Digging the Hole Deeper

J. R. Winfeild

Why we take a bad situation and make it worse—at work and across the fence line—and how to chart another path

There is an old piece of advice that is easy to repeat and hard to follow: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Most of us have watched someone ignore it. Some of us, if we are candid, have ignored it ourselves. A disagreement that could have been settled with a phone call becomes a string of pointed emails. A small irritation becomes a matter of principle. A decision that is not working gets more money, more time, and more defending, because walking it back feels like losing.

I have seen this pattern in boardrooms, on manufacturing floors, and on university campuses over a long career. Lately I have seen it closer to home, in disputes between neighbors. The settings differ, but the mechanics are remarkably similar, and so are the ways out. This article starts at work, where contracts and partnerships go bad, and ends in the neighborhood, where the stakes are smaller in dollars but often larger in daily life.