All Posts in Industry Commentary

|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

As a card-carrying member of the KJR community, you know our guts are optimized for digestion, not for a dominant role in the executive decision-support system.

While watching The Loudest Voice — a biopic chronicling the rise and fall of Fox News’ Roger Ailes — it occurred to me that, when making decisions, deciding whether or not we should rely on our intestines is less consequential than deciding who we trust to provide us with information and insights.

The Loudest Voice, for example, tells a compelling tale. Much of it is or could reasonably have been supported by sources close to Ailes and Fox News. But some of the story depicts private circumstances, especially between Ailes and his wife Elizabeth, for which the scriptwriters could not plausibly have had any reliable sources to draw on.

Scratch The Loudest Voice off my list of places to get insights into conservative media.

But the story as told was compelling (and Russell Crowe’s performance as Ailes was brilliant). Were I a left-wing partisan I’d have been vulnerable to accepting the entire production as history, not just “based on a true story.”

Which brings us to the opinions we form and the decisions we make, not only in our personal livee as citizens and voters, but as managers and professionals as well.

How do you decide which of your potential information sources you can trust? And if you find yourself disagreeing with folks you need to persuade, how do you pry them loose from the information sources they rely on … usually, one or more of the big three analyst firms (Gartner, Forrester, IDC) … to more reliable sources such as Keep the Joint Running, or, even better (for you), you and your colleagues who will have to turn CIO decisions into practical action?

Here’s a starting point: Have some. Information sources, that is.

Take time … make time … to read, about developments in your areas of specialization, and, even more important, where you don’t specialize.

As you read, pay attention to your own confirmation bias.

Read critically, but not so critically that you ignore ideas and trends you should be knowledgeable about.

But on the other hand, we all need to pay special attention to the other side of our confirmation biases, uncritically accepting sources we like, or that tell us what we want to hear.

In the political world, that’s how QAnon has gained influence. Political partisans start with the desire for their own opinions to dominate. That easily turns into a need to dislike those they disagree with — for their opponents to be bad people. Once I need my opponents to be bad people it’s just one small step for me to seek out information sources that disparage them.

In the IT world we don’t (yet) have any QAnons to worry about. Nobody reads an IT opinion piece because it vilifies … well, maybe we do.

Imagine you’re on a solution selection project and have developed a preference for one of the candidates. Now imagine the team seems to be leaning to a different candidate, one you’re far more skeptical of.

As we’re dealing in hypotheticals, next imagine you search for industry evaluations that back your position. You run across a Gartner Magic Quadrant that places your preferred solution in the prized “Leader” quadrant while scoring the one you dislike as a hopeless loser (“Niche” in GartnerSpeak).

I don’t know about you, but my inclination would be to immediately share Gartner’s views with the selection team.

But if Gartner’ analysis ran the other way, I’d probably search for a second opinion. Imagine what I found was a hatchet job that cast aspersions, not only on Gartner’s methodology, but on its objectivity and integrity as well. Would I be tempted to share that with the team?

Of course I’d be tempted. Would I actually share it? I hope that if the critique in question was based solely on hypotheticals, with no actual evidence to back it up, I’d resist the temptation.

I hope.

Sharing that sort of thing wouldn’t be QAnon-grade conspiracy-theory mongering. But it would be a step in that general direction, especially because the act of sharing it doesn’t just influence the people around me. It also sets up the vicious cycle of selecting what I read based on my likes and dislikes, reinforcing them.

Which in turn leads me to make my future information sourcing choices searches, not for information, but for ammunition.

And that’s the point this week: We need to choose our information sources carefully. Choose none and we’re just ignorant.

But choosing the wrong ones will make us worse than ignorant.

It will make us deluded.

Comments

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

I read the news”paper” most mornings, in quotes because it’s an on-line replica of the paper version that doesn’t require tree-felling, wood pulping, and ink-smearing.

In it I read an article about what Facebook is doing to combat the extensive disinformation it helps disseminate. Mostly, its plans sound a lot like trying to extinguish a forest fire with spit.

But not being one to criticize someone’s solution to a problem without having a better idea, I asked myself what my better idea was. Happily, I have one.

I have the solution. Not a solution. Not a partial solution. Not something that might make a positive impact but not much of one.

I have the solution! And because you’re a loyal KJR subscriber I’m going to share it with you. Not only that, I’m going to invite you to share it with everyone you know.

Bob’s Big Idea:

-> Read news and opinions in newspapers. Socialize on social media.<-

If every voting-age American would follow this simple guideline it would, in one masterstroke, neuter all actors, both foreign and domestic, who are trying to pollute our political dialog with their repulsive, fabricated, preposterous, divisive falsehoods.

Well sure, you might be thinking to yourself. Bob is a well-known liberal, so of course he’s going to recommend sources with a leftwing bias.

I’m not. Read the Wall Street Journal if you want to avoid the leftwing slant on things, and that’s assuming the print media as a whole has an actual leftwing bias — a debate I’ll leave to those who research and tabulate such matters.

How about cable news? That’s a gray zone, for three reasons.

Reason #1: No matter how much or how little that’s truly newsworthy is taking place, cable news has to stretch or cram it into its 24-hour news cycle.

Reason #2: Because cable news is such a visual medium, dramatic visuals crowd out the mundane, even when the mundane shows what’s typical.

Reason #3: Shouting heads are cheap. Reporting is expensive. A face on a screen making noises, even a well-compensated face, doesn’t cost very much. Inviting a second or third face in to offer their commentary is still economical programming.

Sending a reporter and camera crew to where news is happening costs a whole lot more … and that’s also in comparison to what it costs a newspaper to send a reporter there.

So on cable news, economics favors shouted inanities over reliable information.

All of which goes to demonstrate just how pitifully the newspaper industry has responded over the past 25 years to the threat to its existence that is the Internet.

Newspapers could have pooled their resources to provide local and national classified advertising. Instead, they gave up the field to Craigslist, Monster.com, Autozone.com, and so many other list services that would have had to compete with newspapers if only newspapers had decided to compete.

And that’s the revenue side of the industry. How about content?

Imagine newspaper companies thought in terms of competing for news consumers’ business. What might they do?

I’d think they’d advertise, offering engaging accounts of how they ensure the content they publish is both newsworthy and reliable … the steps they go through and the principles they adhere to before committing content to printing plates.

If they were even more bold they’d contrast their process to the vetting that precedes posting on social media. They’d portray, perhaps, a bunch of Russians laughing as they clink their vodka-filled glasses and click their mice, or perhaps a few deranged individuals with poor personal hygiene, popping pills and screaming into microphones as they click.

The fact of the matter is that most newspapers do adhere to a code of ethics, do have processes and principles in place to keep misrepresentations out, and issue corrections when their preventive measures fail.

Social media sources are the polar opposite.

What does this have to do with KJR’s mission of providing practical advice people in business can make use of as soon as they finish reading?

There is, unsurprisingly, a business parallel.

Just about every business function is, for those outside it, an arcane, needlessly complex, expensive waste of corporate resources. Few decision-makers outside IT understand why it’s so hard; likewise CIOs looking at Marketing, Chief Marketing Officers looking at Accounting …

Every business decision-maker and influencer benefits by understanding why what other parts of the business do is so hard. If the CEO doesn’t insist on this sort of information exchange, the rest of the executive leadership team should take the initiative.

The alternative? Look at how well social media works as a source of enlightenment.

# # #

Like this idea? Know anyone in the newspaper business? Please don’t hesitate to share this with them. Who knows — maybe someone will pay attention.

Comments