Thank Goodness It's Monday #401

 WHAT TO DO

ABOUT CATCH-22?

It seems as if some time warp has caught up to me – again.

In a recent conversation with a younger (much younger) colleague I said, about an apparent impasse we had reached with some other folks, “Yeah, that’s a real Catch-22.” 

There was a nod of acknowledgement and agreement, a meaningful silent pause, and then -- while thumbing through the documents we were working on -- I was asked –

“Uh, where in this paperwork is Catch-22 specified?”

Uh, oh. Another classic reference point (at least for my generation) bites the dust.

 

Novelist Joseph Heller (b. 1923) died in 1999 and, I guess, somewhere in the decade and a half or so since then, much of his status as a voice and a depicter of the lives of generations immediately post-WWII has diminished. So the phrase “Catch-22” had some contextual meaning for my young associate, but the roots of its origin have all but disappeared.

I can’t let that happen quite yet. 

So today’s TGIM will take a small, non-scholarly look back in an attempt to appreciate the source a bit longer and find some Takeaways that perhaps we can use to circumvent or even prevent Catch-22 situations.

Heller’s early popular fame as a writer came in 1961 with the success of his novel Catch-22.

The literary “catch” – which involved pilots in the Second World War – was fictional, of course. 

But the situation it sums up – an absurd piece of circular reasoning – quickly entered everyday language.

Here’s how Heller first described the “catch” in Catch-22 itself:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was a process of a rational mind.

Orr (a character in the story) was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more (combat) missions.

Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them.

If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.

Yossarian (who is pretty much the stand-in for the author himself, Heller having WWII service very much like that at the core of the story) was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

Watch this: In the real world the creation of Catch-22s is often inadvertent; the mix up of a number of decisions or instructions that, over time, create an undesirable closed loop of consequences.

TGIM ACTION IDEA #1: Sometimes the unfortunate consequences result from a single decision that’s made without all the facts in place. 

In cases such as these, alert and caring action on the part of an individual willing to step up and acknowledge the predicament can quickly undo the harmful decision.

TGIM ACTION IDEA #2: Sometimes a Catch-22 kind of policy can accomplish a goal (like in the case of Heller’s novel, it discourages pilots from quitting a difficult task).

Most intelligent people can accept such situations if two important leadership factors are present.

 

• One is leadership that’s willing to lead, to get involved and reason through the policy with anyone who fails to grasp its necessity.
• The other is a leadership that recognizes that there are exceptions to every rule and that it may be in the best interests of the overall enterprise to grant an exception and move on with the business at hand.

Either way: Managing a Catch-22 situation requires presence and conviction; taking the leadership lead in a way others look up to.

The characters in Heller’s novel lack such an icon and that lack makes the story.

TGIM TAKEAWAY: Be guided in your leadership style by what the Catch-22 characters conclude about their critically-flawed, top-ranking officer Major Major:

Some men are born mediocre … some men achieve mediocrity … some men have mediocrity thrust upon the. With Major Major it had been all three.

And there’s more sharp-tongued observational wisdom about the human character and human condition from the pages of Catch-22 that shares Joseph Heller’s genius with words: 

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.

Even among men lacking in distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.

General Peckem liked to listen to himself talk, and liked most of all listening to himself talk about himself. 

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Don’t be like so many of Heller’s characters so much of the time. Fight against mediocrity. Be outstanding, brilliant, and exceptional. 

In the novel the important character of Captain John Yossarian comes to realize that Catch-22 does not actually exist. But, because the powers that be claim it does, and the world believes it does, it nevertheless has power. In fact, because Catch-22 does not exist, it’s more powerful; there is no way it can be repealed, undone, overthrown, or denounced. 

Don’t buy that thinking. In the end Yossarian realizes it is possible to defeat (or at least escape) his situation and the Catch-22 that supports it. It’s not a particularly happy ending but it is true to the spirit of the character and the (IMHO) evolved state of personal awareness growing in the early 1950s and ’60s.

Yossarian justifies his Catch-22-circumventing action with the statement –

"I’m not running away from my responsibilities. I’m running to them.”

Perhaps we can do the same.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

P.S. Literature 201 fact check: What many who use the phrase today even knowing its origin don’t know is that there was almost no Catch-22.

 

From Joseph Heller's original manuscript
now archived in the Brandeis University Library
Special Collections

The first chapter of Heller’s novel was published a half-dozen years before its bestseller long form in the publication New World Writing as Catch-18. But the numerical designation was later altered so that Heller’s book-length version would not be confused with another best seller of the same period by author Leon Uris entitled Mila 18.