Critical Thinking Cafe

You Need More Information? Bah, humbug!

It seems reasonable that the Information Age should eventually lead us to information overload--and it has. From voice mail systems that can't accept more messages to in-boxes that are cluttered with unopened emails to executive summaries that bury us in statistics and detail, our worlds are flooded with information. Access to and the availability of information are no longer problems for most professionals. Knowing how to use that information to solve problems and make decisions is an on-going challenge for many of us, underscoring Warren Bennis' comment that "There is a profound difference between information and meaning."

The ever-increasing speed with which information is communicated and transferred creates the expectation that the speed with which we personally process information and then use that knowledge to make decisions should be improving as well. But without a process for evaluating and focusing information--a methodology for critical thinking--the abundance of information rarely improves individual or collective performance.

William Pollard reminds us that, "Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit."

One of the dangerous myths leaders embrace is believing that having information is all that is needed for good decision-making. Critical thinking engages us in looking at information in the context of the system in which it exists and then knowing how to distinguish facts from inferences, assumptions, and guesses. Like a series of actions in a cause and effect scenario, information doesn't exist in isolation. Failing to recognize the connections between multiple data points is frequently the cause of problem solving focused on the wrong problem, solutions that don't fix anything, and decisions that create no lasting change.

Dumb and Dumber--Corporate Style

If you've had a tough year marked by a poorly framed decision or a miscalculation of gargantuan proportions you'd probably rather avoid the additional publicity that comes when your corporate fumble appears on Fortune's list of the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for 2007. The addition of YouTube, blogging, and social networking sites makes it harder than ever to hide your mistakes behind a well-crafted press release.

Fortune's 101 Dumbest provides some painful reminders that

• Who you are individually and what a company is collectively are revealed most clearly when we encounter difficulty.
• The need to anticipate and plan for problems never goes away.

Many of this year's winners are companies with plenty of bright and talented people that just didn't think far enough through a brilliant idea to realize what it might create or become (Merrill Lynch's $1.3 billion purchase of First Franklin Financial). A few other cases are examples of people who allowed their personal goals to smother the life out of their common sense (the District of Columbia judge who lost his reappointment due to a failure to demonstrate "appropriate judgment and judicial temperament" following his $54 million lawsuit against a dry cleaner who misplaced the judge's pants).

Fortune's list has at least one great example of a company that learned from the past and planned for the worst. Fast-food chain Taco Bell did a great job anticipating and planning for people mistaking the fast-food giant's menu for Mexican food when opening a new restaurant in Mexico. After a failed launch in Mexico 15 years ago, Taco Bell opened a new store this year by describing meals as "a fast food alternative that does not pretend to be Mexican food."

Lloyd and Harry would probably have a good response for that.

Vision Distortions that Derail Growth

It is easy--and dangerous to confuse a goal with reality and to so fully embrace a vision that you lose touch with what you see every day. Vision is an essential part of leadership. But visionaries and those that follow them wander into dangerous territory when they begin to believe one or more of these vision-clouding myths.

Mission statements define culture. While they are an important component of leading a team of people, mission statements do not define a company's culture. The way people behave every day is what defines a company and those behaviors can easily become widely separated from the idealistic and well-intentioned statements that hang on the walls of a human resources department, in a corporate lobby, or even in a well-appointed board room. The dream of what a company can and should be is important. Authentically admitting what a company is today is critical for lasting growth and health. Leaders lose credibility when their messages about a company only vaguely compare to the environment people work in each day.

Strategies determine priorities. Annual, corporate, or monthly strategy sessions do not define the priorities and direction of an organization. Direction is determined and set dozens of times each day as leaders and managers make decisions about how they will allocate the resources of a company. Strategy may clarify the intended direction of an organization, but what decision-makers choose to do with money, people, time, and materials ultimately and literally define the priorities of an organization. And when people fail to see the organization as an entire system, those decisions will often be directly opposed to the stated vision.

