Theysayers

Isn’t it interesting how many ways people find to shrug off personal responsibility. It seems that no one sticks their necks out any more. In the managerial world there is a thing called shared governance where decisions are made by a collective rather than an individual, or decisions are made by an individual according to the input of a collective.

This means that those higher up the food chain are protected from bad decision making because it was the underlings who actually prompted the decision. So when a division is closed for bad management, the manager usually stays in the company and the underlings are dismissed.

This is a long tradition in American culture. How often have you heard the phrase, “They’ve always said…”, or “They say it can’t be done.”?

The “They” phrases relieve the speaker of the responsibility for saying what he or she are actually saying. It’s like the words are being channeled. It’s shared governance by proxy so the words are totally not reflective of the mouth from with which they came from.

I don’t buy it. I call collective “They Sayers” on the carpet, and make them back up their statement, even if the statement is as simple as, “they say it is going to rain on Thursday.”