Putt's Law 2.0

 

Singaporeans had been through an unforgettable week with their hearts going through an emotional roller coaster ride on the events of the Singapore General Election 2011 that ended on 7^th May. While my mind was still trying to recover from the aftershock of the election results, one particular rally speech given by candidate Denise Phua from People's Action Party (PAP) had struck me so hard that I have been pondering on those words that she said since then.

Denise said: “The easiest thing to do in this world - is to criticize somebody else and find something that is wrong in a person, in a situation. The hardest thing to do and a more respectable thing to do - is to take action, to do the job no matter how small or unglamorous it is and to make a difference.” (You may view this part of her speech in this clip from 9 min onwards).

I couldn’t agree more. Indeed, it is easy for us to find faults and criticize. How many people out there really have the might and mettle to stand up and take ownership of the problem? Most of us just keep whining without taking any constructive action. On the other hand, the elites of the PAP-dominated government in Singapore have been badly lambasted for being too arrogant, stubborn and unwilling to listen to the people. Sometimes, when people have stayed too long in the same place, they tend to get too deeply entrenched to the spot and have forgotten to look around for alternatives beyond the immediate boundary. They have become dogmatic and stopped listening to criticism.

I will call the first type of people the Whiners and the second type the Dogmatists. We see these two types of people around in all projects. They disguise themselves as the stakeholders and they hide themselves in the project team, they are everywhere. Some of them watch over you like hawks. You feel scrutinized. The moment you make a mistake, they will pounce on you like a pack of wolves without hesitation. Then there are others that make you feel like an idiot talking to lunatics. They never seem to be able to understand what you say and they just want you to get out of their way. Sad to say, you probably find yourself turning into one of them unintentionally. In my previous blog post, I have talked about how Putt’s Law pokes fun at the satirical gap between managers and techies in the technology domain. I have attempted to extend this law with a twist to include what we have just discussed.

Putt’s Law 2.0: “Project management is largely dominated by two types of assholes: those who do what they do not criticize and those who criticize what they do not do.”

What should we do to overcome this?

The book “The No Asshole Rule” written by Robert Sutton will probably give you some tips on this topic. You may also want to take a quick look at an interesting review of this book by Guy Kawasaki at his blog.