It's also easier to give forgiveness than permission, especially in an institutional context. Forgiveness after the fact doesn't imply approval of the act the way permission beforehand does.
One of the criticisms I've often heard of Arab managerial and military-command culture (at least in conventional organizations) is that it strongly disapproves of individual initiative; in such a case, asking permission might satiate the cultural drive for top-down micromanagement while still allowing subordinates to contribute their local knowledge to the decision-making process.
Hasn't initiative been a hallmark of a successful military for much of history? I've heard it put forth as a chief reason for the success of Romans (phyric wars), French (Napoleonic wars), Prussians (Franco Prussian war) and Germans (WW2) to win engagements against their extremely rigid enemies.
Indeed. Which is, according to some quite convincing arguments, one reason Arabs have not done too well in modern conventional wars. Especially when going up against e.g. the Israeli military, which takes junior-officer autonomy to an extreme even by Western standards.
See "The influence of Arab culture on Arab military effectiveness", Kenneth D. Pollack (https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/11219). Pollack pulls up examples that don't even involve materially superior Western armies, such as conflicts against ill-equipped Iranian, Kurdish, or Sub-Saharan African forces.
An excerpt is below; what I can say from my understanding is that upper echelons of officers are deliberately understaffed, and superiors are encouraged to give general objectives (or sometimes even just areas of operation) to their subordinates rather than detailed orders; and much planning and communication is done peer-to-peer among officers of the same rank.
========
Among the many lessons that can be taken from the history of the Israeli Defense
Force (IDF) in combat, one key issue is the high degree of officer casualties, often
proportionally up to three times higher than enlisted casualty rates. Hence, leaders in the
IDF regard initiative as not just a point of pride, but an absolute necessity to overcome
leader casualties during battle. IDF Officer Candidates undergo training designed to force
them to develop initiative (some of these training techniques will be recommended in the
final chapter). In training, it is also emphasized that the commander will accomplish his
mission according to the general spirit of the command. Additionally, IDF standing
orders promote initiative (as well as aggressiveness an ' offensive spirit):
1. When orders can't get through, assume what the orders would be.
2. When in doubt, hit out. The short route to safety is the road to the enemy
hill.
The stat about 3x officers casualty rate is surprising, I would have imagined the enlisted would generally become cannon-fodder (for lack of a less demeaning word). I guess that's what makes the Israeli forces unique.
It's more common than you'd think actually. Another surprising one is the English army in WW1 where the officers mostly came from posh private schools, statistically they died in larger numbers than normal soldiers. It's intuitive to think it would be the reverse in that meat grinder.
Not so surprising. Same as how elite forces usually have higher casualty rates in wars - because they always go to where things are worst. No guarding a quiet front for the 101st Airborne or the Golani Brigade, and no hunkering down in a foxhole with a machine gun for the platoon lieutenant.
Yes, but they have permission to use initiative. Scope for initiative is expressly granted by superiors, with explicit bounds. And that freedom is expected to be used. It is part of the development of junior leaders in the military; they are given tests which can only be solved by lateral thinking.
That's not how I've seen "ask forgiveness" used in industry. Usually it's a self-confident maverick who goes off and does something that breaks the rules of organisation or process. I did it once; I thought I was doing the company a favour. Information Security came down on me like a ton of bricks, with good reason, and I nearly lost my job. There was no forgiveness. The Director ensured that it was well publicised and a lot of people learned from my hubris.
The phrase is a crock and should never enter your mind. If you're sure Your Way is best, ask for permission or get consensus. If you get neither, lodge your protest with your superiors and get on with something else. Then in a year's time perhaps people will look back and consider you a visionary, or a hot-headed fool...
Your experience serves as a valuable lesson that everyone should keep in mind. If you aren’t completely aware of the risks you’re taking you should be wary. Information security is something lot of folks are oblivious to in even the basic sense. So I completely understand how your situation happened and why you have an aversion to it. However, I still think there’s value in the phrase but it should be used judiciously. There are plenty of low/non-risk situations where the obstacles are entirely bureaucratic.
