When I was a junior in high school, I had an intriguing conversation with the dean of students. I was not doing very well in my algebra classes. A major problem was that I lacked motivation. I saw no use for this particular technical skill. (I estimate that the state of Ohio spent something like $8,000 teaching me things like how to determine the volume of a sphere. So far, they have yet to recoup their investment.) So I asked this dean of students a very direct question: “why do I need to take this class? I fail to see the purpose.”
And he looked right at me and said, “you have to take the class because the Ohio Board of Education requires every student to take two years of algebra.”
You may have heard of the Toyota lean method of asking “five why’s.” But I had a sense at the time that even asking one single why was going to get me into even more trouble, so i gave up.
This academic factotum was very well-intentioned I suppose, but he had never taken any time to think beyond the bureaucratic requirement, and executing it.
One of my “Principles of Applied Stupidity” states that when smart meets dumb, dumb always wins, and this applied here. I got tired of arguing. It was easier to plod through the class, cram just enough to pass the test, and forget about it. A total waste of time and money for all concerned, except of course for the people who got paid to go through the motions of teaching me.
The problem with defaulting to a compliance instead of consciousness management model in most student situations is that, many people just stick with it for eternity.
I see this kind of compliance without consciousness whenever I go through a security line at the airport. Neither we, nor the TSA guards, are allowed to ask why. To keep the job, they must act like passive students, not like conscious purposeful adults. I recently went through one of those scanners, and apparently I’m the only person in the world who wears a money belt when they travel. The existence of this “lump” resulted in my being pulled out of the line for a special personal screening for high explosives. I am neither shy nor squeamish, I just wanna get on the plane, so I didn’t care. But what was truly fascinating to me was to watch these two guys go through the procedure of checking me for explosives. They were constantly referring to a manual and a series of procedures on a computer screen, asking each other, “is this the way to do it?” There was absolutely no consciousness or objectivity or asking “why?” They were in total compliance with the rules. Thinking about it would have no doubt made the job harder, as one would have to combat the feeling of “this is dumb.”
The trouble with systems based on total compliance is that in the end, they never win out over people who are conscious and have a purpose. Systems based on compliance are inherently finite, therefore there is always a way around them if someone wishes to access the infinite nature of the human mind to do so. It would be so much better if more responsibility and independence was granted to these screeners, so they could use common sense, not waste energy on pointless formalities, and have the ability to adapt to a possibly unexpected situation. As it is, unless the people at the head of the bureaucracy (many of whom, I’m willing to bet, have never actually searched anybody in an airport) have managed to anticipate every single idea that a terrorist can come up with, there will always be a hole in the system. I could give you endless historical examples of this. Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Maginot Line, the list goes on and on.
Re: consciousness versus compliance, I will never forget the day I went from playing in student/amateur orchestras to professional ones. In the student world, the people who ran things were constantly emphasizing the importance of blind obedience. In the professional orchestra world, we took great umbrage at any conductor who failed to understand that we knew what the hell we were doing, and really didn’t need all that much advice from you, thank you very much.
Of course, managing people via consciousness and purpose takes away the fun of having total control, and watching people do stuff “just because you said so.” So I guess I can see their point.
© Justin Locke
Justin Locke is an entertaining speaker. Call him at 781 330-8143 to discuss having him appear at your next event.
