Stop Doing Stupid: An Essential Requirement For Effective Teaching, Management And Leadership

There is an old adage that reads “the suffering of fools”, which for this paper is the passive form of the “stop doing stupid” in the title. For either of these sayings the key concern when dealing with foolishness is not only the loss of resources, in time and money, that result from this indulgence and tolerance, but more importantly the direct impact that not objecting can have on morale and the long-term effectiveness of any decision-making process. Whether it is during the teaching of students, the management of people and business processes or more importantly the highly involved and visionary leadership process, the need to speak up and to try to mitigate stupid and wasteful interruptions has become an essential requirement if we are to continue to grow socially and economically. This paper has been prepared to make the case for taking the road less travelled, which has as a reward growing personal self-worth and enhanced social value. It also has the drawback of becoming identified as one of those few that just can’t sit quietly with their mouths shut when some act of foolishness is in motion.