The 70/25/5 Peculiarity

Not a law or a rule, but not quite a rule that shouldn’t exist. It is more of an over simplification of human processes.

This rule of thumb is based on many years as a First Sergeant and as a Command Sergeant Major. One of the jobs is to deal with the problems that are brought forth by an indignant subordinate. After investigating many, many complaints, I found that most were simple miscommunications that had gotten blown out of context. Less often there were the hidden agendas where the problem presented was not really what the person wanted solved but it would get me to look a situation and, if their plan worked correctly, come to a conclusion that would benefit the person presenting the complaint. Rarely, the problem was as presented. My rule of thumb:
• 70% are miscommunications.
• 25% are hidden agendas.
• 5% are actual problems.

Most of the time this means the many conflicts are linguistic and cultural and that patience and listening will solve most problems. However, there are a few conflicts where there is actual hostile intent.