The strong and unrelenting force needed to prevent The Fast-Food Fallacy need not come from a strong, unrelenting individual. The Corporal MacAndrews of the world are exceptional, and most people, like Prescott, are too weak to resist the blandishments of cost-accounting logic. But there is an alternative that consultants can use to prevent their planned changes from turning rotten one tiny step at a time.
Although Harold may be puzzled about what's happening to the patties, he knows enough to dine at the neighborhood Italian restaurant. Sophisticated research may tell large organizations what's gone bad, but human beings still rely on their noses. That's why pollution is always a battle between corporate data-gatherers and ordinary citizens.
Many pollution situations meet the conditions of The Fast-Food Fallacy: large-scale repetition with a centralized cost-accounting function. Little by little, an industrial plant makes changes to improve processing efficiency, with none of those changes making "any noticeable difference" in effluents. In the end, the citizens living downstream from the plant can smell the difference, even though the engineers can "prove" there's no pollution.
According to legend, Henry Ford was once interviewed by Congress on the question of how to prevent river pollution caused by industrial plants. Ford pooh-poohed all the complex legislation that Congress was considering, proposing instead a single law that would "end river pollution once and for all." Congress didn't pass the law, but its two parts are worth remembering:
1. People can take any amount of water from any stream to use for any purpose desired.
2. People must return an equal amount of water upstream from the point from which they took it.
In other words, people can do what they want with water, as long as they themselves have to live with the consequences.
Why does this principle, which I call Ford's Fundamental Feedback Formula, prevent a gradual drift into pollution? There are two reasons:
1. It is strong, because without the water, there can be no industrial process.
2. It is unrelenting, because it is attached by law to an essential input to the process, and cannot be escaped even for an instant.
If Harold Halstead and his researchers were forced to eat Possum-Patties as a condition of employment, The Fast-Food Fallacy would never get off the ground.
Consultants seeking to preserve quality should first verify that the people responsible for quality are, in fact, downstream from that quality. Individuals who act obnoxiously are generally unaware of their behavior. Watching themselves on videotape often cures the problem in the twinkling of an eye. Insensitive bureaucrats are generally found in places where they never use the services they are supposed to provide, such as welfare and unemployment offices. Hard-hearted surgeons often soften the first time they undergo real surgery themselves.
So next time you're looking for a restaurant, find out if the owners eat there. If they do, the food might still not be to your taste, but if they don't, it won't be to anyone's.
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