“It’s Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than To Get Permission”

Which makes me wonder, are there cultures wherein permission is easy, but forgiveness is not?

Case in point, years ago we used CVS for version control. I had a strong feeling that if I asked to research how could we make the switch to git, it would be allowed but relegated to the back of the backlog, which usually means never to be done. So I did it without asking permission in between tasks, and when I proposed we switch to git I already presented our many dozens of repositories in a git server with the full history preserved. I didn't even need to ask forgiveness.

If it's expected that a rule is to be broken to get a task done, the risk of the backfiring will be borne by the rule breaker. If i am am employee, i will not risk breaking any rule that i have not gotten in writing from somebody higher up that they're OK'ing.

Or, i will have to be paid more for taking on the risk.

I'm curious about how one decides whether a decision even is one-way or two-way? I can think of some contrived examples (demolishing a building is one-way, deciding where to get lunch today is two-way) but what about more complex and realistic examples? Is it that the cost to reverse that decision is so high that it's effectively a one-way choice? And can you make a one-way idea into a two-way idea in some scenarios?

It is memorable, but wierd.

a) Arguments don’t work because team doesn’t listen and/or doesn’t want to change because they wish to stay in their comfort zone.

b) The responsible manager is incompetent and/or does not understand the things he/she’s responsible for and/or is a micromanager which kills any spontaneous action.

c) Those who see a bigger picture do not care to or cannot explain it and/or keep it a secret.

d) Sometimes the best option is to just do it (and improve it later) instead of going through a slow and energy consuming process of gathering consent etc.

e) Software architects

Involving more people in a decision is usually going to result in better decisions, as it will benefit from more viewpoints, experiences, and critical review.

The tradeoff of group decision making is that it is expensive and slow. Even just a single hour meeting with 8 people is a whole man day of work.

On the other hand, distributed decision making (where individuals or smaller groups make decisions) is faster and cheaper, though on average probably produces less optimal decisions.

Whether centralized or distributed decision making is optimal depends entirely on factors like how much better the centralized decision is than the distributed one, at what cost that improvement comes, and the cost of later correcting a sub-optimal decision.

In other words, the real world is complicated. Soothing bromides like "It's Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than To Get Permission" or whatever its opposite is don't have very much value.

That's not an excuse to just go ahead from the start and say "eh, finding a consensus is too hard, I will just do it", but it is a reason to accept that at some point everything has been said, just not by everyone. And then a decision has to be made or you will talk forever.

> It is still possible to go for it. But you need to be accountable for the consequences.

This works in both directions: Are they also accountable for the success or is it a team success then? I see this pattern of not being able to get any decisions made, then hope that someone makes a decision and when it pans out "aren't we a great team? yes, yes, we are" and if not "They decided to just do it, it's their fault" and so on - you either share the wins and losses or you share neither.

Its application is to achieve your goal or enforcing your decision regardless of superior's stance.

Other wording i know is (loosely transtalted) to put somebody against a fact (as opposed to decision).

It precisely because overriding a done deed is harder that arguing against or disallowing it.

If I decide to go out and code a prototype without asking anyone anything, where is the harm in that? You can criticize it after it is done. You could have done the same thing. And you can always throw it out.

And in my view, this precisely is "leading by doing". Linus Torvalds didn't seek consensus before he wrote Git.

In another response, you write, arrogant people are the biggest problem. I don't think doing something on your own is arrogant at all.

And I think, "being accountable for consequences" is exactly the "forgiveness" part. Although I am not a fan of hierarchical decision making systems.

I'm confused why you seem to be so sure that in the anecdote you shared, this isn't exactly what was going on. Could it be you have some unconscious bias against the person who took that action, leading you to see them as a rogue cowboy instead of a wise leader?

A corporate entity should have someone who has authority to do so, is willing to make those decisions, and accepts responsibility for their consequences even when bad. In principle this is the CEO role.

But much more often the right choice is essential, paralysis is better than the wrong choice, at least for a while, so we can afford to dither while we get the choice right. Of course if you're sure you're right this is frustrating - why wait for others to see your POV. But I have very little trust in anybody who hasn't noticed that they're often wrong. Such a person is inevitably short-sighted and their judgement untrustworthy, whereas those who know they're sometimes wrong should be patient to find out if this is one of those times.

Knowing whether you're facing a "any choice is better than no choice" situation is much easier than knowing the right answer, and I think "easier to ask forgiveness" is about people who take this approach when they know that permission is an option and choose not to take it. We should try to make permission easier, and forgiveness harder to avoid rewarding this undesirable behaviour.

Finally though sometimes choice is an illusion. It is not worth anybody's effort to give or deny permission for the inevitable, and we shouldn't praise the "decision" to accede to it. Recognising that something is inevitable and thus not subject to choice is trickier, and you can waste a lot of time discussing whether to do A or B when everybody in the discussions knows actually C will happen and the choice won't matter. Learn to let it go.

