As we start into the season, I want to post a few topics that are not directly related to direct construction, etc.
The first is Chesterton’s fence. Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English author, philosopher, and literary and art critic. Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays.
One of his more famous writings was about fences. You can look at the original quote, but a summary is below:
Chesterton’s Fence is a simple rule of thumb that suggests that you should never destroy a fence, change a rule, or do away with a tradition until you understand why it’s there in the first place. The principle assumes that fences have a purpose, were carefully planned, and cost time and money to erect.
You run across situations all the time. Some examples:
-
I had a property that had a path through it. 1/2 way down the path was a single width of chain link fence about 6’ tall blocking the path. It was annoying. I was going to tear it down, but in asking the neighbor, I was told that it stopped the deer from running down the path from the corn field behind us. Otherwise they would run into the yards and eat the shrubs. (So an actual fence)
-
At build sessions, all food related trash needs to go into the big trashcan at the end of the hall. - That’s the fence. But roboteers say “let’s just ignore that rule, and just use all the trash cans.” Because the custodial people only emptied the food trash after we were there, we soon had ants in all the rooms because of the food.
-
On a big project, I stocked a variety of coffee K-Cups and snacks for the team (about 30 people) to drink / eat. i expensed them, it was about $200 a week. A new finance person came in and decided to deny my expenses. In two weeks time, productivity was down. (Did you see the fence?) When asked why, I said simply, Starbucks is a 20 minute round trip. You’ve taken people off site and it’s a lot of time (30 people * 2 times a day * 5 days a week at 20 minutes about 50-60 hours of lost time. Since they are mostly consultants it’s much much more than my expenses. Plus, because they are consultants, they are billing you for the Starbucks coffee at Starbucks rates as expenses. Even more money. So by thinking they were “saving” $7,500 across a year, they “cost” almost that in just the first week.
-
*On an FRC robot, weight is a big deal. Saving weight was super important. Came in late one day and got “Mr. Foster we saved 9oz of weight! We got rid of these two useless struts.” Pretty soon the shooting team shows up and said “Mr Foster we have a huge problem, someone took the supports for the shooter off the robot” - Do you see the fence?
So before you make changes, do a quick check to see why they are there before you break out your Caterpillar D6 and push the fence over,
Do you have a Chesterton’s fence story to share?