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Chapter 1: What are the famous laws of the office mentioned in this episode?
Sarah. Sarah Gonzalez. My longest colleague. Do you remember a long time ago, an episode that you and I did together, where I confessed to a minor... A crime. You confessed to a crime. I would say malfeasance. I confessed to some malfeasance. Whatever.
You broke a rule.
I definitely broke a rule.
Slash law.
You know, potato, potato. I knew exactly where you were going. Do you remember that episode?
Of course. You were like... Not scanning groceries?
Well, we don't have to get into the specifics because we're about to run the episode that that is about, okay?
Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember. It's like the one and only time Kenny broke a rule, I think.
Certainly the only one I've confessed to on tape. And then, do you remember what that episode was about overall?
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Chapter 2: How does Parkinson's Law explain the length of meetings?
Look at this.
Oh, the Laws of the Office episode.
This is a poster, like an industrial safety poster that you would see next to a water cooler.
This looks like something a federal agency would hand out.
100%. But this is custom made for only very special Planet Money book buyers. And it is the laws of the office. It's the laws that you're about to hear in this episode, but put into a useful water cooler-like safety poster. And you can point to your colleagues obnoxiously when you're like, you know, you're really, really doing Parkinson's law right now or really good arts law going on over there.
What do you think?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is like wash the dishes in the communal sink post sticky note version. Yes. It's like a version of that. So like don't don't be that employee. Don't be that co-worker.
Yes. And all of these particular laws, as you will hear, have some kind of economic backing to them. That's what today's episode is about. But the important information here is this is a special edition poster only available, limited edition, only for people who pre-order the Planet Money book. And the way that you do that is you go to planetmoneybook.com. And if you miss the link, don't worry.
We will say it plenty more times. Okay. So here's the episode that inspired the poster that you can get when you pre-order the Planet Money book.
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Chapter 3: What is the Peter Principle and how does it affect workplace dynamics?
You have no idea, dude. I looked like I was 11 years old at that age.
Oh, I can see that. I can picture it.
It was bad. So one day I learned that my managers have started to keep track of the performance of all of the cashiers.
Like how friendly you are to the customers?
No, no, no, no, no. They were measuring our like items scanned per minute. And then I believe they were posting those for the other cashiers to see. Okay. So I'm a little competitive. I'm also a goody two shoes. And I'm like, I gotta be faster. I gotta be faster. I gotta get my bosses these numbers. And then... I get this item that won't scan.
Oh, like cilantro. Cilantro never scans at the grocery store.
There wasn't a ton of cilantro in rural Pennsylvania. I think it probably was like cat food. Cat food was weirdly hard to scan. The label got all torn up and crap. Anyway, I'm trying to scan this thing and all I can think is like, oh my God, my items per minute is plummeting, plummeting. And then finally I just let it go down the register, unscanned, and I grab the next item and I move on.
so you gave the cat food away for free yes technically i suppose we would have to say i stole the cat food but to be a good employee that's why you asked me to check the petty theft laws in pennsylvania i was just trying to be a good employee i was trying to get good numbers and i got good numbers my items per minute were i believe the best in the entire grocery store so okay but when your bosses said speed things up i'm sure that they didn't mean break the law in the process yes
Yes, and that is the point of this story. I may have been breaking the normal law, but I have since learned that I was simply following a different law known as Goodhart's Law.
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Chapter 4: What is Goodhart's Law and how does it relate to performance metrics?
We had so much energy. So much energy. Hello. Hi, is this Professor Goodhart? Yep, speaking. And you are Professor Goodhart of Goodhart's Law. I am indeed. Do you proudly wear that moniker? Slightly mixed feelings. Mm-hmm.
This is Charles Goodhart, economist, former advisor to England Central Bank, professor emeritus at London School of Economics.
And about 50 years ago, Charles Goodhart wrote a paper about monetary policy that included in the introduction a fateful little line.
It says, ignoring in Goodhart's law that any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.
Okay, hard to understand. But he was making a very narrow point about how measuring one tiny slice of the economy seems to mess up that slice of the economy.
Goodhart's law was actually a rather joking side comment. It was not intended at that time. to be taken all that seriously.
But over time, it was. People took Goodhart's Law out of the world of monetary policy and came up with new formulations of the law.
For example, once you target a measure, it ceases to be a good measure, I think is one of them.
That's correct. The point is really fairly simple. Let's say that One of the measures of a hospital is that the waiting time is kept short.
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Chapter 5: How do incentives impact employee behavior in the workplace?
OK, so it's like what? 930 in the morning, Thursday, November 8th. And we are supposed to be working on the next segment of this episode.
And we're not even close to finished.
No, we're supposed to tell you about the so-called Parkinson's law, which states essentially that work expands to the time allotted.
