Ages ago, when I was in grad school, I learned from Susan Moore Johnson that many people incorrectly cite union contracts as a reason why something must be done, why a practice cannot be altered or a a innovation cannot be picked up. As she explained it, people do not actually read the contract, so rumors about what is in it are often even more powerful than the contract itself. This was eye-opening to me at the time, and it has stuck with me. But I think that it was simply too polite an interpretation. Yes, that is often the case. But I think that sometimes—perhaps even more often—it is a willful ignorance. Some people do not care what is in the contract, and are simply invested in arguing against change—regardless of whether their arguments are made in good faith.
Whether the argument that something is in the contract is made in good faith is itself a contentious question. So, we can put that aside. Regardless of whether it is made in good faith, it is often an erroneous argument used to push back against those calling innovation or change.
I have come across this exact same tactic in other contexts as well.
* About 10 or 15 years ago I was trying to report a bug to Apple in some piece of their software. The level II support specialists I was speaking with went up to a level III support specialists and came back to me with an excuse. The way I was using the software, he explained, violated the end user license agreement. It wasn’t a bug, you see, it was a misuse. But I knew that couldn’t be the case, so I opened up the very long end user license agreement while on the phone with him and went through it, looking for anything relevant to his point. Of course, it wasn’t there. This was a moral victory, as he had to admit that his superior’s excuse was untrue. (I do not know that it got the bug fixed any faster. I switched to a third party application and have not felt a need to go back to Apple’s app for that use.)
* Just last month, a regional chain with ~75 stores opened a brand new supermarket near me—now my nearest supermarket, just 14 minutes away. Unfortunately, there are handful of operations mistakes that make shopping there just a little more annoying than it needs to be, but they hit me every time I go there. I have mentioned them to the "customer experience manager" and last week I saw a team of muckety mucks from headquarters going through the store to make a list of lessons and things that might be fixed. I took the opportunity to mention a couple of my concerns. As I was checking out, one of them came to me to thank me for my feedback. He said he was the head of store design for the chain. I took the opportunity to share another concern, one that would actually take a little—just a little—money to fix. While I was talking with him some assistant manager (from another store) came up to defend the chain’s honor. He started making excuses that I knew weren’t true. Eventually, he said that they couldn’t fix the problem because of the ADA. For me, that was too much.
I replied to him, “You mean that the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed into law in 1990 by President George Herbert Walker Bush (and perhaps amended since then) has a provision in it that says what side of the self-checkout machine the groceries go on? I bet you $100 right now that that it not true.” It actually wasn’t the first time I had used that line about making such a $100 bet that day. Just earlier, when I was talking to an another assistant manager in the store, he said that 80% of people who go to the store end up in the refrigerated section, and I knew that could not be true. (The head of store design confirmed that it wasn’t at all close to 80%, and they didn’t want it to be.) This wasn’t even the first time that they mentioned the ADA, as that assistant manager also tried to invoke it to push me off another point I had tried to share.
I have observed that the federally required peer review process for many large scale assessments is also an intimidating citation used to push back against innovation or improvement efforts. People claims that because a test has already gone through peer review, no processes or documentation can be improved. People claim that some innovations cannot be used or applied because it will never get through the peer review process. It’s just the same damn dynamic.
What I see over and over again is people who simply are against change, do not want to alter what they already know and are comfortable with and are not invested in improving the product or process. But instead of going through an accurate analysis and/or give real reasons to oppose change, they simply grasp for some powerful authority that they can claim is the unmovable obstacle. They do not have to own their opposition, and they certainly do not have to think deeply about evaluating the proposal. They do not even have to have power to reject the change. Instead, they claim some expertise about that other thing that is the real obstacle.
But I know what the ADA is. I know what goes in EULAs. SMJ taught me to actually read union contracts. And I even know enough about peer review to know that it is not the obstacle that it is made out to be. It was not meant to be an obstacle to improvement, and really doesn’t have to be.
More generally, I do not think I am ever going to get over my fury when people try to prevent change by hand waving at intimidating-seeming authorities that they do not even understand. Again, it hardly matters whether they know better, because their ignorance is willful and the citation of authorities they know little about is intentional. It is just fear of change, fear of thoughtful deliberation and an unwillingness to take responsibility for maintaining a their preferred (and problematic) status quo.