Nehaveigur

“I want to double-click on that,” says the head of my division. We’re all sitting around a conference table and for once, there’s no laptop in sight. He is speaking figuratively, and since it’s 2024, he’s not using a sports metaphor but a one inspired by the action of pressing a mouse button twice to open a file. What he means is that he’d like to delve into the subject at hand in greater detail. As far as management speak goes, the metaphor works. I will generously let it pass.

I’m not going to be as magnanimous with “Trust but verify”, another phrase that has become fashionable in management circle. To me, the phrase feels dishonest because what the speaker actually means is the exact opposite, “distrust and verify”.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Trust without verification would be naïve, but verification comes first and trust follows. Your legal department has read the agreement with your collaborator and signaled that they find it acceptable. You can now trust your collaborator, although you’ll likely still not want to crank it all the way up. It’s the same concept for background checks, credit scores and reference letters. With all of those, trust follows verification and if you say “trust but verify” you’re really implying that you want to verify since you don’t trust yet. So why not just say what you mean, “distrust and verify”. It’s more honest and it may even get a chuckle.

Double-clicking on the origins of “Trust but verify” reveals that it is a translation of a Russian proverb that seems to have originated with Lenin (доверяй, но проверяй). This delights me, as what I disliked about the phrase in the first place was its cynicism, and cynicism is something that Lenin’s Soviet system perfected.