The Loyalty Oath Crusade

In chapter 11 of Catch-22, two captains create a complex set of rules to ensure security in the military. Among them are some absurd requirements just to get food in the mess hall.

Everyone knows the process is ridiculous, but they go along with it anyway. To enter the mess hall, you have to recite the pledge of allegiance. To be served food, you have to recite it twice. If you want salt, pepper, and ketchup, you have to sing the Star-Spangled Banner. Other condiments require signing a loyalty oath.

No one questions the process. Everyone follows along because the person before them did. The group behind this keeps escalating the requirements in their Loyalty Oath Crusade, but their goal has nothing to do with ensuring soldiers are loyal. They are simply trying to punish a single person.

This is delaying missions, creating unnecessary process, and slowing down the entire war effort. So how does the Loyalty Oath Crusade finally unravel? It takes one person speaking up. Major __ de Coverley walks in and sees all the commotion. People signing loyalty oath cards, singing the national anthem for ketchup, reciting the pledge of allegiance just to sit down.

He started forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like the Red Sea. Glancing neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was gruff with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said:

"Gimme eat."

Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major __ de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign. Major __ de Coverley swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath.

'Gimme eat, I said,' he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.

Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded. 'Give him eat,' he said.

And just like that, the spell was broken. The entire process fell apart, the Loyalty Oath Crusade dismantled in a single stroke.

I think of this whenever I see a bloated process that has become embedded in work culture. We perform our ceremonies, our loyalty oath pledges, without ever questioning them.

"They do it at Google, so we must do the same." Never questioning whether it's the right process for us. Nothing changes because it feels like pushing back means going against the culture. But what does it actually take to make a change? You have to speak up.

Speak up when you think the processes don't make sense. Even if it comes out as an animalistic grunt. "Gimme eat" is as primitive as it gets, yet it conveys exactly what everyone else is feeling.

When a company grows to the point where you can't fit every employee in a single room, these unusual processes start to take shape. They usually begin with good intentions, you need process to manage a large group of people. But process breeds ritual. And those rituals may help one team while being completely detrimental to another. Individual voices start to disappear, replaced by metrics and managers summarizing the gist of things.

In an interview, Frank Herbert, author of Dune, was asked about the Bene Gesserit use of the Voice to control others. By modulating their tone, the Bene Gesserit can bend others to their will. Readers pointed out that this seemed unrealistic. Frank had a simple answer: it's not unheard of for people to use their voice to control others.

If you want to avoid that fate, don't let your voice disappear. Your voice is one of the most powerful tools you have.

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