Looking back at some courses I taught in 2015, I noticed that I had been teaching the lean principle of respect for people using these 4 pillars:

  1. Develop skills; give authority.
  2. Assume good faith.
  3. Create space to share ideas, problems, wisdom.
  4. Show how today’s work fulfills the organization’s purpose.

It’s #2, ‘Assume good faith,’ that I’m no longer comfortable with.

Two things this misses

My regret

I regret recommending that people ‘assume good faith’ as a way of enacting respect for people. Why? Because it assigns extra work to the person dealing with whatever trash someone else has handed them. It opens a door through which a bunch of sexist and otherwise awful shit enters. It tolerates behavior and hides problems that are intolerable.

A huge part of the project of lean is to fix problems at the source. The exhortation to ‘assume good faith’ sets us up to do precisely the opposite.

I am grateful for I could not care less about your positive intent, a short, illuminating article from Lauren Howard that clarified the situation.

And I’ll keep working at a better articulation of a principle I believe in, but have only clumsily expressed.

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