Johnny Moore’s tyranny of the explicit

British marketing consultant Johnny Moore articulates something that has been bothering me in The Tyranny of the Explicit. He writes about “a creeping extension of the need for academic qualifications, the ability to write clever essays.”

He says:

The intention is good, but the practical effect is to engulf people in explicit, complicated systems and reduce their freedom – based on an unconscious assumption that everyone is not to be trusted. We give ascendancy to people who are really great at theory and effectively degrade practice. I think its rooted in the idea that one person or a group of people can effectively oversee a system and control how it works with written instructions.

One disturbing aspect of this is the arse-covering qualifications provide. If, say, a marketing manager hires a copywriter with a degree in copy-writing, they feel absolved of any blame if the writer stuffs up. There’s an incentive inside most organisations to engage the best-qualified person for a task rather than the most experienced, best skilled or highest performer.

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