Our expert on the hierarchical intricacies of the R&D world discusses the hazards of excessive perfection and promulgates a trio of governing conditions for building your own crises
The first installment of this series (January, 1976) dealt with two anomalies of the technical hierarchy that provide a major basis for Putt's Law. However, there is yet another important anomaly: A person must rock the boat to get ahead. This is just the reverse of the situation in most hierarchies, where rocking the boat is socially unacceptable and definitely not conducive to promotions.
This third anomaly results from the fact that rapid progress in technology is always accompanied by great uncertainty. Blue sky research, for example, refers to projects where both the problems and benefits are unpredictable, but are expected to be large. In such research it is expected that target dates will be slipped and that additional people and equipment will be required. Pushing-the-state-of-the-art is another popular phrase used to describe applied research projects designed to advance technology more rapidly than in the past. Such projects invariably lead to problems and crises in the organization. In fact, if there were no crises, it would be presumed that the goals were not aggressive enough - and no technologist can afford to have projects with insufficiently aggressive goals if he intends to get ahead.
Thus, the importance of rocking-the-boat or having some imperfections or crises on the projects of a technical hierarchy is evident. The First Law of Crises follows rather logically from these observations and may be stated formally as follows:
Technological hierarchies abhor perfection.
The implication to ambitious technologists is clear. They must avoid perfection. This admonition is unnecessary for most persons who could not achieve perfection even if they tried. However, it will be of help to some. Consider, for example, the case of Roger Proofsworthy, whose excessive competence caused him to labor needlessly at the bottom of the hierarchy for many years.
Proofsworthy was hired into the Development Laboratories of the Ultima Corporation shortly after receiving his PhD in electrical engineering. He was a man who combined a solid academic background and good technical insight with a dogged refusal to be less than perfect in all his activities. Once he was given an assignment it was as good as done.
In his second year with the company he was placed in charge of the transfer of a technical innovation from the Development Laboratory to the Manufacturing Division. As usual, his performance was outstanding. When technical problems were uncovered, he personally set to work to solve them, often working around the clock until the job was completed. At other times he found himself embroiled in the difficult "political" problems associated with the reluctance of the Manufacturing Division to accept the work done in the Development Laboratory. However, he managed to resolve all of these difficulties before they became major issues in the corporation. Within a few months, he had accomplished a task that normally would have taken several years and would have involved individuals at the highest levels of the corporation.
In spite of this outstanding performance, Proofsworthy did not receive the next promotion. It went instead to a colleague of substantially less capability who frequently had difficulty handling his projects. These difficulties often went unsolved until after corporate officers became involved. As a result, the colleague had become known throughout the corporation as an individual who handled difficult assignments. He was found to be personable in his interactions with management and quite level-headed. He was thus a logical choice for promotion.
Proofsworthy, in contrast, was unknown beyond his immediate manager, and even his own manager was unaware of all the difficult problems Proofsworthy had personally solved.
The colleague chosen for promotion in this case went on to achieve further promotions and rapidly reached a high level in the hierarchy. Proofsworthy remained a staff engineer for many years. He finally left Ultima in disgust; unfortunately, the problem that plagued him at Ultima continued to plague him elsewhere. He always achieved such a high level of perfection that his accomplishments went unnoticed.
Such perfection is seldom seen near the top of a technical hierarchy because individuals so afflicted with perfection are usually unable to progress beyond the first or second levels. Nevertheless, my extensive research has found one such case in a very small company, and it is well to reflect upon it.
Cosmo J. Draper was hired as director of research and development for a small company whose major product line was becoming technically obsolete. Within a year, he put together a cadre of creative individuals who saved the line from obsolescence and went on to assure the company's technological leadership in this area.
As the years went on, Draper continued to strengthen the company's research activities, expanding their scope to include all fields of interest to the company. He also established effective working relationships with the product groups so that innovations moved smoothly from research to development and then into the manufacturing division.
The members of top management no longer had cause to become involved in technological issues; they spent most of their time with marketing and financial problems. The memory of the crises that caused them to hire Draper gradually faded. Finally, in an economy move, they gave Draper early retirement and dismissed four of his top technologists and some support personnel. What remained of Draper's organization was absorbed into the manufacturing groups. The chairman of the board was pleased to advise the stockholders at the company's next annual meeting of the belt-tightening measures, which had resulted in a small increase in profits. Draper, however, was conspicuously missing from the meeting.
These examples of the hazards of excessive perfection clearly confirm the validity of the First Law of Crises. They further suggest that any manager who is competent enough to avoid crises entirely should nevertheless introduce some into his operation, thus assuring his survival and upward progress in the technical hierarchy. In this way, even an exceptionally competent person should be able to rise as rapidly as an individual with just the right amount of incompetence for the job.
But what is the right amount of incompetence or the right amount of crises to introduce into a given job? A partial answer to that question is given by the Second Law of Crises:
The maximum rate of promotion is achieved at a level of crises only slightly less than that which will result in dismissal.
Because of the precarious nature of the boundary between cause for dismissal and the maximum rate of promotion, a prudently ambitious technocrat should not begin a new assignment with this high a level of crises. Care is especially recommended because the exact level of crises permitted before dismissal may not be well understood until after some time has been spent in a new assignment. Furthermore, some crises may occur quite spontaneously and unavoidably. Thus, the best strategy is to begin a new assignment with as low a level of crises as possible. The level should then be increased gradually until the desired promotion occurs. The optimum timing for this, as defined by the Third Law of Crises, can be stated in mathematical form as
C = Co(l - e-a)
where C is the actual level of crises; Co is the upper level of crises that will be tolerated; a is the quotient of time t, since the last promotion divided by expected time to between promotions; and e is the universal constant, found throughout the technical literature, which has an approximate value of 2.7182818285.
This equation can be represented by the simple curve shown in the accompanying figure, where the dashed line
represents the maximum level of crises that the corporation will tolerate before firing the individuals responsible, and the solid curve is the desired level of crises to be achieved at each point in time following a promotion to a new assignment. It is evident from the curve that a person should begin a new assignment with as much perfection as possible. He should then increase the level of crises gradually until the attention of top management has been gained. Usually this can be accomplished with about one-third the maximum tolerable level of crises.
One-third of maximum tolerable level should. therefore, be reached as soon as the next promotion can reasonably be expected. This time is given as to in the figure. The time 2to is also of interest, because a person will by then have waited twice as long as expected for a promotion. Furthermore, the optimum level of crises will have reached two-thirds of the maximum permitted level.
If the desired promotion does not occur at this point, the individual should begin looking for another job, because further increases in the level of crises will place him dangerously near the upper acceptable limit. Furthermore, any company that does not respond by the time two-thirds of the maximum permitted level of crises has been reached will not survive unless it operates in an area where technology is unimportant. And such a company is no place for an ambitious technocrat.