Barely Tolerance-able

I am not an engineer. However, I am married to one, and that has twisted my brain. It has changed the way I think. For example, when people ask me about my children, I tell them there have been four successful prototypes. When they ask me how I am doing, I say “Well today I am feeling rather static.” And really, my chances of understanding the lower limit of the thermodynamic scale is absolute zero. 

What I am is a lawyer. I’ve been one for a long time. And over those years, I have learned that lawyer is the complete and perfect opposite of engineer. I’ll explain: In an engineer’s world, everything is reducable to a mathematical formula. How strong is this metal? How fast does this signal transmit? What year will that dam break and kill everyone? Math will tell us! And the calculation is either correct, or it is not. Yes or no. Black or white. Ones and zeros. Numbers do not lie. To an engineer, the whole universe is a Matrixy cascade of flowing green integers, and all problems can be solved if the math works.

Attorneys see the universe as exactly the opposite. To a lawyer, the world is a constantly morphing fight scene in a Dr. Strange movie. There are no ones and zeros to an attorney. To us, all is gray. And every calculation and every conclusion, no matter how good the math, can and should be questioned. A lawyer’s world is uncertainty, imprecision, chaos. And we enjoy nothing more than turning obvious facts into abstract concepts. For example, given the chance, I will argue you to death, and convince you, that 1+2=12. As an engineer, even the thought of such a conversation must irritate you.

Despite this, my blissfully happy 30 year marriage to my sweet engineer wife has revealed that both views are valuable. And on that point, I have learned something that I want to share with all of you engineers. It is about tolerances. Not whether or not she can tolerate my constant insistence on winning every debate, or that I can tolerate her constant correcting of my abysmal math. I am talking about tolerances in the purely engineering sense: a measurement of the permissible limits of variation. (See! I have learned a lot).

My particular legal field, real estate, requires me to work with engineers frequently. Often there will be a dispute about a particular property boundary, or suitability of soil to build, or extractability of an ore or mineral in the earth, or any number of issues. This dispute will come to me, and I will kindly bicker with another attorney about it until I am blue in the face. Eventually, in most of these conflicts, a point will come where we will decide to get everyone together, and try to work it out. We try to see if we can come up with a solution and stop the feud. I actually love this part of my job. Resolving disputes is the best part of being an attorney.

But let me be absolutely frank with you. When I am arranging this kind of meeting, I will do all I can to avoid inviting engineers. I do love you guys. But these meetings are about compromise, and compromise requires living in the gray area. Legal cases settle when the parties are willing to give up something, even when that something is correct. Engineers struggle with that. Why? Because the math works. Engineers are trained to be precise.  Why should an engineer ignore the clearly provable and tidy answer in exchange for a chaotic settlement? An Engineer will say “the boundary is right here! See?” They cannot fathom why anyone would place the boundary somewhere else. Engineers, by their very nature, do not fudge things. The result: no settlement.

My sweet wife reports a similar phenomenon with her students. Sometimes, she tells me, a student will get so wrapped up in making a measurement so precise, so perfect, that they do not leave themselves time to accomplish the 27 other things the project needs. And even once the student moves on, she or he just can’t seem to let that imprecision go.

So this brings us back to tolerances. I am not saying that precise tolerances are not critical to an engineering project. They certainly are. But not all engineering projects are for NASA. The trick is to know that not all calculations require tolerances to the sixth decimal point. Sometimes, the second decimal point is great. Sometimes the whole number works. Sometimes in life we need to figure out which tolerances are, for lack of a better term, close enough. Tolerances, in my settlement discussions, just like with my wife’s students, can stall in the quest to be too perfect. Being willing to accept lower tolerance can be unintuitive, but sometimes close enough is - listen carefully to this - necessary in order to move forward. 

Good gravy, I am not suggesting that you think like me. Heaven help us if we were all in chaos! But as an engineer, you can develop the skill of finding the sweet spot in a problem – the right decimal point – where tolerances allow movement toward a solution. Think of it like using pi. How many decimal points of pi do you need to calculate the circumference of a circle? Sometimes 3.14, although it is not precise, is exactly right. Note that I did not say correct. I said right. 

The need to compromise applies not just in the legal setting. This penchant for perfection can stall many opportunities. I know an engineer who could not get home improvements done because he drove the contractor crazy by continually providing new measurements. I know another who missed the chance to get a patent, because she could not decide which design alternative was best. Find good enough and move forward. I hope that when I meet you across the negotiating table someday, together we will do some good in the world. I will try to accept precision in my chaos. You can be the person who tolerates tolerances.