Recently, a Texas judge sentenced an honour student to jail for truancy. She had missed school several times after her parents’ sudden separation left her looking after the family and working two jobs. The judge even open admitted he could have made an allowance for her extenuating circumstances, but chose not to because the law is the law dammit!
Talk about losing touch with reality. The student spent a night in jail. There was a massive outcry. And only then did the judge drop the charges.
A lot of the problems with the world, with business practice, today stems from the lack of interest in the “why.” Why do we do what we do? What is the reason for these processes (and laws) that we have set up? What is the vision we are working towards? What is the big picture?
We are so compartmentalised, specialised and departmentalised we don’t want to see the forest anymore. We are just happy with our branch, and too ready to blindly follow the rules. Or even in the case of this judge to passionately upload a process that can only cause more damage and distress. Because it certainly does not sound like she needed lessons in the badness of truancy.
If a human in the process cannot inject humanity into it, the judge in question may as well have been replaced by a computer. Luckily in this case, sense ultimately prevailed.