That said I think your cautionary tale is really valuable and your uncompromising view toward the phrase actually serves to emphasize how serious everyone should take it. If I were you I wouldn’t change a thing. Actions can have real and sometimes dangerous consequences.
We should always try to understand what we’re putting at risk (as much as we can) so at the very least we can weigh the unknown risks even when asking permission. If you can’t even list the risks off mentally that’s probably a good sign that you should stick to asking permission.
I think this was based on corporate policy and maybe due to the field you're in. It's also symptomatic of a rigid corporate structure that prevents employee initiative without the expressive permission of executives. If you're a large institution, especially a bank, and they have a lot of oversight & compliance concerns, then that explains your hesitation, if you don't have a lot of compliance concerns & regulatory issues, then this was a red-tape situation which was not warranted in your organization and very likely can lead to the end of a large company when flexibility is not possible. Companies like facebook internally with regard to features would not grow as it has, and to some degree even companies like google would not be where they are today either. To my understanding, many organizations grow beyond expectations when they don't have all the red-tape that other companies do. Valve for instance, they have a flat management structure and they're people innovate like crazy, and they hire people who are actively innovative, which often require initiative / independent thinkers.
In retrospect, it seems likely that no amount of officer genius could have won the Civil War for the South, but without it, they would have been completely crushed.
Perhaps the entirety of the European continent (or most of the world re: Germany) fighting back meant the war was essentially unwinnable no matter what, but perhaps the successes they did have were due to the process they used.
Right, but if we're going to wank poetic about the success of Auftragstaktik it's worth remembering that throwing people at the problem was repeatedly and conclusively even more successful. Should we draw deep business practice conclusions from either of those? The whole thing seems a bit silly.
Success is based on many factors, and if you're evaluating military cultures and command styles you have to control for those variables. In individual battles or campaigns with equal forces and materiel, German and Napoleonic and Israeli tactics have been very successful, it's just not enough to outweight any disparity in forces.
I do agree that trying to draw business practice conclusions from the very different military setting. This includes the quote of the OP.
Well they over extended themselves eventually, that doesn't mean they didn't dominate the battlefield early on. The Germany was very successful in the Franco Prussian war.
I could have used the US as an example too, as well as Russia by the end of world war 2, they went on to have a bit too loose of a command structure with their nuclear arsenal.
I feel like that's part of the strategy though. Arguing that the strategy was sound but they just overextended themselves seems facetious; didn't the strategy cause them to overextend themselves? Therefore, wouldn't it be fair to argue the strategy was doomed from the start?
I don't know that I agree with any of this argument trying to relate business practices to military practices -- civilians and soldiers have some fundamental differences -- just trying to imagine it philosophically.
In this context 'initiative' means explicitly not the generals, but on all lower levels, extending as low level as reasonably possible - though often not to the individual soldier level, but to the smallest unit (given that time/era/technology/tactics) that can be effective on it's own and is expected to stay together at almost all times.
In WW2 that generally was up until the squad level, with a focus on NCOs (non-officers leading ~10 men) taking initiative; in earlier times infantry required a bit larger formations to be able to fight efficiently, so initiative of relativerly lower-ranking officers.
Generally, junior officers or higher-ranking NCOs. Some people are too narrowly focused to understand the big picture; upper management is too focused on the big picture to micromanage. It's up to middle management to both have a grasp of bot the overall goals of the organization, and their specific organizational unit's capabilities and tasks.
I think this is more an American thing and I don't see much of it here in Norway (arguably another western country). A lone ranger will not find much sympathy even if the solution works.
Not only does it apply in a company setting but if you were to build something on your property without permission from neighbours / government you will have to tear it down and face the fines even if in the end no one have an actual problem with it.
Most even vaguely urbanized areas in the US have this, but it's a typically a municipal-level (county or city) thing, so yes, there are sizable chunks of the US that have no zoning or building codes, but they're out in the boonies and typically in areas where people live on large parcels, so there are fewer problems with neighbors complaining, since they might not even be able to tell from their own property. That doesn't mean you can build a factory or nuclear plant necessarily, since those kinds of things will typically require state- or federal-level permits, but it does mean you can put up a fence or a pole barn on your own land without asking anyone's permission.