Purpose overcomes problems. The problem you ignore today often becomes the disaster you'll dread tomorrow. Eleanor Roosevelt was right when she said, "The things you refuse to meet today always come back at you later on, usually under circumstances which make the decision twice as difficult as it originally was." Motivational quotes, promises that things will get better, and a vision that motivates people to invest more and more are not enough to overcome systemic problems that are allowed to remain ignored and unresolved.

Healthy vision draws us toward the future while allowing us a clear view of current realities.

Cause and Effect Don't Always Hang Together

Efforts to isolate and identify the root cause of a complex problem without seeing the problem within the context of a larger system often result in short-term fixes that can create additional complexity and future problems. All problems are the result of change. Today's problems may have their roots in changes that occurred weeks or months ago. If we fail to look across an entire system when pursuing the cause of a problem we can mistakenly make a well-intentioned change that we hope will fix the original problem but ultimately causes a new problem in another part of the system--without resolving the original issue.

When this scenario is replicated a few times, we engage in the classic "knob turning" method of problem resolution--reactively trying one fix after another without ever getting to the heart of the issue--or seeing how the system is creating and feeding the more visible problem.

Problems rarely exist in isolation and they cannot be resolved without connecting them with their larger systemic context. Drawing a picture that shows where a problem operates within a larger system is an important step in creating a solution that will resolve the problem and encourage positive momentum toward better performance.

How Risk and Uncertainty Influence Decisions

While you may not know his name, whenever you make a major decision you encounter the tension (and emotional struggle) he recognized and defined. For twenty years, Frank Knight and his colleague Jacob Viner directed the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. Knight's dissertation titled Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (1921) drew a distinction between risk (when the probability of an outcome is possible to calculate and insure against) and uncertainty (when the probability of something cannot be determined).

The underlying problem with any major decision is you cannot know the outcome or be certain, after the decision is made, whether or not another choice would have been a better option. The use of a criteria-driven decision making process helps you ensure against the risks in a decision by making the process as quantified as possible. Tension builds when you expect even the best decision process to eliminate all of the uncertainty that is inherent in a decision.

When a child starts driving, the family's auto insurance carrier protects itself and the family against the known and calculated risks of a teenage driver by raising the insurance premium by one hundred percent or more. The insurer has enough documented experience to accurately calculate the risk probabilities and protect everyone against them. But there are no premiums high enough to eliminate the uncertainty a parent feels when that new driver pulls out of the garage and on to the street.

I've met several people with the title Risk Manager. I've never met anyone that told me they were hired to be the Uncertainty Manager. (A few years ago, Fast Company provided some valuable insight into this tension in an article titled No Risk, No Reward.)

It is difficult to protect against every risk and impossible to eliminate all uncertainty in a major decision. When the criteria in a decision are clearly identified and accurately quantified they can be compared against the alternatives, making any decision a logical process that balances emotion with reason.

Attempting to eliminate all uncertainty in a decision often results in no decision at all (which is the decision). You can't eliminate decision uncertainty so balance it by accurately and effectively managing a decision's risks.

Guns at Work: What's the Problem?

Do you know what Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, and Minnesota have in common? As diverse as these states are, they share a unique viewpoint. Each of these states prohibit employers from telling employees they cannot keep a gun in a locked vehicle in a company parking lot. These states do not believe the Occupational Safety and Health Act's requirement that an employer, "furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm" means you can't have a gun in your car while at work.

This debate recently hit the fan in Oklahoma where an Oklahoma federal court ruled that a state law barring employers from prohibiting weapons on company property was not valid because it was pre-empted by federal law. This ruling will likely go to the OK supreme court and the discussion will fuel the debate in other states as well.

You might be surprised to discover that the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is not waving a "No Guns" banner in this debate. SHRM manager of government relations Bob Carragher states that SHRM is not in favor of any policy that bans guns in the workplace. "What we've always argued," says Carragher "and the judge has agreed, is that all employers have to abide by the OSH Act's general duty clause. . . But since the OSH Act does not have a weapons workplace standard, it is up to individual employers as to how to best meet the requirement of the general duty clause" (SHRM Workplace Law Library, 10/24/07).

