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5.15.04 The Actions of a Few

It is the bad apple spin. And anyone who has worked in any kind of institution or big business is damn familiar with it. When abuse or perversion hits the light of day, the institutional protectors rush in: An isolated incident! A bad apple! We mustn't let the actions of a few tarnish the good work of the many!

It is always the "action of the few" that derails institutions and businesses. The Few is always responsible for The Crash. It's why we have catastrophic health insurance. Those few leukemia cells will mow our big bodies down and drain all our resources.

Pareto's Law comes from economics: 20% of a population earns 80% of the income. But it applies just about everywhere. The Few dominate the Many.

A few bad soldiers abuse prisoners. A few "thugs" fuel the Iraqi insurgency. A few bad priests fondle children. A few bad executives rob their stockholders. A few Bolsheviks toppled old Russia.

Yet our whole precious "rule of law" is about those few. It's only a Few Bad Apples who misuse their personal handguns, who lie on their job applications, who cook their corporate books, who beat their children. And we write laws to punish them.

The good institutions know that the bad apples are out there and they organize around minimizing their presence and their impact. Criminal background checks, psychological testing, and credential checks are a few ways they try to screen out miscreants from the get-go. Then they implement supervision, quality assurance, and external accreditations and audits. They aim for transparency, so that when a bad apple does wind up in their midst, the wrongdoing is quickly evident and action is immediate. If not, they wind up like Arthur Anderson and Enron -- demolished not only because of the "action of a few" but because of their failure to understand their institutional responsibilities around those few.

The Catholic Church doesn't quite get it yet. They are still resisting any encroachment on their right to secrecy.

The Bush Administration doesn't want to get it. Oh, they toppled Iraq because of a few nasty Baathists. But they want us to believe that torture of prisoners is an isolated incident that they shouldn't be held accountable for.

But anyone who has worked in a mental hospital (for example) -- or anybody who studied Total Quality Management in the 1990s -- knows that the institution is always responsible. There are rarely direct orders to do evil things, but the guys at the top set the policies and establish the culture. In a thousand ways they mold behaviors by what they reward and what they "don't see." Then, if they operate in secrecy -- a Bush regime hallmark -- the problems are compounded. It's the system, stupid.

Creating quality and accountability in large institutions is not a mystery. School systems know it. Xerox knows it. Hospitals know it. The Army knows it. "How did this happen!?" is not a rhetorical or philosophical question. The checklist for analyzing exactly how something happens is well established. Yes, a rotten apple sometimes manages to drop in, but good systems don't let it spoil the barrel.

Defense department systems aren't working. Liberation American-style was supposed to be sweet as apple cider. But now it is vinegar.

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