Ducks in a Row: the Dichotomy of Absolutes
by Miki Saxon
I read a great post by Jennifer Miller on the ubiquity of ‘perfect’ in descriptions and the dangers of embedding perfection as a goal in corporate culture.
It reminded me that ‘perfect’ and ‘perfection’ are right up there with ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ on the overused/abused scale—more, actually, since they represent a condition beyond human abilities.
Humans don’t do absolutes particularly well.
They do better on a strictly personal level when they have absolute control over all parts of the equation, but even then their score leaves much to be desired—just consider the infidelity statistics.
Add to that the fact that the standards themselves are a moving target. Even those that seem to be absolute, like murder, have a definition that changes with societal attitudes towards what constitutes a victim.
Since humans so often fall short of perfection, society and corporations codify the definitions to make it easier to adhere to them. That’s especially important when it comes to ethical stances, which is why condoning deviations, as described yesterday, is so devastating to the organization.
The take-away is simple: never establish goals that set you or your people up for failure.
If you are prone to talking in absolutes, “we will always…” here is a simple rule to guide you.
“We will always” is acceptable if you are discussing well defined intangibles, such as ethics and values that apply equally to everyone in the organization, but isn’t applicable in setting tangible goals, such as quality rules for defects.
Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/
July 20th, 2010 at 6:55 am
Miki,
Thanks for the shout-out and I agree– we humans don’t do “absolutes” very well at all. There is so little in life that IS absolute. Yet, we continue to insist on making everything fit neatly into some category.
I confess to being guilty of that sometimes as well….
July 20th, 2010 at 7:54 am
Hi Jennifer, I think we all do it at times.
Perhaps it’s fear that leads people to force things into neat categories yielding a (false) sense of control over them; also, absolutes eliminate the need to think. Not to mention ideologies—where would they be without them?
Thanks for stopping by.