March 14, 2023

I used to work for a major defense contractor. We referred to our company as the best machine shop in the world. We could manufacture virtually any part, to even the most exacting tolerances. The company had even received numerous “Excellence” awards from the Navy for ingenuity, customer service, and workmanship.

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And then in the 1990s, the company decided to try something different. Our president had a brainstorm — which is always scary coming from someone with a Harvard MBA and little manufacturing experience. He decided that we didn’t need quality control inspectors — those folks that check final parts to ensure compliance with the engineering specifications. He posited that our machinists were so good that they could check their own work. We could lay off the quality control inspectors and save a ton of money. They were redundant anyway — just checking the same things the machinists had already checked. Management proceeded with the plan — not bothering to implement any alternative system of accountability.

As the machinists faced schedule and cost pressures, they got lax with their quality checks, but they continued to sign off on the required paperwork. Over the coming months, our quality slipped dramatically. We experienced a tsunami of complaints from the fleet. Spare parts didn’t fit. Products had obvious workmanship defects. The Navy was not happy, and began looking for other contractors to do business with.

Our machinists weren’t intentionally making bad parts. But they also weren’t being held accountable for making good parts. Without that accountability, superb machinists became sloppy hacks, merely rubber stamping the inspection reports.

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It’s an engineering principle that systems need feedback to remain in control. A refrigerator needs a thermometer to maintain the right temperature. An engine needs a governor to avoid overrevving. When the system is a human being, that feedback is often provided by mechanisms of accountability.

Accountability is the balancing of the ledger. It’s the checking of actual behavior against what’s required. When “actual” deviates from “required,” a correction is needed — a price must be paid. That price may be paid in the form of a penalty, personal embarrassment, or loss of a future opportunity. Good employees relish accountability. The feedback helps them excel. Bad employees avoid accountability — for obvious reasons.

President Ronald Reagan understood the concept of accountability. In 1987 he used the term “trust but verify” after signing the INF Treaty with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was actually a translation of a Russian proverb. The term seemed counterintuitive — trust while showing distrust. But it was really quite insightful. Reagan understood that without accountability, human behavior is unpredictable. But verification would provide the accountability necessary to provide confidence. Trust is not achieved with good intentions. It is achieved with predictability, which is dependent on accountability. For President Reagan, verification was not an expression of distrust; it was the foundation on which trust would be built.

Unfortunately, our systems of accountability are failing us.

Our news media is intended to provide information to the public for sound decision making. Instead, it traffics in obvious falsehoods. But there is no penalty for false reporting. Instead, they receive Pulitzer Prizes for misleading the public. Reporters have lost their professionalism because editors and media owners are now in the propaganda rather than the information business.

Our politicians have racked up over $31 trillion of national debt. Yet they have no plan to pay off the debt or even throttle back on their reckless spending. They simply use some of the money to buy votes — such as by paying off student loans.