Levers
Agent Pistone describes how the trial of the first group of Bonanno family mafiosi opened in a courtroom holding three hundred and more people. He sat on the witness stand and looked at the five defendants. Lefty Ruggiero was shaking his head in dismay, and the others copied him like nodding dolls. Not long before, Pistone writes, Lefty had assured his lawyer that Donnie would never give them up. Right up until Pistone appeared in court, Lefty sincerely refused to believe that his Donnie was an FBI agent and not a partner in crime.
Why did Lefty refuse to believe it when everything was already clear? Because once, in Milwaukee, he had told Frank Balistrieri he would trust his buddy with his life. And he went on saying it for years. A man who has once vouched for someone with his head holds on to that pledge longer than common sense holds on to him.
The Word That Holds You
This is the first lever that moves people: commitment and consistency. People want to be consistent. Once they’ve said something, promised something, chosen something, they’ll hold to it even after circumstances have changed. Backing down means admitting you were wrong. For many, that hurts more than going on being wrong.
This lever works both for you and against you. For you, when a client who once said yes to a small trial is readier to say yes to a big order. When a worker who proposed the plan himself carries it out more diligently than a plan handed down from above. That’s why good managers don’t order, they ask: what do you think, can we have it done by Friday? If a man named Friday himself, he’ll have it done by Friday.
Against you, when you hold on to a decision only because you once made it. Lefty vouched for Donnie and then couldn’t let himself doubt, even when the doubt was costing him his freedom. Check yourself: am I holding on to this because it’s right, or because I once said so?
Who Has the Right
The second lever is authority. People tend to do what they’re told by someone they think has the right to give orders, without even asking themselves whether he’s actually right.
Lefty explained this rule to Pistone as plainly as it can be put: a made guy, in Pistone’s account of his words, is always right and you are always wrong, no matter what, and Donnie wasn’t to forget it, because if he got into a beef with a made guy, nobody would back him. And in an argument between a wiseguy and an outsider, always take the wiseguy’s side, even if he’s wrong. When Pistone’s partner once innocently asked Lefty what the point of being made was anyway, Lefty nearly choked with indignation: made guys can cheat, they can steal, they can kill, because they have the right.
In that world authority rested not on being right but on status. In the office the wording is softer, but the mechanism is the same: people obey the name on the door more often than they obey an argument. Use this carefully. Authority not backed by being right works until the first serious failure. And when you’re the one listening to your superiors, ask yourself what exactly is convincing you: the argument or the stripes.
Where the Money Is, the Opinion Follows
The third lever is the most treacherous: self-interest quietly bends judgement. A man who is paid to sell something sincerely believes the product is good. A man who stands to gain from breaking a contract sincerely finds reasons why the contract is unfair.
In the seventies a cartel of cigarette smugglers took shape in Sicily, with both Sicilians and Neapolitans in it. Shipments were shared out in turn, and everyone had a limit: no more than forty thousand cases. Gambetta writes that the cartel fell apart in 1979 not because of outside competition but simply because of cheating within. Antonino Calderone explained that it was hard to get everyone to keep their word; the Neapolitans in particular tried to unload far more cases than agreed. Francesco Marino Mannoia was more honest: yes, the Neapolitan unloaded more than the limit, but the truth was that the others did the same. One of the leading smugglers, who called himself “the Agnelli of smuggling” and boasted that he could raise an army of five thousand men, was also, according to testimony, pocketing the money of small investors, among them that same Don Mariano Marsala.
Each of them, I’m sure, found an explanation of why the extra cases were his by right. That’s how self-interest works: it doesn’t make a man lie to others, it makes him believe what suits him. Draw up agreements so that everyone gains more by keeping them than by breaking them. Don’t pay people for things that work against the business. If a salesman gets a percentage of turnover, he’ll sell to people who won’t pay. If a bookkeeper gets a bonus for savings, he’ll save on what mustn’t be skimped. Every time you set a reward, ask yourself: what behaviour am I really buying?
Our Way Is the Only Way
And the last lever, or rather a trap. Everyone thinks his way of doing things is the only right one. We’re used to it, it’s how things are done here, we’ve always done it this way. And we stop seeing that it could be done differently.
Pistone writes about this with the bitterness of a man who spent almost five years among mafiosi: working undercover, they learned that the main enemy wasn’t the Mafia but the bureaucracy. The higher-ups were forever dragging their feet. The agent in the field had to decide in the middle of a conversation, while upstairs every decision was sent off to headquarters and pondered for two weeks. Not out of malice: the Bureau had its procedures, and those procedures seemed to it the only ones possible. A seller who has been promised a buyer will wait a couple of days, but not a month. With their procedures, the higher-ups put both the operation and the agents’ lives in danger.
In the office this happens all the time. A department that has always worked to a certain pattern doesn’t notice the world has changed. A boss who grew up on one method forces it on everyone, even where it doesn’t fit. Every so often ask yourself: are we doing it this way because it’s the best way, or because we’re used to it? And listen to the people on the ground, the ones who see what can’t be seen from an office.
The Bottom Line
Test your procedures for soundness: they may be the only way only for you.
And when you badly don’t want to admit you were wrong about someone, remember Lefty in the courtroom. He held on to his pledge to the very end. Until the day Donnie stepped up to the witness stand.