A bad system will beat a good person more often than not…

Recently, I came across this statement in a book, and started to think more and more about it, wondering about the statement’s validity, application and logic. Thinking out loud, many instances come to mind where this is indeed the case:

  1. Corruption anywhere, for example in certain departments in India. Even a good person falls prey to the system.
  2. Our building’s condo association and management team – people have the best of intentions when they join, but the established processes and rules hamper their ability to make improvements.
  3. A spiraling downwards quality control process or lack of the right procedures in a software development environment – the lack of code checks, test cases, documentation, etc. can quickly affect a motivated newcomer’s good intentions.

Just sharing the thought – a bad system does beat a good person more often than not.

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