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Slight Way: The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the Slight Way

Slight Way: The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the Slight Way

Last updated on: April 9, 2016 at 9:54 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Slight Way: The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the Slight Way 2016-04-09T21:54:24-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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My Dad is always teaching me something new. Our family has always had a saying that there are three ways to do a home improvement project: the right way, the wrong way, and the Reynolds’ way. The Reynolds’ way is to get the job done, but in a manner unanticipated by the instruction manual. At the end of the project, the Reynolds’ way will produce an object that works, but often not predictably.

Rube_Goldberg_Cartoon_-_18_Nov_1921_Duluth_Herald_opt

The Reynolds Way

This can be good.

Today Dad mentioned a word from his West Virginia childhood (where he insists the purest form of Shakespearean English still existed). For any job there is the right way (instructions!), the wrong way (bad!), and the slight way. To do a job the slight way is to do it with maximum efficiency, to cut so many corners that a square peg can fit in a round hole.

Rube Goldberg was famous for wonderful drawings where tasks were done the Reynolds’ Way, but with maximum inefficiency. You can get the soap back in the tub as illustrated, but it isn’t slight and all God’s children should aspire to being slight.

Oddly the “instruction manual” way of doing things is rarely slight. The people who put together human resource manuals or “how to guides” are trying for a lawyer or idiot proof system. This rarely gives scope for the imagination or room for genius. The death of higher education will come in a blizzard of forms instructing educators to do things “the right way.”

The Reynolds’ way can produce a Rube Goldberg contraption and this is generally bad. The Reynolds’ way can be slight and this is good. Years of putting together everything from K-Mart screw together furniture (Part B1 goes with screw X as in figure 52) to academic programs has taught me how to know when the Reynolds’ way may go Goldberg instead of slight.

Passing a Policy is never the Slight Way

The temptation to solve a problem is to pass a policy: We will never err again. This does not work and the time taken making the policy (committee of erring!), passing the policy, and then enforcing the policy guarantees the slight way will be gone.

Solve a problem by solving the problem. Stop making the mistake.

Filling out a Form will Not Be Slight

No form can produce the Slight Way. In a large organization some paperwork will be necessary, but make sure the paperwork does not become the job. The moment you cannot solve a problem the Slight Way because the paper work or the software will not allow it . . .get new software.

Vision Statements and Plans can kill the Slight Way.

More time is spent in failing organizations figuring out how to say what they are doing, than doing it. More resources are squandered on “five year plans” than the good done. It is important to count the cost and have a plan. It is even better to stick to that plan through completion, adjusting to circumstances, but it is Goldberg and not slight when writing the plan takes as much time as implementing it.

A plan or vision should lead directly to action . . . not further honing of the vision or plan.

Where meetings multiply the Slight Way perishes.

The slight way is efficient and meetings generally are not. They can be important, but the slight way will be lost if one meets to discuss being efficient.

The Slight Way remembers the goal and is not distracted.

I work in education and this is such a broad area that it is easy to get distracted. Instead of helping students, we end up discussing and doing too many things only indirectly related to job one. A school exists to educate. How does it end up with so many people not directly involved in education? The Slight Way is lost when as many people aren’t doing the main job as are doing it.

As the team works on an education revolution, The Saint Constantine School, may this Reynolds, by God’s grace, find the Slight Way.

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