
In 1959, Nico Jacobellis managed a theater in Cleveland Heights called the Heights Art Movie Theater. He elected to show a provocative movie called The Lovers (“Les Amants”) about a woman who leaves her husband and family for an affair with a young archeologist. Within the movie, there is an explicit love scene that violated the Ohio State Code due to its content. Jacobellis was convicted and fined $2,500. Soon later, the ruling was upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court.
Decision making - "I know it when I see it"
Four years later, Jacobellis appealed the ruling by claiming that showing the movie violated the First Amendment. With the help of some lawyers specializing in film censorship cases, the appeal went to the Eighth Judicial District Court of Appeals, urging a reversal of the decision. With the attention that the appeal garnered, the Ohio ACLU and the national ACLU filed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, also urging a reversal.
You're so beautiful. You're my love. You're so beautiful. Mmm. I've always known you. I've known only you. Jeanne Tournier, Les Amants
Roughly a year later, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Ohio Supreme Court judgment and ruled that the film was not obscene with a 6-3 vote. One of the justices, Justice Potter Stewart concluded, "Under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography.” He continued, “I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
Decision making on the unanimous opinion of the culture
Within manufacturing organizations, we strive to build processes, standards, and poka-yokes to describe what to do and what not to do. We have quantitative triggers that require a root cause failure analysis when an operating unit has a delay over a specific length. We train our teams to measure the severity of safety incidents. You may see organizations put approval steps on purchase orders to ensure that certain levels of the organizational hierarchy approve the allocation of funds. We manage procedures with quantitative attributes to minimize variability and establish accountability lineage. But sometimes, things happen outside of the standards or in areas of gray. However, you immediately know that they require a specific level of attention because you know it when you see it.
If the leadership within manufacturing organizations were to create rules for everything, you would be out of business quickly. If you were to pursue documentation perfection, you would be spending more time and resources on the procedures versus what you are selling. There is a limit to what you must define, and unfortunately, it is somewhere between a little and a hell of a lot. We do not need an irrefutable definition for everything, and we cannot be profitable with anarchy. Instead, Stewart categorizes there are certain things that virtually all people would view and agree to unanimously.
By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court reversed the Jacobellis conviction. But the Court was utterly fragmented. There were seven separate opinions, and no majority opinion-indeed, not one of the seven opinions received more than two votes. Paul Gewirtz, I Know It When I See It
Justice Potter Stewart poetically inserted the ability of an individual's opinion to be the unanimous opinion of the masses in his overruling of the Ohio versus Jacobellis case. He indicated that one has the authority to decide on a situation based on the ethical and cultural doctrine that an organization goes by. He recognized that it is impossible to pursue procedures and laws for everything. Instead, he promoted that we should manage and establish the expectations of wisdom and intuition to learn by example. The character within our teams in doing this day-by-day establishes the culture and good habits desired.
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