Friday, May 09, 2008

Why Some Managers Are More Right Than They Think

Fresh from a "Quality Initiatives" program at Large Mutual Insurance Company, I saw that my next bit of minor maintenance was to tweak the instructional text on a data-entry screen. Cool, thinks I, while I'm in there, I'll change the LONG PARAGRAPH OF ALL CAPS TEXT to mixed case. It takes no more time to deliver a High Quality Product, just like they said.

At the clientside review ( I swear this is the literal truth):

Clientside manager: "Why did you take away all the capital letters?"

Me: "Studies show it's easier and faster to read mixed case. This has no impact on system performance, and the dataentry clerks can be just that little bit more productive."

Clientside manager: "Our people aren't really that smart."


(Silently I agreed with her, but not in a way she would have liked.)

No comments: