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How business leaders use the news

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Balance, it appears, is the new political incorrectness.

Unsubscribes peaked following last week’s satire that drew parallels between voter outrage and how bad bosses have treated people over the years. It was clear many would have had no problem with the subject matter had I validated their outrage instead.

Now don’t go away … this column is about you as a business leader, not matters of public policy. Honest. Stay with me.

The subject: How business leaders should interpret the news. It’s an invaluable source of insights about organizational dynamics you can profit from every day, based on publicly available examples (which is why I use it here). But only if you approach it from the correct angle (as opposed to the right angle, or the left). Here’s why:

One of the biggest challenges business leaders face is knowing What’s Going On Out There. The larger the enterprise, the tougher the challenge, as:

  • Ambitious executives and middle managers present one-sided, carefully edited, or otherwise distorted pitches to promote their private agendas.
  • Managers at all levels filter out important information that might be construed as a demonstration of poor performance.
  • Organizational rivals whisper negativities about each other into the information echo-chamber called the corporate grapevine.

Looks to me a lot like our daily political commentary.

Take the Department of Agriculture’s firing of Shirley Sherrod, which raised eyebrows and hackles last week. In case you missed it, a heavily edited version of a speech she delivered to a local NAACP group appeared on a blog known for creative video resequencing. The post managed to perfectly invert her actual message.

The DoA leadership (or, perhaps, “leadership”) asked her to resign immediately, in time for the evening news cycle.

As a business leader, ignore the political context entirely. Race relations, the blogosphere as information source, the caliber of Obama’s cabinet team … they don’t matter. Smart business leaders gained two important business insights instead.

The first: Be alert to the let’s-you-and-him-fight game. The unwary fall for it all the time. One political player describes something awful a rival did that requires immediate intervention. They jump in to save the day, and end up like Sherrod’s bosses: In deep with both feet.

Had the DoA agency heads understood this point, instead of calling for Sherrod’s immediate resignation they’d have first asked Sherrod for her version of events.

The second, even more important insight: Don’t bypass your organization’s Human Resources policies and procedures. They’re there for a reason and it isn’t pointless bureaucracy. Had DoA’s leaders followed the HR procedure manual there’d have been no story at all.

To gain insights from the news you first have to develop a mental habit – one that’s invaluable for business leaders – and that’s to avoid the my-team/your-team mentality.

People who read the news with a my-team/your-team orientation promote their side’s talking point of the week while deploring the other side’s response and own talking point of the week. As dividing the world into us and them seems to be hard-wired in our DNA, it would be an easy mental habit to fall into even without all the shouting from political leaders and commentators who encourage it, and encourage us to deciding which sources of information we trust and distrust base on which team they’re on.

Recognizing my-team/your-team thinking when evaluating the news will help you dodge attempts to manipulate you with it at the office, where you are immensely vulnerable to anyone you trust solely because you and they belong to the same organizational silo.

Failing to recognize it immunizes you from important knowledge you might otherwise gain from members of rival organizational silos.

Which is death, because inside your company, the rival silos ought to be collaborating, to figure out how to beat competitors in the marketplace, not each other in the halls of the corporation. Within our companies, as in our national dialog, smart leaders … true leaders … recognize the difference between opponents and enemies.

Your goal lies beyond yourself – it’s to create a culture of honest inquiry, and of collaboration. You have to start with yourself, and how you choose your trusted sources of ideas and information. Here’s a useful place to begin:

Some sources interpret evidence based on their worldview, and explain both. Others cherry-pick, spin, or simply invent information as necessary to buttress their worldview, distorting one to promote the other.

Treasure the former. Ignore the latter completely. Practice with the news. Put it into practice at the office.

* * *

And farewell to one of the all-time great sources of trustworthy information and analysis, Daniel Schorr. In a wonderful Washington Post eulogy, Patricia Sullivan revealed this little-known tidbit: “During a spur-of-the-moment collaboration with musician Frank Zappa at a get-out-the-vote event in Washington, he sang two Gershwin songs, ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ and ‘Summertime.’”

By definition, a guy like that will always be on my team.