So, for example, Kenny and I have an entire week to finish this Parkinson's Law segment.
And if we're being honest, that should really only take like one day's worth of work.
Probably, yeah. But we have a whole week. So that means we're probably going to spend time like looking for archival tape that we're probably not going to use.
We are going to do extra interviews that if we're being honest, there's not room for in this piece. I always do that. We have a week. And so the work will expand to fill the week.
But today we're going to try to use Parkinson's law to help get this done.
And the reporter for this segment, though he does not know it yet, is Planet Money's newest producer, Alexi Horowitz-Gazi, and we are waiting for him to get into the office right now. Alexi. Yes. Hey, man. Hey. So, Alexi, you just got into work? Yes. So you're coming to the studio with me? Coming, coming.
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Chapter 6: What example illustrates the effects of Goodhart's Law in real-life scenarios?
He's literally rolling up his sleeves. That's right. That's good. It's the only way to get anything done. You can throw the headphones on. Professor, can you hear me? Yes. Great. Okay, so maybe just to start out with, if you could... Well, we are back in the studio. You've had a day. Your sleeves are still rolled up, actually. You interviewed the professor. Do you have a story for us?
That's the key to my success. And yes, I do. All right. Let's do it. So the first thing she told me was that Parkinson's Law started out as a joke.
Yes. So it all started with a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955 titled, The author was C. Northcote Parkinson, who was a British naval historian.
That's Meng Zhu of the Johns Hopkins Business School. In 1955, The Economist published Parkinson's essay as a kind of facetious argument. In it, he talked about why bureaucracies almost always grow no matter how much work they're really doing. I actually found some archival tape of the now deceased Professor Parkinson talking about the essay.
Archival tape? No, you actually brought us archival tape?
Nice, man.
It was unserious in form, and it might have been sent to a humorous magazine. Instead, and I think more wisely, I sent it to the London Economist.
Somehow you found someone that is more British than Professor Charles Goodhart. This is very impressive. That actually came off a 1960 vinyl album called Professor C. Northcote Parkinson Explains Parkinson's Law. The blurb on the cover calls it, quote, delightfully unprofessorial.
That should be Planet Money's slogan. I feel like that's what we're going for.
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Chapter 7: How can social change be accelerated in a workplace?
It did.
Alexi, you did it. You finished the task at hand in one day instead of a week.
It was exactly as good as if we had done it in a week, too.
Better. Hooray!
Thank you, Alexi. Thanks, Kenny. Thanks, Sarah. Okay, this is 2026. Kenny popping in now because, obviously, we heard this segment. And Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi is now one of the co-hosts of Planet Money, so graduated from producer to co-host. And Alexi, obviously, we needed to bring you back into the studio
debrief on this eight years later but debrief yes very happy to be here kenny it's like a it's like a therapy session all right so uh eight years on what do you think about being pulled in to prove parkinson's law point how was that on the one hand i still get like night sweats about that level of uh in the moment uh stress yeah but you know on the other hand i think it really uh
It really taught me you just got to get out there and talk to people and make it make sense. So on the whole, feel pretty good about it. Okay. Okay. That's a very positive review. We obviously, we give you a little bit more time on episodes these days. And I do feel like I haven't seen you in months because we've given you a lot of time on a very specific project.
Alexi's working on a series based on, wait for it listeners, the Planet Money book. Yes, it is a little bit coincidence that Alexi's here, but it does work out great. Not SpawnCon. Can you tell us a little bit about the book? Yeah. So the book basically does a version of what we do here on the show.
It applies an economics lens and a playful, whimsical sensibility to looking at everything in the economic world. Everything from tiny choices you make every day, like what to eat for breakfast, to who you pick for your life partner, to what do you do with your free time?
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Chapter 8: What humorous solutions are proposed for common office problems?
It just felt it was somewhere where I was really comfortable. I really felt that that brought out a lot of strengths that I have.
Phase one of the Peter Principle right here. She is doing great. She knows that she's good at some things and not others.
And then I was asked if I would be interested in this bigger role.
Right. Promotion. Totally normal. This is how jobs work.
Now she's in charge of web content for the university, spends a lot of time in meetings, and part of her job is to tell other people how to do their jobs. So this is not behind the scenes anymore.
I'm an introvert, so having to stand up in a group of people was super uncomfortable for me from the start. I had to do monthly trainings, and I just felt sick before that every time.
And she becomes the person who everyone brings their problems to, asking her to find a solution.
I remember one time having someone confront me in the cafeteria about something they didn't like, being put on the spot, and... holding my lunch and standing there not sure what to do or how to handle it. I thought, I am terrible at this job.
There are millions of Stephanies everywhere in every industry.
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