Bulldozer00's Blog

The figure below introduces the concept of the “D’oh Threshold“. Every institution has their own purely subjective “D’oh Threshold“. It is arbitrarily set by whoever is in charge.

The more bureaucratic or dictatorial the org, the more the threshold shifts to the left (the less the positive safety margin and the more the negative safety margin). Since bureaucrats and dictators care more about conformance to their arbitrary and personally concocted rules than contribution to the “whole“, the “D’oh Threshold” wobbles all over the place. Its setting can vary month to month, day to day, minute to minute, group to group, individual to individual – depending on the emotional state and perceptions of those who run the circus.

When humans are involved in organized group efforts, there is no escape from subjectivity. But in high performing orgs, the “D’oh Threshold” set point is relatively stationary, far to the right, and everybody knows where they stand.