The Way Things Look Is The Way Things Are
Hughism: The way things look is the way things are
Here is a confession: I am NOT the world’s neatest person. When I was in the [tag]Marines[/tag], I always had trouble with inspections; always, that is, until I met Staff Sergeant Britt. He had a reputation of being something of a hard ass and virtually none of us worker bees liked him. One week I drew the card to be the guy that followed him around with a clipboard and take notes during inspection. That week changed my life.
We would walk into a room that looked unremarkable: The rack (bed) was made, the floor was clean. He would stand in the center of the room, do a 360 and walk out. We would walk into the next room, see a dust bunny against the wall and spend the next half hour poking into cracks and crevices, looking behind things and generally ripping the resident of this room a new one.
After inspection, I asked him about what I saw as unfair treatment and this is what he said,”The way things look is the way things are. If a room looks neat, odds are it is neat. If a Marine looks sloppy, odds are he is sloppy. When I walked into the first room, I saw things looked neat, so I did not have to go any further. In the second room I figured if they would be sloppy about a dust bunny, what else were they sloppy about?“.
Now I know it is not a rock solid rule, but it does hold true much more often than not. If I walk into a restaurant and the counter is greasy and the windows dirty, I will walk out. If they are sloppy with the part of the restaurant I can see, God only knows what is going on in the parts I can not see. If the salesman did not shave that day, how can I trust him to handle the paperwork in a quick and timely manner? If a blog has ads everywhere, a huge header that takes up all the above the fold space and has a blinking banner, do they really care about me as a reader?
Again, it is not hard and fast, but this also can be a positive: If someone looks busy, they probably are busy. If someone looks neat, they probably are neat.
Thank you, Staff Sergeant Britt, for cluing me in. (The next week I received the first perfect inspection report I ever got !)
[tags]rule of thumb, rules of thumb, tips, Hughism[/tags]
Category: Hughisms, small business, success 3 comments »
June 11th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Hugh,
This is one of the top 5 things I try to teach entrepreneurs – as listed on my Squidoo lens Don’t Eat the Steak: “Perception is Reality”
Great story from your marine days. That disclosure explains so much about your style!
June 11th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
As insightful as this entry is, I definitely do not agree. A few times I have been the victim of this generalization and I have seen people victimized by it. It’s not pretty to see someone jump to wrong conclusions.
I would narrow the focus of the statement to really only apply to one category. For example, as a programmer I have learned to take pride in my work and generate beautiful, maintainable code. So it is safe to say that you could make assumptions of my future work based on the appearance of past work.
However, if you came to my house and decided whether or not to hire me based on how clean my living room was, that would be very unfair and inaccurate.
It’s human nature to make snap decisions and judgments based on the appearance of things, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.
June 12th, 2007 at 9:20 am
@ Jon-
The point is that based on the sloppiness of your living room, I may not go any further., or I may look a lot harder at what ever examples of your work you do show me.
It is not right to make assumptions about a book because of the cover, but it is what happens. To hope for anything else is to deny reality (See today’s post on reality).
Thanks for commenting, and you do not have to agree with me to chime in.