A Bussinesman Beaten Up By His Collegues: Numbers.

Tuesday, 28 April 2009
On giving 100 percent

This week my phone has been overworked because apparently Alan Sugar fires people who say they are giving a job '110 percent'. He's evidently got the impression that the English language only allows people to get up to 100, in terms of percentages.

I was surprised to hear that, coming from a businessman, who is presumably used to seeing shares going up by 200 percent, and such like. There's nothing mathematically wrong with going over 100. But of course what he's getting at (and failing to recognize) is a recent change in usage. It's a kind of semantic inflation, which (it occurs to me) is a bit like the discussion on this blog a while back about '1000 apologies'.

In its figurative usage, 100 percent always meant a notional maximum: one gave up to 100 percent of one's effort, and could give no more. Now the meaning has altered: 100 percent has come to mean 'the norm, the usual level'. 110 percent thus means, '10 percent more than what ordinary people do, or what has been someone's norm hitherto'. 200 percent means 'twice as much'. And so on. I'd expect Alan Sugar to be pleased that someone has expressed the desire to make that extra effort, not to dismiss it.

I've heard 500 percent, 1000 percent, and other values in recent times. Clearly the numbers are not important: it's the rhetoric that counts. And people seem to need the rhetoric. If a football team makes a greater effort than normal, managers routinely compliment them by raising the percentages. Of course, if such phrases become frequent, they turn into cliches, and lose their meaning. But that is precisely what Alan Sugar should have probed. Was his candidate thinking of what he was saying? If I'd been Sugar, I wouldn't have automatically dismissed the 10 percent as a 'waste', I'd have asked the candidate how exactly he would have improved on his previous performance by that amount, and judged him on the quality of his response.


David Crystals article above talks mainly about how this businessman fires his workers who say they give 110 percent. When I read this it really caught my attention for how more ironic can this get? Firing someone for exceeding the standards with no criteria what so ever. This is insane. Apparently, Alan Sugar being a businessman wasn’t to logical. Numbers chased him down.

David explains Alan’s point of view, Alan believes 100 percent is the maximum level, therefore he believed: one who said they did 110 percent was full of bs. Apparently he hasn’t analyzed the logic out of it, 110 percent means exceeding the normal. It is doing extra, yes I do agree with David Crystal he should have asked the worker to justify his answer and accordingly he would make the decision, whether or not to fire him. Yet, he immediately fired him. With no hesitation at all. I would have done exactly as David says “I wouldn't have automatically dismissed the 10 percent as a 'waste', I'd have asked the candidate how exactly he would have improved on his previous performance by that amount, and judged him on the quality of his response.”

As David says “ Now the meaning has altered: 100 percent has come to mean 'the norm, the usual level'. 110 percent thus means, '10 percent more than what ordinary people do, or what has been someone's norm hitherto'. 200 percent means 'twice as much'. And so on.” This explains clearly the logic of one saying, I did 110 percent, for to Alan it is not so clear.

Believe it or not numbers many times are meaningless, for if you don’t have a standard of comparison they are pointless. As David states in his blog “Clearly the numbers are not important: it's the rhetoric that counts. And people seem to need the rhetoric.” The question is what does ten percent extra mean to this worker? What are the benchmarks of that extra work? Do you consider 100 percent the same as I do? You have to look at the bigger picture, why ten percent more? That is what Alan should have asked instead of committing such psycho act.