The Buddy System is Not Your Buddy
My first five months in my current day-job, back in 2003, were a baptism of fire. I had to get the company through two major certification audits in that brief span of time. There was a retired Engineering VP who had stayed on as a consultant, and he kept telling me to be sure I scheduled one of the audits quickly, before "Manny" retired. "Be sure you get Manny," he kept telling me. "Manny will help us."
It turned out that "Manny" was a guy in the state's inspection office, and the way he helped us was by schmoozing with the national inspector, taking him out for dinner and making sure he was in a good mood. The "audit" would then consist of Manny and the national inspector and a couple of company guys basically shooting the breeze for a while and making some changes to our paperwork so it would look like they'd done something. I didn't realize that, and wouldn't have played that game anyway - and as a result, we got written up for not doing things that no previous inspector had ever written up before. The same thing happened three years later, when things got off to a bad start because the national inspector was unhappy that so few executives showed up for his opening meeting. It wasn't until 2008 or so that we finally got things resolved, aided in part by the fact that the old inspectors were retiring and I was getting to start fresh with new ones.
I started referring to that way of doing things as "the buddy-buddy system." You know how it goes - there are rules on the books, but we don't really follow them because we're all good buddies and we can just decide for ourselves what's good enough. I'd seen it before. The UL engineer who worked with us in my previous job was a young woman who became a good friend of mine (we still exchange cards at Christmas), and my boss would tease me about it and say I should take her out at night. (What he didn't realize is that she and I agreed our products should meet the requirements in the standard we were testing them to.) It's an old-school way of doing business. One I've never been a fan of, but there are still plenty of people out there who like it. When Republicans talk about eliminating "burdensome regulations," what they basically mean is that everything should be run on the "buddy-buddy system." Let's just let everyone decide for themselves what's good enough. Do you really want to drive a car or live in a house or get your power from a nuclear reactor built that way?
Donald Trump wants to run the country that way. When he says he wants to Make America Great Again, he means he wants to go back to the days - either the 1950s or the 1890s, take your pick - when a handful of grotesquely wealthy individuals, almost exclusively white men, made all the decisions for everyone. He wants the world to run that way, so he can go out and be a big-time player on the world stage. How else do you explain photo-ops like this one?
You know who else likes the "buddy-buddy system?" Vladimir Putin. His idea of Making Russia Great Again is taking the world back to the glory days when a handful of kings, queens, kaisers, czars, etc. divided up the world and ran it by making deals with each other. The Russian interference in our election is an example of that, and it's no wonder Trump was the candidate they chose to help.
I suppose there's nothing wrong with a system like that - as long as all the "buddies" are your buddies, too. If they really care about you and have your best interests in mind, then sure, why not let them make all the decisions? You can leave them to it and get on with your life. The problem is that in reality, chances are none of the "buddies" will be your buddy, because if you're not in their exclusive club then they don't really have to care about you. And by the time you figure out they're not your buddies, there's nothing you can do about it. You're stuck.
The other problem is that reality doesn't have to bend to the buddies' will. Here in my day job, we were just lucky the things Manny and the inspectors let slide never came back to bite us. Others haven't been so fortunate. On the national scale or even the global scale, what happens if the buddies decide that climate change is too much a bother to worry about? They can decide it's all a Chinese hoax, but that won't stop the glaciers from melting, the sea level from rising or the storms from getting worse. They can make special backroom financial deals and decide the debts they run up don't matter, but that won't stop someone else from showing up and trying to collect someday. Just ask Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns. Oh that's right, you can't.
John Adams is said to have declared that "We are a nation of laws, not of men." Sure, the buddy-buddy system works when it's just you and your buddies (or at least it does some of the time, depending on your buddies), but as the stage gets bigger and the stakes get higher and the number of people affected grows, that system stops working. You need a set of ground rules that everyone can rely on. They won't be perfect, of course, because all rules are written by human beings, but at least they give you a solid foundation that everyone can check themselves or each other against. Good leaders know that. Good leaders have the humility to recognize that they're not infallible. Bad leaders think the rules don't apply to them, that they're only for "the little people."
