Hierarchy Archives - understand-culture

Malice in Dallas

On March 20, 1992, at the Dallas Sportatorium, Southwest Airlines settled a dispute over its slogan “Just Plane Smart” with an arm-wrestling match. Southwest’s chief executive, Herb Kelleher, took on Kurt Herwald, the chief executive of Stevens Aviation, which also claimed the slogan. Herwald won. When Kelleher’s early pin was voided, he said: “I didn’t know there were any rules!”

Kelleher also dressed up “as Elvis Presley, a woman, the Easter bunny, a leprechaun and a flight attendant to promote Southwest,” the Dallas Morning News wrote.

Casual Friday

In 1966 the Hawaiian Fashion Guild promoted “Aloha Fridays.” In 1992 the Dockers brand of Levi Strauss & Co. mailed a “Guide To Casual Business Wear” to about 25,000 human resources managers. One of its rules: “Keep wrinkled, stained, or dirty clothing out of the workplace.”

A 1995 survey by Evans Research found that 9 in 10 companies allowed casual dress at least occasionally. In 1992 it had been about two-thirds.

Feared or Loved

In the episode “The Fight” of The Office (NBC, season 2), the regional manager Michael Scott asks himself a question: “Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy: both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”

Friendly, Not Friends

Alison Green writes the workplace advice column Ask a Manager. In September 2020 a reader wrote that her boss wanted to be her best friend. Green answered: “Your manager’s job is to judge your work, so you’re inherently on unequal footing.”

In a 2018 podcast episode called “The Friend Boss” she put it more briefly: “there’s a difference between friendly and friends.”

The Vocabulary of First Names

Please, call me Bob. The senior person offers the first name at the first meeting.

Mr. Johnson was my father. A friendly refusal of the title. It means: use my first name.

Hi, I’m Jim, and I run the place. The boss introduces himself by first name and only then by role.

We’re on a first-name basis. The relationship is informal. It does not say who decides.

Associates and Partners

Sam Walton called the people who worked at Walmart associates. In a letter from 1978, Sam Walton wrote: “Our associates make the difference.” He described the company as a partnership in which associates share in the profits.

Starbucks calls its employees partners. In 1991 it launched Bean Stock, which gave stock to every employee, full-time and part-time. The aim was that every person would have “a stake in the success of the company.”

The Causes Which Impel Them

The Declaration of Independence begins with an explanation of why it explains itself: “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

What follows is a list of grievances against the King. The document does not only announce the separation. It gives the reasons for it.

A Reasoned Explanation

On June 18, 2020, the Supreme Court decided Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California by a vote of 5 to 4. The government had ended the DACA program for immigrants brought to the country as children. The Court did not rule on whether it could end the program. It ruled on how it had explained the decision.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote that “an agency must defend its actions based on the reasons it gave when it acted.” Under the Administrative Procedure Act an agency must “provide a reasoned explanation for its action.” The Court found that the rescission violated the Act and vacated it.

The Shadow Docket

In 2015 the law professor William Baude wrote about the Supreme Court’s emergency orders: “This docket operates in such obscurity that I call it the ‘shadow docket.'”

In his book The Shadow Docket, the law professor Stephen Vladeck criticized “inconsistent, unsigned, and unexplained decisions that are affecting more and more Americans.”

Task and Purpose

The Marine Corps doctrine manual Warfighting states: “There are two parts to any mission: the task to be accomplished and the reason or intent behind it.” It continues: “The task denotes what is to be done, and sometimes when and where; the intent explains why.”

The Army’s doctrine publication ADP 6-0 defined commander’s intent as “a clear and concise expression of the purpose of the operation and the desired military end state.” Tasks “include all the standard elements (who, what, when, where, and why).”