A few weeks ago at her early retirement party, I was reminded of a negative self-assessment my former boss Maureen used to make--that she was too wishy-washy to be a dynamic manager. Now, I always thought wishy-washy was an odd phrase, possibly inspired by the sloshing sound of a Kenmore agitator. By it, Maureen meant you could talk her into almost any position on any issue, if you were persuasive.
She wished she wasn't that way. "Aren't great leaders decisive? Once they make up their mind, that's it? I could never do it. First I could see one side of an issue, then I could see the merits of the other side. So my final decision was often to make no decision."
It occurred to me at the party that she was describing computers, not leaders. Computers are better than us at ignoring shades of gray, and--damn the ambiguities--plunging into action. A computer either performs a task or it doesn't. It knows only two truths: the 0 and the 1. It either can do long division or it can't. Either on or off. Up, down. Black, white. Here, to hell and gone.
Which describes a core problem of the new economy. It's being run by people who think it's a virtue to think like computers. The economy is all about automation and efficiencies of scale. It should be about making a life. Consider the logic of implementing a computer-based strategic defense system in which a supercomputer monitors the stratosphere, alert for incoming missiles, and able to plot a course of response within seconds of a sighting. I recognize the necessity of being able to launch nuclear payloads without stopping to think. But it's a shame to let the world die without someone in authority somewhere experiencing a nanosecond of vacillation.
Maureen's problem was that as a manager, she was too decent a person to act in a binary fashion. I can imagine that there were moments when, as a manager, she might not have pulled the plug quickly enough on a project that was going sour. Her managerial motto was something like:
"Be nice, work hard, and hope for the best."
On the other hand, she ran her part of the department through 20 years of ceaseless reorganization. In all that change, morale was a roller coaster of ups and downs. As far as I can recall, she always made her deadlines, came in under budget, and kept the folks who worked under her from going at one another with crowbars.
This makes me want to reassess her baleful assessment of wishy-washy. Maybe managers who send their teams to hell to fetch a pail of water, are not the final word on effectiveness. The further this information revolution drags on--what is it, 25 years since the Altair 8800 kicked off the microprocessor age?--the more I see the need for machines to suggest harsh solutions while we stand up and be wishy-washy about implementing them. Let them blast away at us with uncaring clarity, and let us respond with texture and nuance and ambiguity.
You probably know how this story ends. Maureen didn't just take early retirement, she was squeezed out by the pod people. They didn't tell her to go, they just made her life so miserable--she, who gave the organization everything that was in her--that leaving began to look good.
Well, it's the company's loss, because the crying need in the workplace today is not for faster, crunchier numbers but deeper, better people. Brute speed is an idiot intelligence. The human touch--a wishier-washier approach to management--is harder to program.
Contributing Editor Michael Finley has been a computer pundit for nearly two decades.