Comments (26)

  • Hi Bob: first time/short time… got turned onto your site by a co-worker… she thinks you speak ‘great truth’, and so far, I have to agree… as for ‘unsubscribes’, why did they subscribe in the first place?!?! Didn’t they know what you are about?!?! If they can’t take a joke (satire), you are better off without them (IMHO…)

    As for ‘leadership’, I am at a cross-roads here… I am beginning to believe most of what we see/hear is the facade of leadership to cover up agendas (duh, I am sure many will say)… to wit, my management insisting on a ‘leadership course’ – enough buzz-words to choke a horse… I say we should ban the word “LEADERSHIP” and insted use “WHY-DO-YOU-DO-WHAT-YOU-DO-AND-WHY-SHOULD-I-FOLLOW-ALONG” – not as elegant, but more accurate… (sorry, needed to vent)

  • I wouldn’t unsubscribe because I disagreed with your views, that to me seems like giving in. I’d unsubscribe if you failed to write an interesting article (ok, you’ve got enough credit to get away with a few before I’d do that) And if I was Sherrod, I’m damned if I would go quietly.

  • Bob, the even sadder part of that story is the full video was posted on that web site, not an edited one. Everyone stopped watching when there was a pause. Unfortunately that pause happened right after the inflammatory statement. Had people kept watching, the outrage wouldn’t have happened.

    Overreaction at it’s worst.

  • First, last week’s column struck me as somewhat sarcastic but not as satire. But apparently any comment on politics will cause people who perceive that you are on the “other side” to hit the “unsubscribe” button.
    My parents taught me to engage my brain before putting my mouth in gear. There are a zillion other aphorisms that caution against the DoA response. But we truly have become so partisan on all things that any whiff of disagreement leads to irrational responses. I’m just not sure whether this is increasing or we’re just becoming more aware of it.

    Beyond the societal repercussions, Bob is right that this affects business as well. Rare is the workplace that doesn’t have cliques and intrigue. I choose to work in an environment that is simply too small to segment. For the rest of you — good luck.

  • Surprised to hear that unsubscribes peaked, but glad that the community here is being successfully groomed. I suspect you did a little more than present an unpopular opinion, maybe you won an argument in a few people’s minds.

    Keep up the good work,

    Andrew

  • The Sherrod fiasco was absolutely amateur, bush league performance. A simple phone call by someone in the DoA staff posing the question ” Shirley, what happened?” Then that person calling the White House saying “don’t believe those rascals, Shirley said this . . .”

    Then Gibbs skewering the perpetrators with real data, vs edited data. End of story.

    The good news for Shirley, since no one followed the above: She should come out well compensated for this fiasco.

  • Bob – Keep doing what you are doing.
    People, group dynamics and how you lead are
    far more important than code. If you can’t get support, you cannot make change. In exchange for your great columns. a link to a good little video.

    If you have seen this video clip, please forgive.
    If not Enjoy.
    This is a great animated lecture on what really motivates people.
    I think it’s great.
    http://gotboondoggle.blogspot.com/2010/06/surprizing-truth-about-what-motivates.html

    Thanks again,
    Dave Velzy
    PS – definitely, KEEP ME AS A SUBSCRIBER.

  • Your bias is showing again.

    The video wasn’t edited to make it look like she was discriminating against a white farmer. She was admitting that she was discriminating against a white farmer. What made it out of context was, when you saw the full 45-minute speech, she then explained, as everyone, the entire world, now knows that she came around, she changed her mind, that was the wrong thing to do. It wasn’t a doctored tape. It wasn’t an edited tape. It was an excerpted tape.

    This is the second week in a row you let your bias influence an otherwise excellent newsletter. Please Bob, I beg you, find another analogy besides politics to make your points.

    • Uh … no. When a woman describes her journey and the edited video shows just the first step of that journey, it’s deception.

      Disagree? Imagine you deliver a report on Cloud Computing in which the first three slides show reasons for caution and the remaining 25 provide a compelling case in favor of pursuing it in spite of the cautions.

      Next day, the CIO fires you. Why?

      On the strength of what you told him would be in your report he put his neck on the line in favor of making use of the Cloud. Someone then revealed only your first three slides to the CIO and the rest of the executive committee. The CIO figures you publicly embarrassed him by telling him privately you favored Cloud computing, when in fact you’re against it … the three-slide version of your PowerPoint being the evidence against you.

      I’m willing to bet you’d call the three slide version of your PowerPoint deck “doctored,” “distorted,” “edited out of context,” and “backstabbing.”

