Don’t tick boxes: Difference between revisions

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{{a|devil|}}Modern dogma writ large. In the mortal, unlistened-to words of tiresome Victorian librettist [[Otto Büchstein]], ''[[La Vittoria della Forma sulla Sostanza]]''.<ref>Literally, “The Victory of Form over Substance”. Never popular.</ref>  
{{a|devil|}}Modern dogma writ large. In the mortal, unlistened-to words of tiresome Victorian librettist [[Otto Büchstein]], ''[[La Vittoria della Forma sulla Sostanza]]''.<ref>Literally, “The Victory of Form over Substance”. Never popular.</ref>  


This disposition that ticking a box - fulfilling a formal requirement to have taken a step, followed a process, or sublimated an intractable hazard into a parametrised, traffic-light renderable [[key performance indicator]] should generate any comfort other than a false one, feeds on, just as it nourishes, related dogmas: of ''cost'' reduction, at all cost, that all unknowns can be known, that all vestiges of risk can neutralised, bifurcated, cauterised and ''eliminated'' to leave a pure, crystalline residue of concentrated ''reward''.  That [[The End of History and the First Man - book review|history is at an end]], that the universe can be brute-force computed, and the fact that it hasn’t yet is a minor inconvenience that we can tide over just as long as we check of few boxes and keep a clear audit trail.
This disposition that ticking a box fulfilling a formal requirement to have taken a step, followed a process, or sublimated an intractable hazard into a parametrised, traffic-light renderable [[key performance indicator]] should generate any comfort other than a false one, feeds on, just as it nourishes, related dogmas: of ''cost'' reduction, at all cost, that all unknowns can be known, that all vestiges of risk can neutralised, bifurcated, cauterised and ''eliminated'' to leave a pure, crystalline residue of concentrated ''reward''.  That [[The End of History and the First Man - book review|history is at an end]], that the universe can be brute-force computed, and the fact that it hasn’t yet is a minor inconvenience that we can tide over just as long as we check of few boxes and keep a clear audit trail.


[[Box ticking]] is [[tedious]], in the technical sense of being intrinsically [[waste]]ful.<ref>here we refer you to the [[Jolly Contrarian]]’s laws of worker entropy and in particular the [[Sixth law of worker entropy|sixth]].</ref> But it suits the [[middle manager]] because it is something {{sex|she}} can show her superiors that she has achieved — something that will handily populate a [[PowerPoint]] slide, or which she might render with a cute little traffic light in the [[RAG status]] section of her reporting [[dashboard]]. This will delight the members of the [[steering committee]] to whom she reports. It will delight them in the sense that they will be see a healthily populated [[RAG status]] and, neither knowing nor caring to what it actually attests, and will draw the happy conclusion that all is well and in order, the relentless bureaucratic machine rumbles onward, and should anything turn out to been amiss, it certainly won't be their fault.  
[[Box ticking]] is [[tedious]], in the technical sense of being intrinsically [[waste]]ful.<ref>here we refer you to the [[Jolly Contrarian]]’s laws of worker entropy and in particular the [[Sixth law of worker entropy|sixth]].</ref> But it suits the [[middle manager]] because it is something {{sex|she}} can show her superiors that she has achieved — something that will handily populate a [[PowerPoint]] slide, or which she might render with a cute little traffic light in the [[RAG status]] section of her reporting [[dashboard]]. This will delight the members of the [[steering committee]] to whom she reports. It will delight them in the sense that they will be see a healthily populated [[RAG status]] and, neither knowing nor caring to what it actually attests, and will draw the happy conclusion that all is well and in order, the relentless bureaucratic machine rumbles onward, and should anything turn out to been amiss, it certainly won't be their fault.