Over the past month I’ve been asking the question “Why would we do that?” to most typical tasks that I’m involved in. The number of times the answer has been to CYA has surprised me. There is a lot of communication, documentation and conference calls setup for the sole purpose of ensuring that the butt area is sufficiently covered if things go wrong.
My follow-up question is usually “Is there any other reason for this?” which usually is met with a “not really.”
I have a new philosophy: I’m not in the cover your ass business. CYA is all about setting up excuses for when things go wrong. They add no value to what you are doing today other than giving us a reason to think it is ok to fail. It’s the safety net into which we could fall later. CYA promotes a mentality that what we are working on is not so important that we must succeed at all cost. If your project isn’t more important than that, kill it now.
We all awe over Evel Knievel when he performed his stunts but the awe was for the lack of a safety net as much as it was for the stunt itself. Safety is great but it does accept higher rates of failure. It’s also a cop-out. We’re working in business failure doesn’t result in death, it results in an ass chewing. If you can’t handle that when you screw up you’re probably in the wrong business anyway.