One more thing. Your piece sparked an interesting discussion about heuristics with my son, who is experiencing his first overseas deployment at an army post in Bavaria. I realized this morning that your talk about SOP’s was being felt in real time as my wife & I try to fit ourselves into the routine of his household, specifically with regard to doing laundry. We are coming to the process from the point of view of people who have all the time in the world and of people who don’t need to impress anyone else. It’s exactly the situation I experienced years ago when visitors from a higher headquarters would drop in for extended stays!
Excellent! I’m ashamed to think how much time I spent (wasted) writing SOPs for my organization, only to re-write them when a real world event proved them worthless. Writing an SOP to solve (avoid) a potential problem that the organization has never experienced is silly.
Have you read “Bureaucracy” by Ludwig von Mises?
Very quick read and worth exploring.
https://mises.org/library/book/bureaucracy
I’ll check it out today!
It’s instructive
I’ve just stumbled across your Substack. It’s fantastic. Can’t wait to learn more about your beef with McCrystal.
Ted, thank you so much! I really appreciate your kind words.
One more thing. Your piece sparked an interesting discussion about heuristics with my son, who is experiencing his first overseas deployment at an army post in Bavaria. I realized this morning that your talk about SOP’s was being felt in real time as my wife & I try to fit ourselves into the routine of his household, specifically with regard to doing laundry. We are coming to the process from the point of view of people who have all the time in the world and of people who don’t need to impress anyone else. It’s exactly the situation I experienced years ago when visitors from a higher headquarters would drop in for extended stays!
Excellent! I’m ashamed to think how much time I spent (wasted) writing SOPs for my organization, only to re-write them when a real world event proved them worthless. Writing an SOP to solve (avoid) a potential problem that the organization has never experienced is silly.
You nailed it on personality over procedural continuity, absolutely agree