      • A better analogy would be where you made a presentation on the internet and explained how you did not create a web presence for your company because you had moral objections to using the internet. And then you go on to explain how wrong that decision was for the business and therefore you changed your mind.

        I’m going to bet that the CIO fires you despite the context.

        She didn’t discuss considering discriminating against the white farmer. She actually did and later regretted her actions.

  • You asked: Do you think columns like this one, that draw parallels between current events and issues of business leadership, are valuable? Or are they too hard to distinguish from irrelevant opining?

    I’ve always read your column for your opinion. Agreeing with it has always been optional.

  • I agree with Bob’s article.
    I would add the following:
    1. Don’t do anything when your blood vesels are full of adrenalin and your blood pressure is above the normal (after you get news).
    2. At least count to 10 and look for other independent (if possible) sources of info so you would not be limited to just one.
    3. Think twice or more what was exactly the intention of such news.

  • Bob,

    I’ve read two books lately “Leadership and Self Deception” and the follow-up “The Anatomy of Peace”. The first book convinces you that you have a problem. The second book helps you figure out how to deal with it. Together they really give insight into the us/them and particularly the demonizing of the other side. Of all the business books I’ve read, taken together they are the best book (or second best book after the KJR manifesto). A coach suggested them to one of the directors at my company, and they’ve become the book that everyone reads. Most say that they are very good.

    As always I enjoy reading your journal.

  • Here is the crux of the problem:

    “smart leaders … true leaders … recognize the difference between opponents and enemies.”

    In our companies, as well as our country, we have very few leaders. Most people confuse “management” with “leadership”. They are definitely NOT the same.

  • Bob Lewis wrote last week in a thread which seems closed, but was referenced in today’s column:A point, though: The Republican party’s single biggest defect today is that it considers the Democratic party to be its enemy, not its opposition. You apparently agree, having described the candidates you imagine I vote for to be the “bad guys.” (The Democratic party, by the way, possesses an entirely different set of deplorable flaws; this doesn’t appear to be one of them … or if it is, the Democrats are too inept at it for it to show.)

    Bo3bO cites Dennis Prager 2010.07.27:
    Perhaps the most telling of the recent revelations of the liberal/left Journolist, a list consisting of about 400 major liberal/left journalists, is the depth of their hatred of conservatives. That they would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. But what is jolting is the hatred of conservatives, as exemplified by the e-mail from an NPR reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death — and the apparent absence of any objection from the other liberal journalists.
    Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous extreme comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs — such things exist on the right as well — but to mainstream elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists. Yes, nearly all conservatives believe that the left is leading America to ruin. But while there is plenty of conservative anger over this fact, there is little or nothing on the right to match the left’s hatred of conservative individuals. Would mainstream conservative journalists e-mail one another wishes to be present while Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or Michael Moore dies slowly and painfully of a heart attack?
    From Karl Marx to today, the Left has always hated people on the Right, not merely differed or been angry with them.
    The question is: why?
    Here are three possible answers.
    First, the left thinks the right is evil.
    Granting for exceptions that all generalizations allow for, conservatives believe that those on the left are wrong, while those on the left believe that those on the right are bad, not merely wrong. Examples are innumerable. For example, Howard Dean, the former head of the Democratic Party said, “In contradistinction to the Republicans … (Democrats) don’t believe kids ought to go to bed hungry at night.”
    Or take Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who, among many similar comments, said, “I want to say a few words about what it means to be a Democrat. It’s very simple: We have a conscience.”
    Has any spokesman of the Republican Party ever said anything analogous about Democrats not caring about the suffering of children or not having a conscience?

    • Sorry I had to close the thread. More than 100 spam comments per day and the legit ones had stopped.

      Can’t answer directly (don’t know the people and don’t know whether your data are accurate or not – lots of stuff along these lines is simply invented and you haven’t given me enough to research it on Snopes or FactCheck.org).

      I will tell you that I recall the run-up to the war in Iraq, when both administration officials and many right-wing commentators described anyone who disagreed with administration policy with words like “traitor” and “un-American.”

      Right now, no shortage of commentators on the right (and elected Republican officials) use terms like “fascist” and “Nazi” to describe the Democratic leadership.

      Welcome to Yugoslavia, where we’re going to have intense debates leading to vicious acrimony over who started it. I’m more interested in who will bring it to a halt.

