychological quirks like selection bias.
But what about when our hindsight combined with our ability to suss out patterns causes us to overcompensate for past errors? Don’t get me wrong. Reviewing the past is vital so that we may identify mistakes, determine their causes, and learn from them. However, an important lesson we often overlook is that, except with the benefit of hindsight, some errors we identify may not have been preventable or avoidable. In other words, sometimes all we are left with is saying with a flourish, “it happens.”
Typically, when people react to past error, they tend toward a lock-down mentality. They want to establish more control so that errors cannot arise. All this brings to mind a former colleague of mine who convinced our boss that we could mitigate error by having all work and decisions reviewed by an array of individuals. Her preferred method? Forms! Forms soon abounded, and we even hired someone, this woman’s relative in fact, to develop more and more forms for us to use.2
Employees started joking that we would soon need forms to access other forms, and, sure enough, in time, that’s exactly what happened. Such redundancy became the norm, and I came to understand that redundancy is micromanagement on steroids. Almost every form required multiple signatures to be obtained in a strict sequence from various authorities, and each signature line had a little checkbox next to it. If someone signed the form out of sequence or did not check the box next to their signature, the form was considered incomplete. No one was ever able to explain what the checkbox indicated, but it had to be checked. Maybe it was her analogue version of a captcha challenge test.
As we have seen in a previous essay, the more we try to control, the less we control, and increased control is rarely a useful strategy for problem solving let alone problem prevention. As we clamp down, we often generate more errors and lots of useless work, such as forms to access forms and signed approvals on top of signed approvals. As with all attempts at control, while certain errors may be avoided, redundancy primarily spawns new mistakes and much waste.
Generally, the rise of more errors and wasted resources causes control freaks to suffer a severe cognitive dissonance. They reason that because they have maximum control, errors and waste either do not exist or are due to others’ failures. Control freaks are driven to clamp down and then clamp down again by their belief in their own superiority and a pathological fear of failure, the former being untrue and the latter unwise. All too often, control freaks act like freaks because of the one reality they cannot control or extinguish: it happens.
Control freaks imagine they can constrain the future by constraining the present. They do not know how to predict the outcomes of their decisions and non-decisions, though, and they struggle to account for the inevitability of both the dullish it and the outlandish it happening.
This is not all to say that laissez faire approaches to management are the answer. Although sounding tritish, “it happens” can be a powerful invocation but is not a magic formula to shirk a reasonable effort to quash it from happening. But, we also must, in retrospect, accept that sometimes, beyond our ability to anticipate or vanquish, it happens.
Perhaps you will find some wisdom in this essay as you finish it. You may wish it longer or shorter or have thoughts to burnish it. Still, no matter how much you try to avoid or abolish it, no matter how much you pull or push, “it happens.”
Share your thoughts on this topic or participate in a discussion by leaving a comment below or by contacting me directly by email:
You must register with Substack to leave a comment, which stinks but is painless and free.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Post this essay on social media or send it by email to someone you want to inspire/annoy.
Subscribe to receive my weekly newsletter and special editions directly to your mailbox.
You can improve your ability to achieve your organization’s mission.
Visit my website and reach out to me to learn how.
Meanwhile, Californians are endowed with a bizarre, stupid, and ultimately self-defeating power of recall.
During meetings, nothing garnered a collective moan like when she would intone, “Now, no one hates forms more than I do, and far be it from me to propose another form,” followed inevitably by “but…”
Gosh, It Happens