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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Fast Company interviewed Tom Peters on the twentieth anniversary of In Search of Excellence. In the interview, Peters casually mentioned that he’d faked his data. And neither he nor anyone else thought anything of it!

Smart managers rely on evidence to evaluate the validity of their ideas but as Peters’ remark illustrates, they face a serious disadvantage when compared to the scientific community. To avoid intellectual relativism — a mindset that considers all ideas equally valid — you need trustworthy evidence. Scientists understand this. It’s why articles submitted to scientific journals receive peer review, and no research is fully accepted until confirmed independently. It’s also why discussions among scientists are blunt, sloppy thinking is publicly derided, and anyone caught faking data is expelled from the profession. Scientists require integrity the way professional golfers require good manners.

The sources business people rely on, external and internal, are intrinsically less reliable than the peer-reviewed journals scientists read, and they’re getting worse as intellectual relativism takes increasing hold. Here’s another example:

In the olden days we had access to independent test labs, and trade publications routinely published product performance comparisons. We no longer do, because technology vendors prohibit publication of performance data in their EULAs. This might be so vendors can control what we’re told about their products. It also might be that vendors are concerned that “independent” testing labs and IT research firms have been paid to reach a predefined conclusion.

The concern isn’t unreasonable. Quite a few vendors have complained to me privately about “shakedowns” by well-known IT research firms. Nobody will go on the record — for fear of retaliation, they say, although sour grapes is another possible explanation. The closest I’ve come to direct evidence is a marketing director who happily burbled, off the record, that in exchange for her buying services from one of them, they would “… help us with our marketing efforts.”

The information these firms sell might very well be excellent, but you have no way to evaluate it, or them. The raw data is confidential, their processes are opaque and un-audited, and potential conflicts of interest are significant.

This is what happens when no culture of honest inquiry exists and no process exists to enforce honest research: You lose your ability to trust the evidence. That’s true when it comes to the big IT research firms. It’s equally true when it comes to the sources of information you rely on inside your company.

In small businesses, much of your information comes from direct observation. You know what happened (although even then, interpreting what you see isn’t always straightforward). The bigger the organization, the more you learn indirectly and in summarized form. In very large companies, figuring out what’s actually going on out there is close to impossible.

Many leaders respond by limiting their information sources. They might trust one or two executives in the chain of command. Their administrative assistants might share what’s in the gossip mill. They might rely on a weekly production report that provides “key performance indicators.” But the number of sources is always small, because every additional source of information adds confusion, not clarity. This is so much a way of life for many executives that they miss the thoroughly obvious implication. Which is:

Every additional source of information should improve your understanding, adding depth, color and detail. If that isn’t the case, your organization is guided, not by a culture of honest inquiry, but by the selling of personal agendas. Managers sift through evidence searching for ammunition, instead of letting the evidence tell the story. It’s a hallmark of intellectual relativism — starting with the “right” position on an issue, then accepting and discarding evidence depending on whether it supports that position.

Fixing a culture like this is neither quick nor easy. To start, broaden your range of sources. Meet with a lot of people. Open your door. Convene “user groups.” Invite groups of employees to luncheon roundtables. Start collecting performance measures (yes, metrics are a listening channel — one way of finding out what’s going on out there among many).

Initially, you will become increasingly confused. Stick with it. As you continue to listen to more and more sources a picture will come into focus.

It comes down to this: Some leaders want to find out what’s really going on out there. They want high-quality evidence that tells an accurate, nuanced (if you’ll forgive the over-used word) story. Other leaders start by telling the story and insist you give them evidence that proves them right.

Both get what they ask for.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Remember the Y2K crisis? Most IT professionals do. You probably recall long, hard hours, sweating the details to make sure your company’s systems kept working. The Y2K crisis might be the best example in history of what David Brin calls “self-preventing prophesy.”

Much of the rest of the population has fallen for what became typical commentary starting around 8:39am, January 2, 2000. Instead of thanking the tens of thousands of hard-working programmers who saved their companies from bankruptcy, and the world’s economy from chaos, a swarm of second-guessers decided we computer geeks had all bilked our employers with a trumped up, phony scare, which was our fault in the first place for designing the old systems so poorly.

This is intellectual relativism — the philosophy that all ideas are equally valid so long as enough people accept them — at its most egregious. All of the evidence is on one side of the issue, and it doesn’t matter. Given a choice between evidence and what someone wants to believe, evidence doesn’t stand a chance, especially when the belief is that someone else is to blame for something. Propagandists exploit this all-too-human tendency — to feel better about myself by feeling worse about someone else — all the time. It’s what makes their standard rhetorical fare — the ridiculing and demonizing of some identifiable group — so effective. If you’re wondering how intellectual relativism takes root, look no further. Frequently, it starts with the desire to blame.

Last week’s column explored the gold standard for avoiding intellectual relativism — the systems, processes and mental habits scientists have developed over the past few hundred years to assure the integrity of published evidence. The place to start reducing intellectual relativism in your organization is one of those mental habits. Call it a culture of honest inquiry — a bias toward making decisions based on evidence and logic rather than starting with personal preferences. Or as Jim Collins put it in Good to Great, “confronting the most brutal facts of your current reality.”

Nationally, we’re losing our culture of honest inquiry. Corporately, too many executives and managers actively prevent it from ever forming.

Speaking of blame, one popular barrier to a culture of honest inquiry is the desire to hold people accountable. What this mostly achieves is rewarding everyone in the chain of command for forwarding only good news, sweeping everything else under the rug as long as is humanly possible.

It’s Hobson’s choice. Want to hold people accountable? Or do you want straight information, so you know if you should hold them accountable?

Pick one.

And anyway, holding individuals accountable is usually ManagementSpeak for finding someone to blame.

Another nasty mental habit that can prevent a culture of honest inquiry is my-team/your-team. My-team/your-team turns people into debaters, arguing for their side as persuasively as possible. When you’re on a team you want your side to win, rather than wanting to achieve the best result. People being what they are, of course, they equate being right with being on the right side — their team.

Note an important distinction. My-team/your-team results in debating … arguing. A culture of honest inquiry results in discussion. The difference: Arguing is about winning. Discussing is about collaboratively solving a problem.

My-team/your-team is easy to spot. It usually takes the form of ad hominem argument, is aimed at another workgroup in the company, and demonizes, diminishes, or marginalizes them. So if you hear, “What do you expect from those bean-counters?” or “They’re all clueless Pointy-Haired Bosses,” or “They’re propeller-heads — only interested in technology for technology’s sake,” it’s a safe bet Accounting, IT, and various executives aren’t asking each other, “What is it about our processes and systems that allowed this to happen?” They’re too busy … altogether now … blaming each other.

People will identify themselves as part of a group. It’s a natural tendency and you aren’t going to stop it. What you can do is encourage a change in how they define the group. So if you hear my-team/your-team conversations in your organization, confront the arguers. Point out the window, name your biggest competitor, and say, “Out there, right now, they want our customers. They’re the competition. You, me, and all those folks you’re busy insulting are on the same side. So instead of blaming them for a problem we all share, figure out how to work with them to solve it instead.”

Which gets to a sign I’ve wanted to place on the wall in a number of companies I’ve seen over the years: “We have a blame-oriented culture and it’s Your Fault!”

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