That said, doing that is a calculation and is done to achieve the organizations mission. That may be restore a customer out of service (sorry, we’ll do it tomorrow, busy) or hit a milestone that matters on time (we’d love to, but expediting some change process is a lot of work).

Unfortunately, in these situations I’m empowered to make tactical changes, but not to make more valuable strategic change. From my perspective process and controls are there to make things go faster, not as a weapon to make sure folks leave at 4. The trains need to run.

This can also be ego and attention seeking behavior masquerading as trying to 'get things done'. It seems to be driven more by the need to stand out than accomplish anything and puts everyone in peril for individual glory.

Casual references to 10X have no credibility without performance metrics. 10xers will have to earn the trust of the team and will automatically have it with a track record like Linux Torvalds on Linux or Ussain Bolt on 100m or its just hubris and posturing that will damage team productivity.

No doubt the quote by itself it broad generality is not helpful. Does that quote apply to assault or murder? Definitely not.

The quote is probably most helpful is risk-averse, at least moderately dysfunctional bureaucracies, and where the forgiveness-asker is actually right.

Applied to the wrong thing in the wrong way, or on the wrong day (there are no rules)... it's wrong. This (ironically) makes proverbs and religion a bad mix.

Don't argue with the devil. Measure twice, cut once. Grab the bull by the balls. Great company at a fair price, not fair company at a great price. Show must go on. Show, don't tell. It's how you use it that matters. Who cares what colour the cat is. Quality over quantity. There but for the grace of...

If you like your statements airtight, you don't like proverbs. Airtight statements require too many words. We can find exceptions to all these rules.

EDIT/PS: reading over what I wrote, proverbs are interesting. proverb meta analysis required.

If you are the type of person who is comfortable going in an independent direction in a group effort, you need to be able to assess the skills of those around you objectively, and you need to be able to ask good 'meet in the middle' questions when your objectivity needs re-evaluation.

A team member may do what is best for one instance you observe versus the thousands of other times you ignore them following instructions in spite of the fact that they may potentially have valuable information that could be very useful for the team as a whole.

>It is still possible to go for it. But you need to be accountable for the consequences.

We all do. Whether it's forgiveness or permission it's still the same problem when you work on a team.

> I will flag anyone that decides to "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" and notify their manager.

I don't know your dynamic and I'm not pretending to. But it's pretty easy for me to say "aren't you doing exactly the same thing you are calling out?" except from a managerial perspective, instead of whatever you consider 'ground zero' to be for business decisions.

> I have seen this abused.

I'm sure you have, and I'm not doubting that either, and no, that's not sarcasm. I'm sure your experience is relevant, but it's important to weight your entire set of a priori information / observations / inferences and assumptions with a 'maybe that's all wrong?' perspective too, at least in my opinion.

> And quite often that person feels vindicated when her solution works.

Try to exist in a world where you force yourself to assume everyone is just smarter than you, because you just assume they all have more information and greater awareness in their heads than you do. People wind up judging themselves more carefully, and people wind up taking note of their errors more carefully, without it having to be explicitly pointed out to their detriment and embarrassment (IMO)

Vindicated might be just another word for "thank god I finally did something unique and correct"

Asking for permission puts the responsibility of the decision on the person being asked, which makes everything slower and more conservative.

Just doing it and rationalizing it afterward tends to be more efficient, and helps to captures upside sooner rather than wasting time worrying about the downsides.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

But then we have the quotes that are quite banale in nature, but where the use of said quotes have been taken as validation by extremists, bolstering them in their rather dangerous belief, that secretly everyone agrees with then, and thus the ends justifies the means.

For now I brandish unattributed quotes with reckless abandon in settings where I know everyone, but try to do some basic research in public settings, not because attribution is important, but because others might.

Though for me the quick quips of quotes is a lens which can be used to shine some light on some aspect of our lives and world, it's as much a folly to rely on them as anything else. They capture is a single snapshot of an almost infinitely complex world and are as such almost always exactly as wrong as they are right, although in unusually interesting ways.

I wish she were more remembered for her backward clocks and the fact that she would let you have it if your answer was "Because that's the way we've always done it."

And, while she may not have originated the word "bug" for a computer problem, she was probably the first to document an actual insect causing a problem in a computer:

https://www.wired.com/2013/12/googles-doodle-honors-grace-ho...

I'm not necessarily a big fan of the "Ask forgiveness rather than permission" route as it only really works when the result either direction doesn't really impact anybody further than the person carrying out the action.

I currently have to step over a half-dozen bicycles every morning because some venture capital funded companies decided permission was just too difficult, and I hope they don't get forgiven and have to pay really expensive fines for not obtaining permission.