The case for common sense at work

“Why isn’t common sense more common at work?”

I’ve heard some version of this question more times than I can count, and it’s only increasing.

I’ve asked it myself. I’ve been at nearly every rung of the corporate ladder, from working the cash register to sitting in board meetings. And it’s often people in the latter who could use a reminder to take a break from slide decks and spreadsheets and make decisions using their head—and yes, even their heart.

To get there, it helps to have real examples. I get plenty of them whenever I follow up: “What happened most recently to make you think common sense is missing?” Because there’s usually something very specific underneath that generalization.

Where common sense goes missing

Sometimes it’s small. An employee is expected to be in the office by 8:30, but schedules a doctor’s appointment that means they won’t be in until 9. There’s nothing urgent or pressing that requires them to be there at 8:30. If you were their manager, what would you say? Maybe: “It’s 30 minutes, just let it go.” Or “Just record it as sick time.” Or “Can you stay 30 extra minutes later to make it up?” All fairly reasonable. But there are managers who’d roll their eyes and write up the team member instead.

Sometimes it’s bigger. A manager is furious that a direct report didn’t send an important client email out. They fire off an all-caps “CALL ME ASAP” message and launch into “How could you forget that?! That’s unacceptable!” Their report pauses and says, “But I did send it—I copied you on it.” What should the manager do? It seems obvious: check their email and, if they missed it, apologize and ask next time instead of assuming. But there are managers who wouldn’t ever do that, and instead sputter, “Well, you should have messaged me to make sure I saw it.”

And sometimes it goes all the way up the ladder. A CEO sees a viral video of a creator posing as a remote employee—shopping, hair appointment, napping during the workday—and treats it as proof of how their own workforce operates. The CEO could ask their own remote team members what their days are like, or look at the research showing what suddenly requiring everyone to be back in an office can do to performance, engagement, and retention. In other words, verifying what’s actually happening instead of rewriting a policy based on a TikTok. But plenty of CEOs skip that step.

These are three scenarios out of the dozens that I’ve heard—and others likely come to mind for you, too. Which brings me back to the original question: Why isn’t common sense more common?

Three reasons common sense gets overridden

Common sense isn’t gone. But it gets overridden, especially by three common culprits.

· Ego. In the email example, the manager could’ve said, “You’re right, my mistake.” Instead, they made up a new rule: From now on, every email concerning them also requires a message confirming it went out. As absurd as it sounds, it feels safer than apologizing. Other times, ego means chasing credit—so a manager requires sign-off on every decision, or their name on a deck instead of the person who actually did the work. Or it’s the reverse: Decide something alone and get it wrong, and it’s your job on the line; make three people agree to it, and now it’s everyone’s. Either way, the decision stops being about what makes sense and starts being about who gets noticed.

· Mistrust. This is the example of the CEO and the viral video. One person, whose goal is only views and likes, becomes the reason for a policy that impacts everyone else who showed up and did the job. The same instinct plays out smaller every day: One person pads an expense report, and instead of dealing with that person, there’s a new rule for everyone, including the 99.9% who were never the problem. You’ve just managed to the lowest common denominator, and people who don’t feel trusted rarely act like they are.

· Fear. This is the 8:30 story. The manager isn’t actually worried about 30 minutes. They’re worried that if their own boss notices their team member walk in at 9, they’ll look bad for allowing it. And in their head, it snowballs from there. One late morning becomes a pattern, that pattern becomes the new standard for everyone, and then they become the manager who can’t get anyone to show up on time. So instead of treating it like the routine, human situation it is, they treat it like a precedent-setting crisis.

Most examples I hear include all three at once, and often stem from the top. Managers who are told “double-check with me before you send that” and “you’ll set a precedent” by senior leadership start to believe their judgment is a liability, not an asset. So they stop using it. And then everyone wonders why a 30-minute request takes a week, and why employees feel like they’re dealing with a rule book instead of an actual human being.

How to bring common sense back

Once you’ve climbed multiple rungs of the corporate ladder, it’s easy to forget what things look like to the ones below you. So try this instead. Before you escalate a situation, institute a new policy, or loop in four people to gut-check a decision, ask yourself this: If I were in their shoes, what would I want to see happen? This is the Pause-Consider-Act framework in action.

Go back to the three scenes above. Consider what those team members would say: “Let me go to the doctor, and I’ll show up healthier.” “Check the sent folder and apologize, and I’ll respect you more.” “Ask what my day is like working remotely, and I’ll give you my breakdown.” Usually, they’d say the obviously reasonable thing, because most of the time, the reasonable thing actually is obvious. We just stopped trusting ourselves to do it.

This test doesn’t pretend nothing will ever go wrong. People will take advantage of flexibility sometimes, or forget to send emails. But you’re not managing for the exception first. You’re building trust, so that when you do have to address the exception, it feels fair instead of arbitrary. Having standards and approving a late start aren’t opposites; they’re both just part of managing the real people you need to get the work done.

Common sense is a muscle, and it atrophies when you stop using it and start outsourcing it, whether to policy, to committees, or “let me get back to you.” The cost of not using it is decisions that ignore the real people they’ll affect—and, as I can attest, those people tell everyone else they know.

And here’s my answer back: “Common sense isn’t rare, but managers willing to trust it are.”

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