Many years ago, my forth grade teacher gave us an assignment to write a recipe about how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The next day, she took each set of instructions and showed how, without using any judgment, each set of instructions would fail to produce a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If the recipe said spread peanut butter on one side of the bread and then put the pieces together, she would put the peanut butter on the outside of the bread. Ostensibly, the assignment was supposed to show us the importance of clear instructions, but years later, I've come to realize the real lesson is don't associate with nincompoops.

No member of our class, no matter how diligent, and dedicated, could get someone with no judgment to effectively make a sandwich. I can promise those same students are effectively giving instructions on complicated engineering, legal and medical matters today. The problem was not the instruction writers nearly as much as it was the instruction followers.

It sounds simple, but still the reality is that tons of organizations continue to focus first on “process,” particularly when something goes wrong. “How did this happen? Look at the flow chart, where's the hole?” I'd dare say 90% of the time the correct answer is that the right, experienced people weren't participating at the level they needed to be.