Following the (management) crowd

This is a post in my Ethics, Lazy Management, and Flawed Thinking series - see https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/11/ethics-lazy-management-and-flawed.html.

One of the fairly widely used approaches to many matters is: "What have others done, and what are they doing?"

In engineering, it was an early approach, before the development of materials science and reliable design equations a couple of centuries ago, to keeping things from falling down.

Slightly more rigorously, in court decisions it is aimed at taking advantage of previous thinking by "good thinkers", avoiding reinventing the wheel, and attempting to ensure matters are properly considered. 

Socially, the "what is everything else doing" approach is a form of control - enforcing herd thinking, compelling people to be sheeple, suppressing any difference / dissent, and it has been a plague for millennia that reached its extreme in nazi Germany in the 1930s, and deserves comparison to that whenever it occurs since.

My experience suggests that many management programmes are based on what others have done.

In the good sense, this means that things like improved management of safety spreads through other companies (which I have seen since the 1980s).

In a less salubrious sense, much as happens in engineering, it means there are fashions and fads.

Worst of all, it can mean that companies introduce measures that harm people, or have potential harm for some people, without having thought of that matter.

This is particularly likely in the case of management that has limited awareness of "other" people - e.g., all male Boards, all white Boards, all cis / hetero Boards, etc - unless they exercise careful, deliberate, and specific attempts to be aware and think of minorities.

Boards and management more generally have been getting better at that - slowly, too slowly - in my nation over recent years, maybe a couple of decades.

However, they need to be aware that lazy or flippant / trivial / glib / nominal consideration of matters that affects the human beings who work for them will not protect in a court case, in the worst outcome, but I would also hope they have some pride in their job (and I know that at least some do) and want to do their job to the best of their ability.

So, if another company introduces a measure, or has something that may address a matter you are considering, take the time to think about everything involved carefully, properly, and clearly. If you are not sure on particular aspects, seek expert help.

Don't, whatever you do, use the glib lies that I experienced from some "managers" in the 80s and 90s and say "well I'd be grateful if X".

People who do that don't just look like idiots, they are idiots - and incompetent managers to boot.