This is one of the largest collections of humorous laws in the ledger, and nearly all of it was written by people inside organisations. The laws are funny because they say what cannot be said in a meeting. They are useful because many of them anticipated, in a sentence, findings that research took decades to confirm.
Reports that do not match reality
One cluster concerns the gap between what an organisation reports and what is true. The Potemkin Village, the facade built for an inspection, is the oldest image. Watermelon Reporting is its modern form: green on the outside at every level of summary, red inside. Mushroom Management keeps staff in the dark, and the Memory Hole, from Orwell, destroys inconvenient records. The Chinese saying Shang You Zhengce, Xia You Duice, the centre has policies and the localities have countermeasures, describes the same gap in a large state.
Organisations that serve themselves
A second cluster describes organisations outliving their purpose. The Shirky Principle holds that institutions preserve the problem they exist to solve. Mission Creep and the observation that nothing is so permanent as a temporary government programme describe remits that grow and never shrink. Parkinson's later laws, on delay and the pension point, extend his satire from staffing to decision-making.
Where you stand depends on where you sit
A third cluster concerns how position shapes judgement. Miles's Law states it directly. Sinclair's Law adds that it is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Kidder's Law finds responsibility exceeding authority; Stewart's Law finds forgiveness easier to get than permission; and Initiative Is Punishable, a Russian saying, finds that whoever proposes an improvement is assigned to carry it out.
Absurd procedures and group folly
The literary entries name procedures that trap people. Catch-22 and the Kafkaesque describe rules that are internally consistent and collectively absurd. The Abilene Paradox describes a group agreeing to something no member wants, because each assumes the others want it. Sayre's Law observes that academic politics are so bitter because the stakes are so small.
Where it applies
Several of these laws are practical tools. The Bus Factor, the number of people who could be lost before a project stalls, is now a standard risk measure in software. Watermelon reporting is a reason to ask for the underlying data rather than the traffic light. The Abilene paradox is worth naming aloud before a group commits to a plan nobody has defended. Miles's and Sinclair's laws are useful in any negotiation: they suggest predicting a party's position from their interests before hearing their argument.
Where it is argued over
Most of these laws were never meant as findings, and the ledger files them as figures for that reason. Their plausibility often rests on research filed elsewhere: the Abilene paradox on pluralistic ignorance, the Shirky principle on organisational survival, Parkinson on bureaucratic growth. Two entries carry political arguments. Conquest's Second Law and O'Sullivan's First Law claim that organisations drift leftward, and the Iron Law of Liberalism in the model essay makes a mirror-image claim; none has an agreed empirical test.
Why it is worth knowing
These sayings are how employees theorise about their own organisations, and they are often more accurate about daily working life than the formal models. They also do a social job: naming a pattern makes it discussable without accusing anyone. A team that can say "this is a bicycle shed" or "we are on the road to Abilene" can change course without anyone having to admit they were wrong, which is a rarer and more useful capacity than most management techniques supply.
The entries behind this essay: Figure in Organizations & Bureaucracy. Every subject has its essays on the essays page.