inverse specificity law 

A natural law that dictates that the depth and accuracy of your task description is inversely proportional to the importance of the task. You will be given a ten-page written specification on preparing an invitation for five customers to come to morning coffee, a tax audit report will be requested in an email consisting of a single paragraph, while a request to revise the organization's entire cost structure will be delivered verbally in a single sentence.

CEO: Bernie, our database manager left and we need a report of all customers who bought semi-spleeted widgets in the northwest region since the beginning of the month. There's a potentially fatal fault and we need to do a product recall.
Bernie: Sure, right away! What's the product code for semi-spleeted widgets, and what's the region code?
CEO: Dunno. The database manager left. But it's all in the database. Just do it.
Bernie: Hmmm... the inverse specificity law indicates that this task must be critically important!

inverse specificity law by Terrible Tadpole June 3, 2010