      And whatever criticisms you might have of Obama (and he deserves many), I can’t recall a single utterance since he took office in which he has been anything other than gentlemanly in replying to some dreadfully vicious, completely counter-factual attacks.

      • You are comparing what “many right-wing commentators” said to what Obama personally said. Either compare Bush to Obama, or right-wing commentators to left wing commentators.

      • No, I’m comparing what many right-wing commentators, and Republican elected officials (Dick Cheney, for example) said quite publicly. Add to that such luminaries as Karl Rove, who spoke for the Republican party at the time.

        Yes, Bush himself limited his acrimony to “You’re either for us or against us.” The next tier? Vicious.

      • Big fan Bob, but let’s check out the work facism.

        From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism

        1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
        2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

        If this doesn’t describe our current goverment’s mindset and where we’re leading, I don’t know what does.

        Private health care destruction, pay czar, auto bond holders ignored, financial control (ability to break-up companies). Billions of dollars of tax money under the control of one branch of goverment (tarp, stimulus). Energy tax on the way.

      • “If this doesn’t describe our current government’s mindset and where we’re leading, I don’t know what does.”

        I guess you really don’t know what does. We’ve had no private health care destruction. That’s a myth. Pay czar for companies with significant federal ownership? Gee, too bad the owner gets a say in compensation. Auto bond holders would have been entirely out of luck had the federal government not kept the auto companies in business. Loss of money does not totalitarianism make.

        I think you need to read some history, to learn how fascists behave. If we had a fascist regime in charge, your post would have landed you in jail.

        Anonymously.

  • Bob, I followed your lead with the term “fascist”. If I described our near-term environment, I would use the less inflammatory term “statist” to describe the people running our federal government.
    The private health care destruction comes in phases over the next few years with the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. An example is the mandate on health insurance companies requiring everyone to be covered for pre-existing conditions. This sounds compassionate until you remember that “insurance” is purchased to transfer or mitigate risk. How can an insurance company survive if people can buy insurance when they’re sick and expect to have a large enough pool of “well” people to spread the cost?
    This seems like a business issue you might use in a column.
    Any chance of reducing the cost of health care comes from private companies competing for your business, providing customized insurance to fit each person’s needs. Once the federal government gets involved to help, we get Medicare and billions of unfunded liabilities.
    As for the “pay czar”, you mentioned that the “owners” would get a voice in deciding the salaries. Since when does a government appointee set salaries and decide an employee’s value to a business? If the stockholders are not happy, they should work through the company’s board.
    The GM bond holders (mutual funds, pension funds, maybe your retirement fund) were given 10% of the new GM stock, while other debt holders received much larger percentages of new GM stock based on the amount of money loaned to GM.
    You last point about money not being important doesn’t make sense to me. Creating personal wealth (private property ownership being big example) is the hallmark of a free society.

    • My last point is that the opportunity to obtain personal wealth – just one of many hallmarks of a free society – is a matter of opportunity, not guarantee. GM corporate bonds? Without the bailout they’d have been worthless instead of getting ten cents on the dollar.

      There are those who think Obama should have allowed GM to simply fail and disappear. There were pros and cons to both sides of that argument. Either way, the bondholders lost; this way they lost less. It was a statist solution, and it was to the bondholders’ advantage.

    • “Any chance of reducing the cost of health care comes from private companies competing for your business, providing customized insurance to fit each person’s needs.”

      The US is hardly unique. Why don’t we look at what other civilized countries do? You know, the ones who spend less on health care than we do, but who have healthier citizens.

  • Wow! I thought the thrust of this column was that we should avoid an us-versus-them orientation and “create a culture of honest inquiry, and of collaboration.” by starting with ourselves as indivduals. I wanted to point out that we need to foster that approach in our staffs as well.
    Based on the comments above, seems the only collaboration some see is that of traitors collaborating with the enemy.

  • Current events CAN be good examples for business leadership issues, as this weeks KJR shows.

    I did have some problems with last week. I didn’t realize I was reading satire. The health care example is still very “hot button”, being an angry society, examples that get someone’s blood boiling, making it difficult to see you’re point, give us a good example of what not to do.

    Additionally, I didn’t hear any concerns directly related to the length or complexity of the health care bill (now law). What I was hearing was that it was too long and complex to pass so quickly, before it was throughly understood. Not taking the time to understand a complex issue before acting on it is a practice to avoid in business, politics, and life.

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