The people who promised to Make America Great Again neglected to mention that they only planned to make it great for themselves. The system this country was built on has safeguards that can protect us from such people, but only if we use them while we still can. It's not too late yet, but our chances won't last forever.
It turned out that "Manny" was a guy in the state's inspection office, and the way he helped us was by schmoozing with the national inspector, taking him out for dinner and making sure he was in a good mood. The "audit" would then consist of Manny and the national inspector and a couple of company guys basically shooting the breeze for a while and making some changes to our paperwork so it would look like they'd done something. I didn't realize that, and wouldn't have played that game anyway - and as a result, we got written up for not doing things that no previous inspector had ever written up before. The same thing happened three years later, when things got off to a bad start because the national inspector was unhappy that so few executives showed up for his opening meeting. It wasn't until 2008 or so that we finally got things resolved, aided in part by the fact that the old inspectors were retiring and I was getting to start fresh with new ones.
I started referring to that way of doing things as "the buddy-buddy system." You know how it goes - there are rules on the books, but we don't really follow them because we're all good buddies and we can just decide for ourselves what's good enough. I'd seen it before. The UL engineer who worked with us in my previous job was a young woman who became a good friend of mine (we still exchange cards at Christmas), and my boss would tease me about it and say I should take her out at night. (What he didn't realize is that she and I agreed our products should meet the requirements in the standard we were testing them to.) It's an old-school way of doing business. One I've never been a fan of, but there are still plenty of people out there who like it. When Republicans talk about eliminating "burdensome regulations," what they basically mean is that everything should be run on the "buddy-buddy system." Let's just let everyone decide for themselves what's good enough. Do you really want to drive a car or live in a house or get your power from a nuclear reactor built that way?
Donald Trump wants to run the country that way. When he says he wants to Make America Great Again, he means he wants to go back to the days - either the 1950s or the 1890s, take your pick - when a handful of grotesquely wealthy individuals, almost exclusively white men, made all the decisions for everyone. He wants the world to run that way, so he can go out and be a big-time player on the world stage. How else do you explain photo-ops like this one?
You know who else likes the "buddy-buddy system?" Vladimir Putin. His idea of Making Russia Great Again is taking the world back to the glory days when a handful of kings, queens, kaisers, czars, etc. divided up the world and ran it by making deals with each other. The Russian interference in our election is an example of that, and it's no wonder Trump was the candidate they chose to help.
I suppose there's nothing wrong with a system like that - as long as all the "buddies" are your buddies, too. If they really care about you and have your best interests in mind, then sure, why not let them make all the decisions? You can leave them to it and get on with your life. The problem is that in reality, chances are none of the "buddies" will be your buddy, because if you're not in their exclusive club then they don't really have to care about you. And by the time you figure out they're not your buddies, there's nothing you can do about it. You're stuck.
The other problem is that reality doesn't have to bend to the buddies' will. Here in my day job, we were just lucky the things Manny and the inspectors let slide never came back to bite us. Others haven't been so fortunate. On the national scale or even the global scale, what happens if the buddies decide that climate change is too much a bother to worry about? They can decide it's all a Chinese hoax, but that won't stop the glaciers from melting, the sea level from rising or the storms from getting worse. They can make special backroom financial deals and decide the debts they run up don't matter, but that won't stop someone else from showing up and trying to collect someday. Just ask Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns. Oh that's right, you can't.
John Adams is said to have declared that "We are a nation of laws, not of men." Sure, the buddy-buddy system works when it's just you and your buddies (or at least it does some of the time, depending on your buddies), but as the stage gets bigger and the stakes get higher and the number of people affected grows, that system stops working. You need a set of ground rules that everyone can rely on. They won't be perfect, of course, because all rules are written by human beings, but at least they give you a solid foundation that everyone can check themselves or each other against. Good leaders know that. Good leaders have the humility to recognize that they're not infallible. Bad leaders think the rules don't apply to them, that they're only for "the little people."
The people who promised to Make America Great Again neglected to mention that they only planned to make it great for themselves. The system this country was built on has safeguards that can protect us from such people, but only if we use them while we still can. It's not too late yet, but our chances won't last forever.
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