Standards and Dissent
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People do not come to work to do a bad job.

Sidney DekkerThe Field Guide to Understanding Human Error, 2006

The quote is short, but the word people carries the weight. In a request to bypass a guardrail “just this once”, it tells you where reality will push back, even when the plan looks clean.

In a request to bypass a guardrail “just this once”, the phrase can feel abstract until the system bites. It shows up as a local fix that creates a new problem at the seams, where local logic produces global trouble. If you cannot describe the boundary simply, the boundary will not survive escalation and reorgs.

Sidney Dekker is a reminder to keep it concrete. Surface the assumption the plan depends on and name the first signal that would prove it wrong. Do not hide the cost in prose.

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