
It's Better to Beg for Forgiveness than to Ask for Permission - rpledge
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/06/15/its-better-to-beg-for-forgiveness-than-to-ask-for-permission/
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edw519
This reminds me of my first partner in our software/consulting service
business. He was absolutely fearless.

We would always arrive at appointments very early so he had an excuse to "poke
around". He'd ask anybody, the receptionist, someone in the breakroom, even
the janitor. He'd see what was going on in the parking lot, the loading dock,
even in the warehouse or factory. Seeing him in a business for the first time
was like watching a kid in a candy store.

In our first meeting, he always knew something about the client's business
that they didn't. He'd say things like, "Automating the inventory won't help
if Fred and Jean are counting 2 different things." This always led to
interesting discussion and often, follow-up business.

Once he even spent a week of his own time on third shift, going over
procedures and reports with factory supervisors. They didn't know who he was;
they just figured someone from the main office sent him. He did a complete
analysis in Excel which we used in a proposal. That got us hundreds of
thousands of dollars worth of work.

I often challenged him, "You can't just do that," I would say. To which he
would respond, "These people need help and don't even realize it. We have to
find a way to show them." Then the inevitable, "It's better to beg for
forgiveness than ask for permission."

Looking back, it didn't always work. It pissed off some people and burnt those
bridges. But when it did work, we often concluded that nothing else would
have.

I learned a lot in those days. I'm still not as fearless as my partner was,
but I'd like to think I'm getting there. Thanks for the memories.

~~~
msuster
Great story! And exactly the point. The other saying is "you can't make an
omelet unless you're willing to break eggs." I don't mind getting messy from
time-to-time. When you take risks like your partner did it backfires
sometimes. But I'd rather occasionally get shut down for trying too hard.

~~~
eru
Yes. But keep in mind: You can break an awful lot of eggs, without making an
omelet.

------
j_baker
This is especially good advice if you work in a large company. Banging your
head against the wall is often more pleasant than getting permission to do
something new or different. So my solution is to just mock up a prototype
before I tell anyone about it. It's _easy_ to say "I want to do this, and can
prove it's not all that difficult". Even better if you can say "I had this
idea that was so great I went ahead and wrote it!" People are a lot more
likely to take your work seriously after it's already been written than
before.

~~~
roqetman
I fully agree with this. Getting past big company bureaucracy absolutely
requires this attitude in my opinion.

------
jknupp
The outcome of this story was favorable (which is why we're reading it). I
wonder, however, if there are far more stories that begin the same way but end
with "You're being fired for insubordination" or something similarly negative.

~~~
huherto
I have a story that backfired. I had a team of 5 developers that were working
in a product. The company had been trying to build the product for several
years. When I saw the architecture they were using I tried to convince the
architect to make some changes. They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't even let me
touch the code. I was a manager I wasn't supposed to get involved. So I
thought. "It is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission". So
I started to build the product from scratch. I had plenty of time and no one
cared what I did. After 5 or 6 months I already had a product that was way a
head than the official product. When I tried to show it to my manager he got
really mad. He literally screamed at me. That was 1.5 years ago. I went in a
depression for a long time. They fired the architect. They fired my manager.
The developers had to spin their wheels for a long time. Then they left. And
the product is still not ready.

~~~
jfager
"Ask forgiveness rather than permission" is not equivalent to "forge ahead
without thought for the consequences". Completely rewriting a codebase by
yourself to show up a team that has been working on it for a long time might
mean better code, but it's also a direct demonstration of the ineffectiveness
of that team. _Of course_ some kind of major shake-up is going to happen after
something like that. Firing people might be a little extreme, but you
certainly have to expect that it's a possibility.

If you don't have the stomach for directly causing people to get fired, or for
conflict, then don't go out of your way to demonstrate how poorly they're
doing their job. Find your way out to something else, and let them do
themselves in.

~~~
huherto
No one was fired as a consequence of what I did. They were fired because time
passed and there were no results. If I had been able to convince my boss I
think we would have been successful. At one moment I thought about going one
level up in the organization, I decided to be loyal to my boss so I kept my
mouth shut.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Ouch. Don't chain yourself to a sinking ship.

------
russell
"It’s Better to Beg for Forgiveness than to Ask for Permission", Grace Hopper,
one of our pioneers. She also coined the term "debugging" and was one of the
creators of COBOL.

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Periodic
If I were to follow this philosophy more often I'd try to be damn sure I knew
exactly what I was doing before I did. Going off on your own to do something
because you know others would not agree is a bit arrogant. It has to come from
a belief that you know more than they do. So if you are going to do something
when you know your boss/colleague/co-founder would disagree then you had
better make sure you do know more than they do.

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strick
If you enjoyed this article, you will probably love Randy Pausch's Last
Lecture: [http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-
Pausch/dp/140132325...](http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-
Pausch/dp/1401323251/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276700690&sr=8-1)

I had already watched the lecture on YouTube and thought I wouldn't get much
from the book but I was wrong.

The story of Pausch muscling his way into Disney's Imagineer team is
fantastic.

~~~
hboon
Also watch Randy Pausch's lecture on Time Management:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0>

------
nollidge
Why do people put distracting animations next to the content which they
presumably _want people to read_? I don't care which Twitter users looked at
your page, and if I did I could very well find that information without the
animation drawing my eye to it.

EDIT: Thankfully there's Readability. But I'm sure the author would rather I
read it as he presented it.

------
InclinedPlane
Sometimes it's better, sometimes not.

Life is complex and subtle. That applies to business, personal relationships,
friendships, personal hobbies, society, culture, everything. If you bind
yourself to the naive "official" level of policies, rules, and regulations
then you will miss out on the rich vein of interactions based on tacit and
implicit knowledge, culture, and norms.

Flirting is a perfect example of this sort of thing. Full of subtlety and
complexity and none of it 100% direct and straightforward. All of life has
similar elements. If you treat your job, for example, as a mechanistic process
then you'll probably have about as much success as if you treated romance the
same way.

Developing the skills, experience, and judgment to know how, when, where, and
in what way to "break the rules" and when not to is a an ongoing, lifelong
adventure for everyone.

------
wallflower
Tangent story [Asking for Permission]

[http://kbiri.blogspot.com/2009/01/lens-story-about-
yesterday...](http://kbiri.blogspot.com/2009/01/lens-story-about-
yesterday.html)

~~~
josh33
That's not exactly a counterpoint, as the intonation behind "ask for
forgiveness, not permission" is that you are doing something the other party
would not want if asked directly.

~~~
wallflower
Corrected it.

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fuzzythinker
One of Colin Powell's leadership slide points.
<http://www.blaisdell.com/powell/>

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tjmaxal
This usually works best in overly bureaucratic or draconian situations.

