Let’s forget the “bubble”, for a while. As well
as the noisy flutters of the stock markets, the inflating and
deflating ventures of the dot coms, the woes of the telecoms,
the bewildering bewilderment of analysts and economists who
failed to see the obvious two or three years ago. Let’s go a
bit farther back in time – and take another look at some
famous “laws” that can be of great practical value now
and in the future if we spend a little time understanding their meaning.
Before we look at the relevant laws, I think it’s
important to get rid of one that never existed and has been
widely misinterpreted – causing considerable damage.
“Moore’s law” (1964) is fiction. Gordon Moore did
not say that “computing power” (whatever that is
supposed to mean) would double every 18 months. And whatever
happens to computer technology does not mean that the whole
world of society, economy and human behavior is
revolutionized every year or so. That false perception has
been used for 37 years to sell hardware and software
“updates” that nobody needs. Even worse, it has
caused a widespread perception of “haste” that has
scared many people into hurried and poorly planned moves and
generated an unbelievable number of “business
plans” setting impossible short-term targets. There is a
simple thing that we can do with this myth. Forget it – and
concentrate on the realities of life and business. Where
things are changing, but in another way and with a different
pace – that can be slower, or faster, depending on the
specific nature of what we are doing or planning.
Gordon Moore found that in 1962-64 «the number of transistors per integrated circuit was
doubling every 12 months.» The trend was not confirmed in following years.
Over time, “manipulated folkore” arbitrarily defined the “doubling” period as 18 months
and extended the notion to a vague concept of “performance” or “speed.” That false “law” was used to sustain for 37 years a confusing perception that hardware and software
needed to be changed very often and that everything relating to information technology (as well as communication)
had to be managed with frantic haste.
There are four “laws” that, I think, we should
re-consider. Four different ways of answering the same
question: «why to things go wrong?». They are not
new, but they can teach us a lot about what’s happening, help
us to understand what’s going to happen – and what we can do
to make things work a bit better.
Murphy’s Law
This problem, of course, has been proven by facts since
the dawn of history. It’s been known as “Murphy’s
Law” since 1949. Apparently it was never defined as a
“scientific law”. It started as a comment by Edward
Murphy, an aeronautics engineer, complaining about things
going wrong. As we all know, it became established as the
simple notion that «if something can go wrong it will,
at the worst possible time.» It seems to happen more often
with computers than with any other type of equipment – but
that’s another story. Over the years it has generated
hundreds of variations and corollaries. Some are just jokes,
many are sadly true. With hasty management and clumsy
technologies the effects multiply. But Murphy’s Law can be
put to good practical use. If we understand that errors are
unavoidable and unpredictable, and will happen in unexpected
ways, we can set our plans with a healthy dose of flexibility
– and avoid the flutter and confusion that make things worse
when something goes wrong. The internet, with its effectiveness
in testing every step, can be a particularly useful tool for this purpose.
Murphy’s Law is also known as “Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives.”
Several collections of its variations are available online, such as
Murphy’s Laws and Murphy’s Laws and Corollaries.
Parkinson’s Law
The most common definition of Parkinson’s Law is that
«work expands so as to fill the time available for its
completion.» That is often true – but the remarkable
book written by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1958 was about
something else. It explained why organizations grow
regardless of an increasing or decreasing amount of work to
be done. In today’s environment, dominated by short-term
maneuvering, stock exchange manipulations, mergers and
acquisitions, the reverse is often true. In many cases the
size of organizations is suddenly reduced for reasons that
have nothing to do with the size of the tasks to be performed.
And that is done so hastily that the inefficiencies of overstaffed
or unnecessary departments aren’t eliminated. The resulting
mess is a structure that is understaffed where it should have more
resources, overweight where it needed some pruning –
as well as scared and confused everywhere.
Some of the problems have been getting worse in recent
years. But Parkinson’s book discusses many other organization
diseases in addition to the “law”. It’s even more
useful today as it was forty years ago.
Peter’s Principle
According to Peter’s Principle (1969) «people are
promoted to the level of their incompetence.» The
idea of “meritocracy” is that people doing a good
job are promoted. If they perform well in their new role,
they are prompted again. This goes on until they are assigned
a task for which they are incompetent – and there they stay.
Also in this case things are worse today than they were
when Laurence Peter wrote his book – because the notion of
“merit” is confused. People are often chosen or
promoted (or re-assigned, or fired, or scared) for reasons
that have nothing to do with competence or efficiency.
And... it’s blatantly confirmed by facts that many
companies have handled “new” business areas vaguely
and superficially – in the silly assumption that “growth
would fix everything”. And assigned to those tasks people who
were not competent to handle them. The results are sadly visible.
Other articles on related subjects
Dancing bulls and fat cows (December 1999)
Is hasty really fast? (January 2000)
Do androids dream of electric money? (February 2000)
Dot com tantrums (May 2000)
The millennium and the bubble
(January 2001)
Cipolla’s Laws
Above all, of course, there are the “fundamental
laws of human stupidity” so brilliantly defined by Carlo
Cipolla in 1988. It has always been obvious that
stupidity is the biggest destructive
force in the history of humanity. And another “law”
is appropriate in this context, known as Hanlon’s Razor:
«never attribute to malice that which can be adequately
explained by stupidity.»
What’s making it worse today is the “homogenized”
worldwide media systems. The silliest statement or the least reliable
“news” can be perceived as “true” simply
because they are repeated by so many apparently independent sources.
Hanlon’s Razor applies here as well: false or inaccurate
information can be spread deliberately or simply multiplied by stupidity.
It’s a crucial task for each one of us to be constantly on guard
against the dangers of stupidity. Non only what other stupid people can do,
but also what we can make happen because of those elements
of stupidity that exist in every human being. The worst fools are those
who don’t realize how foolish they are. And when human
stupidity is multiplied blindly by technology...
But we can make an intelligent use of technology. If we
use the internet (as well as, and in combination with, other sources
of information) to check the reliability of what we are told –
and to understand if our opinions and perceptions are reasonably
accurate or need to be corrected.
