
The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves - stepstop
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/07/15/morale/
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ggm
The shift in meaning of the word _morale_ is important. "Pour encourager les
autres" is subtly different. Officers (and sergeant's) canes are sometimes
called 'starters' and were used to 'encourage' harder work. I think calling
them 'swagger sticks' came into use when hitting troops and sailors became
less acceptable.

'give that man the end of the rope to encourage him to pull harder' comes to
mind: it does not mean 'let him be the one pulling on the back end' -a concept
found in many a book by CS Forester, Patrick OBrien or maybe even Herman
Melville (who witnessed flogging)

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082349872349872
Capt. Vladimir Littauer was an influence on George Morris, and hence on US
olympic equestrian teams. Littauer was trained in the imperial russian
cavalry, where the staff sergeants instructing the young officers would often
whip them for correction, excusing themselves by saying "sorry Sir, of course
that was meant for the horse." He notes dryly that when he was earning his
biscuit in exile by teaching rich New Yorkers to ride, he'd had to slightly
modify his pedagogical methods...

(the soviet equivalent is from a movie in which the scout camp director
reminds the scouts: "Remember, young people, this camp belongs to you! You are
the owners, therefore, you must have Di. Sci. Pline.")

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SideburnsOfDoom
Although "pour encourager les autres" is similar to "the floggings will
continue", I do not think that it is the same sentiment, or in the same
lineage.

The sarcasm lands on the word "encourage" \- so that it does not mean
"encourage to have better morale", instead it means "encourage to work harder
out of fear of punishment".

The phrase means "to make an example of someone, as a warning to strike fear
into the rest, and ensure compliance". (1) It is a crack of the overseer's
whip.

On the other hand, "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves"
expresses a self-defeating cycle of interventions that perpetuates the
situation.

1 ) [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/pour%20encourager...](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/pour%20encourager%20les%20autres)

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tgb
I'm not convinced. Merriam Webster seems consistent with the article's
interpretation saying that it is meant ironic. The examples given by you and
others in this thread of "encourage" meaning to force doesn't rule out the
double meaning and irony. The modern saying is merely more transparent.

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MattGaiser
In modern parlance:

Scrum meetings will continue until velocity improves.

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perl4ever
I know PMs that have meetings amongst themselves calling them "scrum"
meetings. I suppose it's no worse than a department of programmers that named
itself something that is also a field of math without being aware of it.

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noir_lord
Ah, you mean "Scrum of Scrums" where the people with at best half a clue lose
that half.

I distinctly dislike my job (and am looking elsewhere, interview monday).

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Xylakant
Scrum - as pretty much everything - is bad when it’s done bad and can be good
when it’s done good. I’ve seen both: 30 minutes of SoS where you’d wish for a
pure caffeine infusion just to keep your eyelids up and daily SoS meetings
with representatives from about 15 teams which were quickly adjourned most of
the days when no cross cutting concerns needed coordination. It all hinges on
the person responsible for the meeting.

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noir_lord
Shrugs, I don't have the authority to fix the problems yet I'm responsible for
the fallout - hence I'm leaving as soon as possible.

If you have a broken process the developers with options will leave, what is
left is the developers who are either stuck for family reasons or simply
unemployable elsewhere - a few years later you wonder why a simple change
takes a week and a half and breaks things that should be totally unrelated and
blame the process, so you do workflow re-org number #27 to see if you can fix
it.

It's hard to explain to a more senior manager that they are in fact the
problem.

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ArkVark
The wikipedia article on John Byng (the ultimate source of the quote) is
fascinating, particularly this section:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byng](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byng)

"Naval historian N. A. M. Rodger believes it may have influenced the behaviour
of later naval officers by helping inculcate:

"a culture of aggressive determination which set British officers apart from
their foreign contemporaries, and which in time gave them a steadily mounting
psychological ascendancy. More and more in the course of the century, and for
long afterwards, British officers encountered opponents who expected to be
attacked, and more than half expected to be beaten, so that [the latter] went
into action with an invisible disadvantage which no amount of personal courage
or numerical strength could entirely make up for.""

