(From 12/14/04) – Target the Target -- I was discussing these new business regulations with an acquaintance today. His group was “out of compliance” because they didn’t sign and date the workpapers they created. You could do everything right but not sign in the right place, or use your initials instead of your full name, or forget to cross a “t” or dot an “i.” For that, you are now out of compliance. What is happening with these new requirements is that we are taking honest people and trying to create some rule for them to break. There is a problem with this whole thing – you can’t catch the people that are doing the right thing. It’s impossible! There’s nothing to catch! So, in order to catch the crooks, we put controls on the honest people. There can’t be any doubt that there will be more corporate governance scandals, because dishonest people don’t play by the rules. That goes along with their dishonesty. Why is this important? Because we waste resources fixing the thing that isn’t the problem. You’ll see that if a company has 100 people and two of them are consistently late, they will put everybody on the time clock. This wastes 98 people’s time and punishes them (and really annoys them) for doing the right thing in the first place. So the next time that one of your employees (or children) is misbehaving, target that person (the target!) instead of everybody. Watch how much time and effort you will save, and note what happens when only the abusers are singled out for their abuse.