I was sitting in the first class car of Amtrak’s Acela recently, when I asked the conductor about a certain detail of our trip.
“I wish I could tell you,” he apologized, “but I’m not allowed to use my cell phone any more.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because since they found the engineer on that freight train that collided using his phone to text message at the time of the accident, the government has banned the use of cell phones by train crews. The penalty is 30 days off without pay.”
“But you’re not the engineer.”
“The government doesn’t discriminate.”

The great management guru Peter Drucker observed a long time ago that laws passed in reaction to a single instance of wrongdoing are notoriously bad laws. They punish the millions of innocents to attempt to solve the problem caused by one miscreant. Hence, a child can’t even be carried on the mother’s lap in a cab any more, yet for some reason there are no seat belts on school buses.
Go figure.

You Can’t Legislate Judgment

Neither the train nor the passengers are safer because the conductor on Amtrak is prohibited from using his phone. The government just doesn’t trust his judgment (nor that of his colleagues) because an engineer used poor judgment (and broke the company’s rules, by the way).
We’ve all been in hotels and restaurants where the staff is trained rigorously (and even threatened) to proclaim, rote-like, “It’s my pleasure,” or “Have a nice day,” or “Enjoy your meal.” Yet some of them say it with such apathy and lack of emotion that I’d just as soon have them say, “I hate that color on you!” At least that’s helpful.
You can’t legislate manners and you can’t legislate judgment. I see drivers texting every day, along with women applying makeup while driving, and kids jumping around without seatbelts. There are undoubted laws against all of that, but if you attempted to enforce them traffic would stop. We trust people to use their judgment (which is undermined when they do things such as drink too much).
In our businesses and enterprises, we have to hire, nurture, and reward people who use their judgment. Even in the hierarchically bound military, the greatest victories have been won more commonly through judgment than blind obedience to rules. Grant should have retreated after Shiloh and The Wilderness. Instead, he moved south to win the war. General McAuliffe didn’t surrender in World War II, he said, “Nuts!”

You Can’t Teach Judgment

Just as I advise people to hire candidates with enthusiasm and teach them content, since you can’t teach enthusiasm, I also advise to seek out those with judgment, because you can’t teach that, either.
We need people around us who can objectively evaluate circumstances, analyze the rewards and the risks, and make reasoned decisions which provide for maximum reward within acceptable risk limits. We need people who can say, “I don’t know” without damaging their ego, and who can say, “That’s not right,” without damaging a relationship.
One person’s lapse in judgment shouldn’t result in perverse laws which restrict the freedom or options of the general population. We’re better off trying to avoid hiring those with bad judgment, or spotting them early. But denying the right to use judgment to everyone else simply further delays and delimits the business.
The rules were followed pretty closely in the financial debacle that struck, it was judgment that was wrong, influenced by greed and a perception of unending prosperity. It may or may not help for the government to increase laws governing the investment industry, but it will be a lot more personally rewarding if you use judgment about the people with whom you’ve chosen to trust your investments.
The same holds true for your business and your life.

(Million Dollar Consulting® Performance)

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Alan Weiss, Ph.D. is the author of 30 books appearing in 9 languages. He runs his famous Million Dollar Consulting® Colleges all over the world, and has consulted with over 500 organizations, such as the Federal Reserve, Mercedes-Benz, Hewlett-Packard, and J.P. Morgan Chase. He serves on a half-dozen boards, and is the only non-journalist to have ever received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Press Institute.. You can reach him at Alan@summitconsulting.com or his blog, http://www.contrarianconsulting.com.