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Half a Loaf Over Half a Baby

by JD

There are two different kinds of compromises in decision making.  One compromise results in a decision that gets you towards the solution.  The other compromise results in a decision that is worse than where you started from. 

In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker illustrates these two distinct compromise types.

Key Take Aways

Here are my key take aways:

  • Half a loaf is better than no bread.
  • Half a baby is worse than none.

I think metaphors are great for illustrating points.  I think these metaphors are easy to relate to and will come in handy at work.

Half a Baby is Worse Than None

Go for half a loaf, and a whole baby.  Drucker writes:

“For there are two different kinds of compromise.  One kind is expressed in the old proverb, Half a loaf is better than no bread.  The other kind is expressed in the story of the judgment of Solomon, which was clearly based on the realization that half a baby is worse than no baby at all.  In the first instance, the boundary conditions are still satisfied.  The purpose of bread is to provide food, and half a loaf is still food.  Half a baby, however does not satisfy the boundary conditions.  For half a baby is not half of a living and growing child.  It is a corpse in two pieces.”

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