Monday, December 29, 2008

Detail

In fact, a sensible (yet a wanting character) administrator should not put up operation instructions that assume the front line staff could exercise common sense - they invariably fail.

But, if we could not put up Exercise your common sense as an operation guideline, it would also be impossible to improve the condition by having more staff training or better equipment - as claimed by some of our senior officials.

The reason is simple: no training or equipment could handle all possible scenarios that happen in the real world. (Albert Einstein was wrong: God does throw dice with the universe. Everything, by the law of quantum physics, happens in a chaotic and unpredictable manner; accidents, however improbable, would occur - usually on the most inconvenient day.)

Alas, now you come to realize why the guideline says "It is not within the hospital area" and "Dial 999". These are things with a clear boundary and could be done by anyone with a motor cortex.

PS. The problem is, while a responsible administrator should never use Exercise your common sense as part of the operation instruction, its application should always be encouraged in real life practice. Many extra-terrestrials have gone so far to forbid the use of this very capability and penalize those who try to be sensible.

That's the real tragedy.

1 comment:

TW said...

This is the essence of "modern management". Everything is put down as "guidelines" and "protocol". This is inevitable for big organization to run. I am a "common sense" person, or more correctly, a sixth sense" person. Therefore I really cannot become a good managerial person. People very good at these are really genius, we have a few in our specialties.