So it seems that Morale did actually improve!

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nradov
Perhaps, but I'm not convinced that was the real cause of British naval
dominance during the latter part of the age of sail. Their real advantages
were that the officer corps was at least partly a meritocracy, and the
government provided enough funding for realistic training. By contrast the
other European navies were so badly managed that they often basically beat
themselves through sheer incompetence.

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mirkules
Modern take on it:

Scrum meetings will continue until morale improves

Edit: Accidentally submitted twice

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ianamartin
Fuck scrum.

Edit: No really, fuck scrum.

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namdnay
Spoken like someone who has never witnessed the abomination that is SAfE...
God I miss the time when Scrum was the worst part of my job

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rm445
Interesting read but I think this 'Quote Investigator' went off at a tangent
with "pour encourager les autres" (a famous quote in its own right, but not
quite the same sentiment). It seems more like the 1961 navy cartoonist who
coined "all liberty is canceled until morale improves" deserves credit for the
creative act, unless some earlier source is found.

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maciejw
Byng's fate seems to mirror a bit a history of Thucydides, an Athenian general
who lost Amphipolis to Spartans and was sentenced for exile because of that.
The sentence pushed Thucydides to create one of the greatest historical works
of ancient era.

It's funny that ancient Athenians were less barbaric than imperial Britons.

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pwdisswordfish2
First example that popped into my head was Mutiny on the Bounty. Anthony
Hopkins as Bligh.

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fennecfoxen
Captain Bligh was actually notable for an unorthodox management style. He was
doing his best to be an enlightened and humane captain of the ship and, for a
long time on the way to Tahiti, managed to entirely avoid floggings. He
gradually reverted to a more traditional naval flogging policy as five months
in Tahiti led to dereliction of duty, but his main morale problems were more
around Tahiti being a tropical paradise, while life on board a ship is
miserable. Taking away the rum because someone stole his private coconuts
probably hurt more than the beatings.

(However, he is easily conflated with Edward Edwards, who was sent to hunt
down the mutineers and bring them to England to be tried and hung. Cruelty was
in the job description.)

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pwdisswordfish2
Your comment reads as if you were there. :)

The film is just a film, probably not a true reflection of what happened.
Memorable for the performances nonetheless, speaking only for myself.

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fennecfoxen
The incident was investigated in detail, with several journals, testimony in
court of ten mutineers (of whom only three were hung), as well as the
captain's own logs, and more. Much of it is fascinating reading. Bligh's own
post-mutiny voyage was nothing short of heroic and he was hailed upon his
return.

The interesting human study, I think, is the image of Bligh as the earnest,
"enlightened captain," but a failure at that: paternalistic, overbearing, out
of touch, naïve about the motives and feelings of those serving under him,
prone to causing jealousy and resentment, dangerously mixing business and
friendship with things like a personal loan to his first mate... and just not
self-aware, oblivious to his own anger management issues and the impact of
verbal abuse on his officers.

You could take real management lessons from that.

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ncmncm
Looks like 1961 is the oldest example identified. The earlier quotes have a
fundamentally different character.

As "encouragement" goes, it is sometimes cited that the Soviet NKVD had a
quota to shoot down the ten percent of their own infantry who were furthest
from the front line of any battle. As might be expected, it is hard to verify,
but it would have discouraged reluctance to advance.

What is well established is that being taken prisoner was considered
desertion, and soldiers released after the war, or liberated by advances, were
routinely executed or sent to the GULag.

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taejo
A couple posters have brought up the "meetings will continue" version. US
Senator Max Cleland used this is 2000, but I wonder if it can be antedated?
[https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106shrg85968/html/C...](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106shrg85968/html/CHRG-106shrg85968.htm)

