Decision Laundering II
All organisations engage in Decision Laundering. And we’re complicit.
It begins with our whiter-than-white job application and interview. ‘If I have a weakness, it’s that I care too much about puppies in this space going forward …’.
The potential boss knows that we know that they know that we’ve laundered the spots and stains and scuff marks from our previous jobs. In short - we’ve lied. Great fit, because his organisation does, too.
We get the job. We read and listen to the induction rah-rah stuff about People Are Our Most Important Resource (a ‘human resource’) and we know that they know that we know it’s mostly branding nonsense. All good.
Until …
‘My Gran is sick’. ‘You’ve got no leave, sorry.’ ‘But that thing about people being important …oh yeah…’.
The closer we are to decision makers, the more we witness institutionalised decision laundering. A poor, dubious, or sometimes illegal decision is made, and requires execution.
The boss (or the boss’s boss’s boss) tells us to do something. We do it. We do it well. Bleach it. We buff out any uneven edges. So rewarding to smooth the rough.
The further we are from the original decision, the less likely we are to notice the flaws in the decision, especially if those above us have done their jobs well and polished away those scratches.
The closer we are to the decision, the more challenging and therefore satisfying decision laundering is. It is rewarding both intrinsically and in our boss’s eyes, to turn a wonky widget into one that fits our boss’s Widget. There may be cognitive dissonance as we try to reconcile our execution of the decision with the the organisation’s slogans. We routinely shoehorn ill-fitting decisions into a glass slipper.
We deal with our deep unease by telling ourselves virtue stories.
We are helping the boss (parent). We are a good worker (child). We are thanked and possibly promoted and can pay our mortgage and care for our family. We are a team player. We serve a Greater Good that transcends our laundering of the dirt. The boss knows what she’s doing and we trust her. We get a thank you at the staff meeting.
There’s another corrosive effect of decision laundering boss’s always overlook.
If we know we’re laundering the dirty decisions that come across our desk clean, then what of all the decisions affecting us? What of the promotions and pay increases and benefits and other decisions? What went on behind closed doors? How can we know whether those decisions they were made fairly and legally and with my best interests taken into account? What can we believe? What soil was bleached white?
Do, or witness decision laundering often enough, and we become ethically numb to the whitening; seduced and soothed by the ten year old inside us who wants to please their parent.
Or we join the majority of workers protecting their souls by disengaging.
This is why it’s often the outsiders who point out the laundering - only to be rebuked and even shamed by an insider.
Colonel Nicholson : You're a fine doctor, Clipton, but you've a lot to learn about the Army.
What’s the answer?
Major Clinton could have responded to the list of virtuous outcomes by reminding his superior of his Widget: To defeat the Japanese. He could even have referred to sources of authority: for him as a Doctor, the Hippocratic oath, and for Colonel Nicholson, the multiple military codes against collaboration with the enemy, and the obligations on prisoners of war.
In short - he should have engaged in constructive subversion.
When subordinate widgets - the doing-of-good-work, the following-of-orders, the ‘attaboys’, are laundering the dirt from the original decison, then the superior Widget must be invoked. Everything must serve the Widget. If it does not, then it must be removed.
Or there will be a reckoning.
As in the movie, there will be a ‘What have I done?’ moment.