It is, and it's what I'd be most familiar with. A lot of this stuff is driven by central government, but implemented and enforced at a local level. It'd be harmonised throughout the state.
It would mostly tie in with European environmental regulations too.
That's not to say these regulations are flauted from time to time, or if you were out of site on your own estate you could do what you want. But there have been cases of people being told to demolish their houses.
Here's an example [0] where it should be clear why planning laws are needed ...
That seems more like an example of how the "planning laws" are a nuisance and totally out of step with reality. If there were really some harm in the house being there, surely somebody should have challenged it before 10 years. What harm is the court redressing in ordering it torn down?
I think in my culture back home (Pakistan/India), asking for permission is really just to show respect and usually easy to obtain.
For example, here in the US teenagers usually tell their parents that they are going out. In my culture, teenagers usually ask their parents if they can go out.
And I cannot remember ever been denied when I was teenager. I think if I had simply told my parents that I was going out, they would have stopped me to ask more question or even stopped me from going out.
I think what we're talking about here is "Power Distance Index" [0], one of Oersteds most well know dimensions, covered in Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers".
It's the degree to which people in a society capitulate to power and to which those in power are aloof to their subordinates.
There are some very interesting patterns in that measurement indeed.
In my fairly brief working life in Japan (5 years at a school), it's not uncommon to do things without permission out of respect for your supervisor. That seems strange, but if you know that you must do something, but that your supervisor must say "no", then doing it helps the supervisor save face. They can yell at you publicly for doing the"wrong thing" and then nobody can criticise them. You've been yelled at and if you look sorry (it helps to cry a little bit), then everybody will forget about it and nobody will blame you after that.
Weird dances like that are one of the reasons why it's difficult for foreigners to fit in :-)
>Weird dances like that are one of the reasons why it's difficult for foreigners to fit in :-)
Western cultures have them too but they are so ingrained you don't notice them. This video highlights some of the more interesting ones (e.g. refusing to accept an apology being offensive): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfO9gL28pAs
Yeah, that's very true. It's an interesting talk as well. One of the examples is highly codified in Japan. If you offer someone something, they must refuse. Then you must offer it again. Then they must accept it. Any variation on that leads to one of the parties being really upset :-).
One of the cool things about this is that regifting is completely accepted in Japan. Because you must accept what's being offered, it is considered normal to make a gift of it to someone else if you don't actually want it. This is one of the things that I trip over often. Quite frequently if someone offers me some food, I'll think, "Oh I have a lot of food in the house. I can't eat that." But you have to be thinking, "Who can I give that to". It's weird, but I also like it because people are constantly giving gifts (to the point where it's rare that I don't receive something almost ever week).
> This video highlights some of the more interesting ones (e.g. refusing to accept an apology being offensive)
I didn't catch that. He only offered a somewhat contrived example of it being rude to "take back" an apology (which is, of course, not a thing) after being told it "wasn't owed".
His thesis was, AFAICT, that this is an example of empty gestures, that we don't really mean it.
However, that falls flat with the apology example. An apology that is actually sincere isn't something that can be taken back, so it could only be empty if it were insincere, and in his anecdote, he did not even imply insincincerity.
He talks about the words not making sense when analyzes, which I assume is in reference to the fact that "you don't owe me an apology" sounds like a rejection of the apology, but, it isn't. If it's truthful and can be interpreted literally, then no offense was taken in the first place. If it's untruthful, then offense was taken but the apology was accepted (and presumably the insincerety was a lie told to spare further bad feelings). Either way, no offense remained on the part of the apology recipient.
None of that was empty gesture, and there was only one opportunity for lying to spare someone's feelings (though this was not called out in the video).
The rest was about Japan and the old Soviet bloc.
I think you need to come up with a better example of a "weird dance" in Western culture, preferably with more observers than just the (usually two) participants.
It's also that asking for permission allows the manager to "preventively" re-arrange the project/effort/whatever you want permission for, and thus leads to failure.
