April and I have a neighboring concept, the Grace Factor, which we apply to bad things that tend to occur now and then. Rather than curse the flat tire or the hotel room key that won't open the room, chalk them up as consuming some part of human activities that sometimes fail. Call it 3% or 5. Now you have that part of the Grace Factor behind you.
Thanks Jerry! Nice coincidence on the related concept! I think there's some tension between what one would just apply the grace factor to (i.e. shit happens, nothing you can do about it) and situations that are genuinely unfair and that should be resisted. I feel people sometimes confuse the two, and either rail against perceived 'injustices' when it's simply bad luck, while quietly accepting preventable systemic problems.
Not so much a tension as very different uses of grace. One as a way of receiving unexpected but inevitable hiccups in life gracefully; the other about being gracious to your customers (I love that Disney and Target call them "guests," which implies hospitality.
This weird modern era seems to have misplaced the notions of hospitality, civility, and shame. And that's a shame.
"The entire trajectory of corporate optimization for the past forty years has been in the opposite direction: judgment is risk, discretion is liability, exceptions are inefficiency."
"It will be mundane and bureaucratic and wrapped in the language of fairness. And the outliers - the complicated situations, the edge cases, the people whose lives don’t fit neatly into available simplified categories - will find that there is no one left to appeal to."
But when your only scorecard is money, productivity and efficiency, then this is the natural result.
- - it's already happening. It's slowly getting harder to get to real people.
I read the other day about people using AI for their responses in dating apps... bots flirting with bots. Unsure if I'm an outlier here (and as someone who's usually an early adopter), but I'm consciously looking at how I can shift my life the other way... more analog. ...More dirt & sun.
It 100% is getting harder to get to real people - and even worse, when you _do_ get to a person, their hands are so tied behind their back because of policies that they tend to be just as useless as the automated systems.
Another great piece Sami. One thing I am seeing in response to this is an emerging industry of human coaches and facilitators who help people who don’t fit the mould.
Where I see it clearly is in dealing with government agencies like the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and Centrelink, where really vulnerable people are bumping up against a bureaucracy where the grace margin has already been removed and automated decision-making dominates. Because vulnerable people are less skilled at doing the shape shifting required to “tick all the boxes”, there is now a whole industry of ‘advocates’ who will help you to ensure you confirm to what the agency is looking for, to access the support and funding you need. For a fee - usually a % of what you receive.
And look, I’m not going to criticise them. I am hardly a vulnerable person. I’m a middle class, white, PhD educated person in full time employment. But I use an advocate to manage my daughter’s NDIS application and ongoing funding because the system is inflexible, impenetrable and - frankly - inhuman.
But I do worry about a society where the only way to deal with the absence of a human grace margin is for people to pay other humans to navigate graceless systems on their behalf.
Two thoughts that resonates with me after reading your piece:
1. Compassionate Drift: A term occasionally used in healthcare and social work. The opposite of “procedural drift” (where people cut corners for convenience).
2. There is always an aviation angle:), the grace margin is what allows a crew to deviate from a checklist when the checklist doesn’t fit reality and to do so safely. Remove it, and you get perfectly compliant accidents.
And 100% on the aviation angle! I was actually trying hard not to make any aviation references here for the benefit of the more general audience 😁 But you're right, the allowance to deviate from SOPs & checklists if necessary is a great example.
Another one that comes to mind is related to the broader issue of "work as imagined vs work as done" and things like work-to-rule strikes, where it becomes painfully obvious that it's for all intents and purposes impossible to follow _all_ the rules in most professions.
Love this, Sami!
April and I have a neighboring concept, the Grace Factor, which we apply to bad things that tend to occur now and then. Rather than curse the flat tire or the hotel room key that won't open the room, chalk them up as consuming some part of human activities that sometimes fail. Call it 3% or 5. Now you have that part of the Grace Factor behind you.
Thanks Jerry! Nice coincidence on the related concept! I think there's some tension between what one would just apply the grace factor to (i.e. shit happens, nothing you can do about it) and situations that are genuinely unfair and that should be resisted. I feel people sometimes confuse the two, and either rail against perceived 'injustices' when it's simply bad luck, while quietly accepting preventable systemic problems.
Not so much a tension as very different uses of grace. One as a way of receiving unexpected but inevitable hiccups in life gracefully; the other about being gracious to your customers (I love that Disney and Target call them "guests," which implies hospitality.
This weird modern era seems to have misplaced the notions of hospitality, civility, and shame. And that's a shame.
You nailed this Sami.
"The entire trajectory of corporate optimization for the past forty years has been in the opposite direction: judgment is risk, discretion is liability, exceptions are inefficiency."
"It will be mundane and bureaucratic and wrapped in the language of fairness. And the outliers - the complicated situations, the edge cases, the people whose lives don’t fit neatly into available simplified categories - will find that there is no one left to appeal to."
But when your only scorecard is money, productivity and efficiency, then this is the natural result.
- - it's already happening. It's slowly getting harder to get to real people.
I read the other day about people using AI for their responses in dating apps... bots flirting with bots. Unsure if I'm an outlier here (and as someone who's usually an early adopter), but I'm consciously looking at how I can shift my life the other way... more analog. ...More dirt & sun.
It 100% is getting harder to get to real people - and even worse, when you _do_ get to a person, their hands are so tied behind their back because of policies that they tend to be just as useless as the automated systems.
Speaking of dating, some thoughts from almost two years ago on this very development: https://medium.com/foresight-matters/who-is-controlling-our-romantic-futures-and-what-your-heart-can-do-about-it-the-perils-and-promise-7f44a7444817
Another great piece Sami. One thing I am seeing in response to this is an emerging industry of human coaches and facilitators who help people who don’t fit the mould.
Where I see it clearly is in dealing with government agencies like the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and Centrelink, where really vulnerable people are bumping up against a bureaucracy where the grace margin has already been removed and automated decision-making dominates. Because vulnerable people are less skilled at doing the shape shifting required to “tick all the boxes”, there is now a whole industry of ‘advocates’ who will help you to ensure you confirm to what the agency is looking for, to access the support and funding you need. For a fee - usually a % of what you receive.
And look, I’m not going to criticise them. I am hardly a vulnerable person. I’m a middle class, white, PhD educated person in full time employment. But I use an advocate to manage my daughter’s NDIS application and ongoing funding because the system is inflexible, impenetrable and - frankly - inhuman.
But I do worry about a society where the only way to deal with the absence of a human grace margin is for people to pay other humans to navigate graceless systems on their behalf.
This is excellent!
Excellent Sami- that really made me think. 🙏
Two thoughts that resonates with me after reading your piece:
1. Compassionate Drift: A term occasionally used in healthcare and social work. The opposite of “procedural drift” (where people cut corners for convenience).
2. There is always an aviation angle:), the grace margin is what allows a crew to deviate from a checklist when the checklist doesn’t fit reality and to do so safely. Remove it, and you get perfectly compliant accidents.
Thanks Naveed!
And 100% on the aviation angle! I was actually trying hard not to make any aviation references here for the benefit of the more general audience 😁 But you're right, the allowance to deviate from SOPs & checklists if necessary is a great example.
Another one that comes to mind is related to the broader issue of "work as imagined vs work as done" and things like work-to-rule strikes, where it becomes painfully obvious that it's for all intents and purposes impossible to follow _all_ the rules in most professions.