The Johnson Syndrome

I remember reading a long time ago, back in a prior life when such things mattered deeply to me, about a business theory based on Lyndon Johnson’s behavior during the Vietnam War. The war wasn’t going well, the strategy wasn’t working, and, rather than step back and reevaluate, LBJ figured that more of the same—more of what wasn’t working—would do the trick. So he threw more troops in (a troop surge if you will) and, well, surprise surprise, it didn’t work.

This somewhat natural reaction, to refuse to admit that a well-thought out plan or strategy might need to be reevaluated and either altered or abandoned in favor of a new, revised approach, became known as the Johnson Syndrome. (At it’s most basic, when the computer freezes, continuing to hit the delete or enter key over and over before finally changing strategy and rebooting is a prime example.) Some businesses did use this to their advantage. Johnson & Johnson (perhaps they felt an affinity with the name), for example, used it to inculcate a culture of failure. It was okay to admit a mistake as long as it resulted in change. To avoid their people (and ultimately their company) becoming mired in the status quo, they encouraged a climate where frequent reassessment of goals and benchmarks became the norm, so that mistakes and business strategies were constantly challenged.

So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, lately I’ve been thinking about it as I’ve been thinking about quitting—good or bad?—and the whole idea of reevaluating goals from a personal perspective. I wanted to revisit the Johnson Syndrome, so I was interested in whether or not people were still talking about it. So I did a Google search.

I found several hits for a skin disease: Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. I didn’t spend much time there…skin diseases aren’t quite my thing. (My curiosity does have some bounds, usually based on the ick-factor.)

Other than that, I didn’t find much. But I did stumble upon an interesting phenomenon. It turns out there were a few mentions of the Johnson Syndrome, but all based on various idiosyncrasies of Lyndon Johnson. To wit:

• One computer programming business site made mention of it in what could also be called the good-news syndrome. As they described it, when his advisors brought LBJ bad news about the war, he got angry. So rather than incur his wrath, they only brought him good news and ignored the bad, so he only had a partial view on which to base his decisions. (This could also be described as the tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear syndrome.)

• According to the History News Network blog archives, Doris Kearns Goodwin coined the term to describe the experience she had writing Johnson’s memoirs to explain why presidential biographies tend to be dull. LBJ would tell her all of these interesting stories about himself, but when she showed him the manuscripts, he would routinely take them out because they weren’t “presidential” enough.

• And just a couple months ago, the Aussie paper Herald Sun trotted out the Johnson Syndrome to describe the excitement politicians of a financial bent have when it comes to talking about budgets. As Roger Franklin put it: “Such a talent would have made him a natural in Canberra yesterday, where it was all about the dead president's second-favourite subject: spending other people's money.

“Unveiling big budgets was so thrilling, he once confessed, that he had to remind himself it was a lot like losing bladder control—a hot moment for him, even if no one else saw it the same way.

“If you want to call it Johnson Syndrome, then a black-suited Treasurer Wayne Swan seemed firmly in its grip as he strode into work just after 9am and faced the day's first barrage of questions.

“He had slept like a baby, he said, confident that six months of bean counting would chart a 10-year course towards security, justice, prosperity, honesty and a fair go for all.” (It’s actually a pretty funny article, as it goes on to tell how, confident swagger aside, the rest of Canberra, Australia, didn’t feel the same way.)

So there you have it. Four different syndromes after one man. That has to be some kind of a presidential record.