Someone I follow on Bluesky recently posted about an absurd demand from her HR department. Her post reminded me of similar experiences in my own 33-year career in Government. One event that still stands out after twenty years was the demand that we begin reporting our monthly number of “capabilities delivered.”

“Capability delivered” sounds like a reasonable thing, but I was in a group writing small-to-medium software tools. Those two vague little words could describe anything we did, from writing small spreadsheets for ourselves to delivering finished products to external customers. Foolish mortal that I was (and still am), I asked for clarification. What counts as a capability? What counts as delivery? If I send the same software to twenty people, is that one delivery or twenty? My request was rebuffed, and it wasn’t hard to guess why: The people I asked didn’t know either. Some Big Boss had shouted, “Minions, fetch me the monthly number of capabilities delivered!” and the minions had scrambled to obey without committing the unforgivable sin of asking questions. From that, I drew three conclusions:

1. Without a meaningful definition of “capabilities delivered,” the resulting count would be meaningless. (“Garbage In Garbage Out” for those who know the idiom.)
2. The Big Boss needed numbers that made him look better than other Bosses.
3. The minions had unwittingly dared me to conduct an experiment.

I decided to report a test number and see what happened. If the minions had an unspoken definition of “capability delivered,” they might complain that my answer was too high or too low. But if my answer satisfied them (or fell into apathetic hands), I would hear nothing.

I needed a believable test number, so I chose 17. It’s odd. It’s prime. And for some reason, it doesn’t sound like a guess. But I didn’t just throw that number at the minions and call it a day. I reviewed my monthly work log and identified 17 things that could be called a “capability delivered.” Now I had a defensible position. If anyone complained about my answer, I could point to 17 things I had actually done and say “I thought that’s what you meant.” I sent in my answer and heard nothing back. The next month, I did the same thing. And the next.

For the next year and a half, I reported 17 “capabilities delivered” every month, and I never heard a word back from anyone. Then the minions abruptly stopped collecting numbers. Apparently they had fulfilled their mysterious purpose in the oxygen-deprived heights of the bureaucracy. (That goes for both the numbers and the minions.)

And that’s the Rule of 17. If you’re asked for a bullshit number, don’t invest yourself in it. While everyone around you is sweating bullets over some ill-defined request, remember that you have a limited number of seconds in your life. Grab a clipboard and walk briskly. (It makes you look productive.) Go out to lunch. Take a walk. Give blood. Do something fun. Then come back and answer 17. You’ll look like you know what you’re doing. And you do know–you’re putting the right amount of work into a meaningless request. It may feel like slacking, but the people who asked the question were slacking even harder. Otherwise they’d have given better instructions.