L'esprit de l'escalier

I had never heard the term until recently. Sarah taught it to me; it's the phenomena where you think of the great retort; the witty, cutting rejoinder; the perfectly pithy phrase... as you walk out the door and down the steps on your way home. I've had it happen countless times, so it's an unexpected pleasure to learn such an elegant phrase for it.

[A quick aside - I love how so many French phrases have a kind of "drawing-room" air to them, "fait accompli" or "coup de grâce," while so many in German sound so bizarre and threatening, heavier somehow. "Schadenfreude" or "bremsstrahlung." It is cliche, and old comic trope, but two languages in such proximity, one light and airy, the other consonant and guttural - it amuses and amazes. In this case, the German equivalent of l'esprit de l'escalier is treppenwitz.]

I seem to be experiencing l'esprit de l'escalier more often, lately. What usually happens is I have an urge to say something rash at work. I stifle the urge, since in the moment the best I could come up with would be expletives. Of course, everyone has experienced this: the words come to me later, when they are no longer any use.

One recent occasion, though, I came through in the clutch. I had recently harangued some of my coworkers to be more professional. They were talking and joking together in the office, and I was acting diffident, actively paying them no attention, if you follow me. One said, "What's your problem, man? You're always pretending like you're better than us."

"Oh, I don't have to pretend."

Maybe it was a little too mean. I guess I have a little buyer's remorse - the perfect phrase was too cutting, perhaps. I'm sure there is a phrase for this regret - but I'd wager dollars to donuts that phrase would be in German.

Language

We had a meeting today at work. This should come as no surprise - unless you're one of the folks who actually makes something for a living, you probably spend a lot of time at work in meetings, too. And, like most meeting attendees, I hate meetings. Most meetings aren't really that productive, or get monopolized by a few people that waste everyone else's time, or worse still just spawn more meetings. The meeting spawn are the worst. We say "let's take that issue offline" and then hold a "splinter session." Splinter - it always makes me think of sailing ship battles, where the cannonballs would smash the wooden bulkheads, and the splinters would fly like shrapnel, causing more harm than the ball itself.

But as I said, I am already predisposed to dislike meetings. I once was selected and directed for special training in Meeting Facilitation, and it was great. Basically, they said

• Have an Agenda
• Control who is talking
• Keep it under 30 minutes

That right there will put you a long way towards having a good meeting. On the program I'm working right now we break all those rules, all the time.

This particular meeting was interesting, because it highlights something I always enjoy. The perversion of language. That is to say, when we play games with language to avoid unpleasant consequences or get what we want. Bear with me while I explain what happened.

The meeting, which was scheduled some time ago, was a "90% Milestone Review." This means it was a session to review technical issues when a particular portion of the project was 90% complete. This particular portion or zone was unusual, in that we are only having one milestone review - most zones have 3, at 50%, 70%, and 90%. This is because this particular zone is very plain, with very little to design and review.

When we (the Government and it's representatives) received the design, we began our review and quickly concluded the design was not 90% complete. The exact phrase is it did "not meet the 90% Entrance Criteria." Fair enough. But, because of bureaucratic momentum, we still held the "90% Milestone Review," even though ALL parties, Government, designer, contractor, etc., agree that it is not 90% ready. This is where the language issue comes up.

If we call the meeting a "90% Zone Design Review" and review this design we have in our hands, we have to fail the design. That gets reported up to the Big Boss, and is a Bad Metric. Bad Metrics eventually get projects canceled. So, we're in a bind - we've got too much momentum to cancel the meeting, but if we hold the meeting it hurts the program. The solution? We rename the meeting. The 90% Milestone Review became a Government Comment Review Session. That way there's no report, no bad metrics, just a schedule slip as the "real" 90% meeting "slips to the right" to a date to be determined. That is a bad metric, too, but it is easier to hide in the recent tide of schedule slips.

This is just my personal example of the perversions of language. "Tax increase" vs. "expiring tax cuts" and "estate tax" vs. "death tax" are two famous examples. My friend Chris in Japan told me another, more grisly euphemism, "human accident" for suicide-by-subway in Tokyo. Euphemisms, misdirection, obfuscation... all just games with language. Kind of fun, if you can step back from it. I'm still too close, I think - I still have to set up and run the "real" meeting in a few weeks, probably. It will be funnier after that.

Executive Decision

A personal parallel to the presidency.

When asked his reason for refusing to allow his aides to testify under oath, the President has invoked "executive privilege." The idea that his aides can't speak freely if they think they'll be forced to testify about their advice and discussions. This idea is often ridiculed. It isn't mentioned in the Constitution, but many Presidents have insisted it is a necessity to maintain a coequal branch of government.

I've always thought if had the whiff of BS about it. Why would you want to keep something a secret if it was legal, or part of a reasonable discussion of how to govern? Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant and all that - opacity only benefits the corrupt. Transparent government will always be just, and rule best.

In a happy coincidence, though, a very similar situation has developed at work. I cannot go into too much detail, but I can generalize some. We are the government's agent, acting in the interest of the Navy. In this role, we pursue the Navy's interests dealing with the shipyards. We review the detail designs provided by the yard at a series of milestones, sending comments back to the yards. At a recent informal, collaborative review session, one of our Navy team members said "this model is crap, it is not adequate for this 90% Complete Milestone." Or words to that effect.

This Navy team member got written up. His comments percolated back to the shipyard, and up to some VP-type, Inner-inner Circle Executive. And his comments were not well recieved, apparently. So now we've recieved direction that our informal, collaborative meetings will be GOVERNMENT ONLY so this kind of thing won't happen again.

This annoys and disappoints me in a few different ways. First, and not to be self-aggrandizing, I invented these meetings. I suggested them, I came up with the scheduling and the basic format. It bugs me that now the folks On High are telling me how to run something I run and is entirely my creation. More importanly, it betrays one of the basic guidelines for this process. These reviews were supposed to be a collaborative process, where the government, contractors, and shipbuilders worked together to improve the design and make the best possible ship for the price, for the schedule, and for the mission. Now we have to begin cutting some people off our invite list, to avoid saying the wrong thing in front of them. That means less eyes on the design, acting as a team. It promotes the kind of antagonism that seems to poison so many contracts. It means the shipyard is now our enemy, instead of our partner.

All of this leads me to a few conclusions. First, I see more clearly why an Administration would fight for Executive Privilege. Not just to cover up illegal or unscrupulous acts (though that may be a major factor) or to win a intragovernmental pissing match. But to actually keep doing the job. If we don't restrict the working sessions to the Navy personnel, they won't happen, and that hurts the quality of the work. And if the Administration was completely transparent, they couldn't say some things without stepping on some political toes. It may not be that the ideas are illegal or immoral - they would just piss off powerful representatives and senators, bogging down debate and snarling the already molasses-slow process of democratic government. Second, though, this reaffirms my belief that everyone's job - on this program, in government, maybe everyhere - would be easier if we could just check our egos at the door. The engineer who got written up hadn't done anything - he merely stated an opinion. How is that a problem for the yard? I'm convinced the VP-type was just offended personally, when the engineer was just offering a (bluntly phrased) assesment of the design from the yard. If you train people not to give their honest assessment and rubber-stamp things, you get spectacular engineering failures (Tacoma Narrows, Challenger, Kansas City Hyatt, etc).

For a great book on those incidents and the subject of failure due to lack of good advice and analysis, see To Err is Human by Henry Petroski.