Our local newspaper recently ran an opinion piece by Minnesota’s Senate majority leader, suggesting that it’s time to end our governor’s COVID-19-driven emergency powers. His logic? We aren’t better off than we were a year ago, when the governor’s emergency powers took effect.

I’m nowhere near wise or informed enough to take a position on the question of whether the governor’s emergency powers have outlived their usefulness.

But as a professional consultant I’m more than wise and informed enough to know this is Lewis’s Law #5 in action: When you ask the wrong question, even the right answer is misleading.

Are we (“we” referring to all Minnesotans) better off than we were a year ago? No. Sure, there are a few notable exceptions, like people who had the foresight to invest in Zoom (I’m still kicking myself for missing this one).

But after a year of a pandemic that to date has killed 6,600 Minnesotans, 523 thousand Americans, and more than two and a half million people worldwide, asking whether we’re better off than we were a year ago makes about as much sense as asking whether, following emergency surgery, the patient is better off than he was before the car crash that sent him to the hospital.

A better question, although one that’s much harder to answer (yes, I did say the same thing twice, didn’t I?) is whether we’re better off than we would have been had our governor not assumed emergency powers.

Among the reasons it’s a much harder question to answer is that it asks us to compare the path we did take to all the paths we didn’t.

The point this week

Lewis’s Law #5 matters to every manager and leader, for every important decision. In my consulting I find frequent violations. What’s hard is that pointing them out invariable seems nitpicky to the perpetrators. Some examples:

What’s the return on investment? What makes this a wrong question is that it’s so intensely tactical and one-dimensional. Insisting that every action generates a direct, measurable financial return precludes investments in, for example, the business strategy.

Who is accountable for this? This is ManagementSpeak for “Whose fault is this?” It invites blamestorming while preventing the root cause analysis that might prevent the next problem.

Will this create shareholder value? Shareholder value … dividends and increases in the price of a share of stock … isn’t a bad thing. It’s that so many ways of achieving it help prevent long-term success. Shareholder value should be thought of as a consequence of achieving competitive advantage, not as the focal point of management attention.

What are the right metrics for this? This is a wrong question because the question to ask is what management’s goals are. Only after these are clear does it make sense to ask how we’ll tell if we’re achieving them … a semiotic improvement over asking about metrics.

Bob’s last word: Asking a wrong questions in business is like handwaving by stage magicians. It’s a way to distract attention from what’s really going on.

So as a business leader and manager, take time to ask yourself and everyone around you: “Is this the question we should be asking?” That’s always a good question to ask, and one whose right answer won’t mislead you.

Bob’s sales pitch: Nothing in particular this week, but watch this space. I’m building up to a good one!

High on the list of statements that are almost always wrong is, “It’s really very simple.”

Maybe something, somewhere in this universe really is very simple. Nothing comes to mind, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

Don’t let Occam’s Razor confuse you. It … a foundational principle of modern scientific inquiry … advises us to prefer the simplest explanation that fits the known facts of whatever phenomenon we’re trying to understand.

Simplest doesn’t always mean simple. Too many of us, too much of the time, only explanations simple enough for us to easily understand, pushing aside any facts that indicate we need a more complicated account of the situation. Understanding that can be hard work, which might explain our collective tendency to find complexity irritating.

Unless, that is, it’s our own complexity that’s on the line.

Imagine, just for the sake of argument, you’re responsible for managing and running your company’s IT infrastructure. The plethora of Windows 2003 servers in your data centers is starting to get on your nerves, so you decide it’s time to secure the budget you’ll need to replace them with something more modern.

So you find yourself in front of the executive leadership team, defending the capital and labor costs you and your team estimate will be required to get the job done.

And “defend” is the operative term, because nobody on the ELT has any interest in the technical and logistical complexities associated with keeping obsolete technology running, not to mention making sure the applications that run on the obsolete technology keep running.

You do your best to explain it all, but in the end it’s just too complicated, especially as the ELT has been told you can just “lift and shift” everything to The Cloud and everything will be wonderful.

Ignore the outcome for a moment, and instead consider the dynamics of the failed conversation that just took place. The ELT found you irritating because you tried to explain the situation in all its complex glory. You, in the exact same conversation, found the ELT irritating because its members did their best to reject the exact same complexities.

Why the difference?

As a general rule, once any of us have committed the time, effort, and energy to master a complex subject we take pride in our expertise. It’s something we own. When it’s a technical subject, most of us, having mastered it, also enjoy contemplating the beauty of the elegant engineering it involves.

And we want to share that sense of beauty, just as someone with expertise in the visual arts might want to share how they experience, say, Picasso’s Guernica.

Their wanting to share it, though, doesn’t result in my wanting to have it shared, and in fact I’d probably find all that sharing irritating. I want to enjoy viewing the mural in peace, without having to filter out all that auditory background noise.

Back to your attempt to justify updating all your Windows 2003 servers: Keep all the complexity to yourself. Instead of trying to explain it all, substitute a familiar analogy. I find automobiles useful for this. You might find baking (our servers are like flour that’s long past its use-by date) or golf (they’re like a persimmon driver that’s starting to crack) work better for you.

Bob’s last word: But, you might be thinking, arguing by analogy isn’t legitimate. And it isn’t … if you’re on a debating team. And if someone challenges you on this point, it gives you an opportunity. “You’re right – this is just an analogy,” you might say. “But that leaves us with two choices. Either you can trust me, or I can explain it to you.”

Yes, it’s an ugly threat. But needs must when the devil drives.

Bob’s sales pitch: I have nothing new to sell you this week, and for that matter no new pitches. As always, if you find KJR valuable, forward columns to friends and colleagues and encourage them to subscribe.