The Orwell Clause
George Orwell has become a larger than life figure. A man, whose name itself, has become synonymous with Authoritarianism, Communism, and what sometimes seems like any other form of government. Given the political fervor in the United States, you typically don’t have to wait too long between hearing his name invoked, regardless of the cause the speaker is championing.
Orwell, however, gave us much more than 1984 or Animal Farm. He gave us the ultimate means to escape tyranny, totalitarianism, and — worst of all — business processes1. He gave us Rule Number 6.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous
— George Orwell, Politics and The English Language
Behold the ultimate trump card of all rules, heuristics, processes, workflows, and operational procedures.
What is actually given by Orwell as advice for writing, turns out to be applicable to just about any set of rules. Rules and guardrails exist to help keep us in line, but there comes times at which it becomes necessary to break the very rules we created for ourselves. In certain contexts we need to give ourselves the ability to act freely — to break the rules.
But what are those contexts? When should we break the rules? The thing is, we never know ahead of time. Our approach to processes should not be that they will protect us and give us guidance in all areas and situations, or that they will always be right. But, rather, that they will guide us in the right direction in lieu of all other information. And that there will be times in which we need to act outside the constraints we created for ourselves.
Orwell has provided us with a clause that I think should be appended to just about every rule book or process map that exists.
Do not get me wrong, processes within a business are not inherently bad. But process can also create some negative effects. It lends itself to passiveness. Problems aren’t faced as head on, aren’t thought about as much.
Process can be a means to fight complexity within an organization, but sometimes complexity is good. Complexity, in a way can also mean variance. And when we work so hard to reduce variance, it can be easy to forget that we are also working against the variance at the positive end of the distribution — the type of variance that can change the entire form of your enterprise, for the better2.
A business process should not erase critical thinking. Process can and should be a good starting place for how to act, but it should not erase our ability to exercise best judgment if a situation calls for something different.
Sam Walton said, “No one looks to add bureaucracy. You have to be constantly looking to eliminate it or else it will build”. As time moves toward infinity processes naturally grow, and it becomes necessary for people to feel empowered to speak up. For them to question that maybe there is a better way to do things. A process cannot give you 100% coverage, and you should be ready to change your behavior accordingly.
Do whatever you can, sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
I think it would be possible to form an argument that this rule has much more to do with Authoritarianism or bureaucracy than we realize. We sometimes fall into a habit of thinking of these huge complex systems as planned or architected by powers that be, as opposed to slowly accreting over time. People failing to do the right thing, failing to think critically and simply carrying out whatever they are told to do — despite all evidence that would point to such action not making sense in the given context — are how these huge bloated systems form over time.
This paragraph and quasi-syllogism can be the topic of a much longer essay