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OJB's Laws

Entry 2277, on 2023-06-16 at 11:34:39 (Rating 4, Comments)

Many people have created "laws" which they claim, either seriously or with some degree of wry derision, explain various phenomena in the world.

Here are a few of my favourites...

Sturgeon's Law (or Sturgeon's Revelation) is an adage stating that "ninety percent of everything is crap". It was coined by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science fiction author and critic, and was inspired by his observation that, while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, most work in other fields was low-quality too, and so science fiction was thus no different. (from Wikipedia)

Acton's Law, which states that "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", certainly appears to have some credibility when we look at political trends. How often does a government start off reasonably, and with good intentions, but after a few years becomes corrupt and arrogant?

Hanlon's Razor is the advice to "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." Sure, sometimes malice is the correct explanation, but more often than not, pure incompetence is a more realistic one.

The Peter Principle states that "Employees rise to the level of their incompetence." In other words, people get promoted until they reach a position they are bad at, then don't get promoted any further. Of course, this applies to anyone in any hierarchy, not just employees.

There are many more too, but I chose some examples here which enhance and extend the main purpose of this post: to explain the poor state of management, governance, and general leadership in the world today. As an aside, note that I completely reject the concept of leadership; I neither need it nor accept it, so from now on assume the word "leader" is in scare quotes!

So now that we have dispensed with some examples from others, let me present mine. I don't claim these to be completely original - of course, most of the others aren't either - but I do claim some acknowledgement for grouping these together and for the exact wording used.

So here are my laws...

OJB's First Law: "The people in charge have no idea what they are doing". Here I'm saying that leaders are out of their depth, and really have nothing more to recommend them as leaders than anyone else.

This explains a lot about why the world is such a mess: why there are unnecessary wars, why many institutions and companies perform so poorly, and why many people have little or no confidence in the institutions we have created.

Note that this shouldn't be taken too literally. There are some leaders in some situations which might have possibly done an essentially good job in their role, but in the vast majority of cases, anyone else could have done the job as well, or maybe even better.

This law applies to all levels of leadership, from petty bureaucrats and junior managers to international leaders (Biden and Putin immediately spring to mind).

I'm not saying there is much we can do about this, because the systems for appointing leaders are very well entrenched, but at least if we acknowledge my first law we can begin to understand why the world is run so poorly.

OJB's Second Law: "Senior leadership is motivated by theory, and ignores the reality of the real world." This can be stated more pithily like this: "in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they aren't".

When you look for this phenomenon you will see it a lot. When a new strategy is explained by a leader it might sound good, although often on later reflection the initial promise is seen to be lacking. Also, the people expected to implement the new strategies might see numerous practical problems with them, but the leadership likes to focus on the "big picture" (see my third law). However, as time goes by the problems with practice become more and more apparent forcing another, equally flawed, system to be established in a eternal and pointless attempt at fixing the situation.

OJB's Third Law: "There is no such thing as *the* big picture, there is just *a* big picture, which is one of many".

How often do we see more junior people's opinions being dismissed because those people cannot see "the big picture" like the management can? The problem here is the use of the word "the", as if there is only one big picture which only leaders are astute enough to apprehend. There is no one big picture, there are many, and which is best can be highly subjective. Additionally, big pictures tend to be highly abstract and ignore the realities of implementation (see law 2).

OJB's Fourth Law: "Leaders like to have a horde of sycophants to reinforce their superior abilities", or to put it more amusingly: "Leadership is like a mutual admiration society in a lunatic asylum".

The concept of a mutual admiration originated almost 200 years ago, and refers to two or more people who admire each others skills and talent. But what if this was entirely unfounded on reality? It would be like the same thing happening between people entirely disconnected with reality, and that's what I claim leadership is like.

In fact, I do believe that my instantiation of this concept is original; I can't find this phrase anywhere else on the internet, but I think it is highly relevant.

OJB's Fifth Law: "We can excuse ignorance, because no one can know everything, and we can excuse arrogance, because some people are just naturally good at certain things, but the combination of the two is deadly."

This is basically a reformulation of the Dunning-Kruger Effect which is a real psychological phenomenon and states that as people's degree of skill or knowledge increases there is a "danger zone" where they know enough to think they know everything, but not enough to know how lacking their knowledge really is.

I would place most leadership in exactly this category. They know enough to think they know everything, but are too ignorant or stupid to know that this actually isn't true. You might notice that genuinely brilliant people, like scientists, and not leaders and not people in the media (even scientists in the media), often emphasise how incomplete or temporary their knowledge actually is, but this is rarely the case with managers, politicians, etc.

So those are my laws, which explain the current parlous state of the world. To summarise them in one sentence: Leaders have no idea how to make things better beyond what most other people might also have, and they follow theories and ideologies instead of practical solutions, they have a big picture model, but that is completely arbitrary and many others also exist, to reinforce their certainty they have many like-minded supporters around them, and they are too ignorant to genuinely realise how ignorant they actually are, but too arrogant to try to attempt any self-improvement.

I challenge you to watch a political interview, or listen to a management announcement in future and not see most, if not all, of these laws in action. And when you do, everything that is wrong with the world will suddenly make a lot more sense!

Comment 1 (7447) by Jim Cable on 2023-06-16 at 19:43:39:

As always, Owen - good, solid, inarguable, intellect-soothing stuff. I really enjoyed perusing your deliberations.

For some reason I was reminded of a story about Socrates or Plato who, when challenged to declare who was the wisest philosopher, said he didn't know. The questioner persisted with, "But all the other philosophers say that you are the wisest philosopher."

Supposedly the reply of Socrates/Plato was. "All the other philosophers know nothing but they think they know everything. I know nothing and I know I know nothing - therefore I must be the wisest philosopher."

Another item recalled concerned Andrew Carnegie whose gravestone features the edict - "Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself."

Comment 2 (7448) by OJB on 2023-06-16 at 22:42:18:

Yes, that story of Socrates is a very well known one, and I like it.

I just watched the PM talking on TV; he had about 4 mindless sycophants around him, all nodding and looking as if they completely agreed with everything he said. Reminded me of rule number 4.

Comment 3 (7469) by Anonymous on 2023-07-30 at 12:00:09:

Love and agree with all your Laws here Owen, the one that really resonates is the 5th Law. Sadly many people in leadership positions have both which when makes all the other Laws essentially hard to avoid.

Comment 4 (7470) by OJB on 2023-07-30 at 12:06:50:

Yes, that’s what it really reduces to in the end: arrogant and too blind to know that their arrogance us misplaced. Everything else follows from that.

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