The Word Several

MSB and one of her staff were discussing some work that had been completed. Within this document, there was, apparently, a statement to the effect of "The company operates in several cities outside of the United States." MSB asked how many cities outside the United States the company operates in. The answer from the writer of the document was "It's not clear from the information I found, but I thought it was relevant to how much expansion the company has accomplished."

The reply from MSB was swift and terrible: "This is unacceptable! We sell certainty here! Don't you ever use the word 'several' with me ever again!" and the poor staffer was sent away to re-write the document.

For the record, our company does not sell certainty at all. We do a lot of selling and marketing and schmoozing, but we do not sell "certainty." In addition, even if the problem really was with the use of the word "several," why would this particular issue cause the use of the word to be completely prohibited in all cases? This is another frequent and extremely time-wasting action that MSB takes all the time: legislating future behavior to correct for an error that is not likely to repeat itself. If you are a good manager, you teach a lesson at a time like this. For example, you explain the benefit that precision would provide in the document in question and then move on to how you would appreciate it if the future documents included absolutely as much precision as is possible. The problem is not the specific word that was used - it was that the word did nto provide the precision that MSB wanted in the document. To forever forbid the use of the word "several" is an unneccesary additional rule that doesn't even solve the initial problem, much less prevent the problem from happening again.

More on making rules to correct past mistakes later.

I bring this up today because the abused staffer from this story quit at the end of last week. I have no idea why she would want to leave this place.