A spoonful of sewage

“If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage.” Schopenhauer’s Law of Entropy

The nasty few wrecks it for everyone else. Or:

A few demeaning creeps can overwhelm the warm feelings generated by hordes of civilized people.

Basically, it doesn’t matter if most people involved with an organization are well-meaning or that a strong organizational structure is already in place. Sutton argues that even one or a handful of jerks can poison the experience for everyone else: that negative interactions have five times the effect on mood as positive interactions. So, he argues, “the first things that you need to do are screen out, reform, and expel all the assholes in your workplace.”

(From a review of The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t by Robert I. Sutton, on workplacefairness.org)

Is there sewage within the ranks of your organisation?
Is your business sewage or wine?

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