It appears that HR professionals, employers, state governments, and the federal government are stuck at the first step of their problem solving process--they don't agree on the problem they're trying to solve. Most of us have worked for someone we occasionally wanted to strangle, maim, or otherwise harm. Would immediate access to a pistol in your car have changed the trajectory of your career during those times when you and your boss were at odds?

Yesterday a young man walked in to a Nebraska shopping mall and killed eight people before taking his own life. Does  proximity to a firearm make it more likely that someone will use the gun in an act of violence?

What's the problem we're trying to solve and will either state or federal legislation fix it?

It looks like this debate is just getting started.

Systemic Problem Solving

Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you're getting.

That statement by W. Edwards Deming underscores why so many problem-solving efforts fail to achieve their intended objectives. No problems stand alone. The interconnectedness of human relationships, organizations, markets, supply chains, etc. make it impossible to approach any problem as an isolated event, independent of a larger system.

Our English word "system" comes from two root concepts - to combine and to cause to stand, resulting in a term that refers to "a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole" (Webster's New Collegiate Distionary). Thomas Merton's idea that no man (or organization) is an island extends far beyond the philosophical and theological discussion of his book by that title. Nothing is completely independent.

When revenue drops in a company, management often looks first to the sales organization for answers. Obviously, more people buying a product or service results in more revenue for the company. But failing to look at the entire revenue-generation system could result in a lot of blame and problem correction going to the wrong place. While money invested in better recruiting, more robust training, and a new method for managing the sales process will provide marginal improvement, those remedies may not address the heart of the issue.

Revenue in any organization is dependent on a system that includes

1. Revenue
2. Closed sales
3. An effective sales process
4. A pipeline of qualified prospects
5. An adequate number of qualified leads
6. Effective marketing that attracts qualified prospects

When this system is viewed as a whole entity (and looked at in relation to all the other systems in an organization) it becomes apparent that lagging revenue may have a root cause far from the point where a customer makes a buying decision or where a salesperson helps the prospect evaluate the value of a product or service. Sales growth is dependent on a pipeline of qualified prospects. A sales pipeline develops from an adequate number of qualified leads. Those potential clients are generally reached through some type of marketing.

Peter Senge points out that the "invisible fabrics or interrelated actions" present in businesses "often take years to fully play out their effects on each other" (The Fifth Discipline, pages 6-7). A lag in sales this year may be the result of inadequate investments in marketing during previous years. The push for profits one year can precipitate a drop in revenue the next. Companies that fail to look at the long-term, systemic impact of their decisions are doomed to an endless cycle of cause analysis, problem solving, and looking for new solutions when the bigger problem is a system that is not designed to produce the desired result.

If you don't like your results, don't focus on isolated events--look at the entire system. The cause of your problem may lie far from your point of immediate pain.

Affluenza and the Problems of Wealth

You don't have to watch much tabloid television to know that a wave of cash can sometimes bring with it a riptide of trouble. While someone struggling on a middle-class income may have an opinion about the perils of prosperity, their comments don't carry quite the same weight as insight from someone who has had every material need satisfied during her entire life.

Jessie O'Neill was born into a family of great affluence (her grandfather was Charles Erwin Wilson, former president of General Motors). Ms. O'Neill lived "the American dream" in perfect luxury as a child and inherited much of her family's wealth. At age 40, O'Neill returned to college to get a master's degree in psychology and counseling. Although she has never needed to work, Ms. O'Neill now invests her time helping people of great affluence deal with the psychological challenges that accompany money. While you may wish you qualified to be one of her clients, this child of privilege knows from experience the fallacy of believing that money has anything to do with happiness.

If you've never read The Golden Ghetto (Hazelden, 1997) you will find in it Jessie O'Neill offers a perspective on the root causes of a problem she calls affluenza, "the myth of the American dream, the conviction that money can, does, and should guarantee happiness" (p. 37). She later states that, ". . . the affluent are desperate to believe, as most people in this country do, that wealth or the pursuit of it couldn't possibly be at the root of their discontent" (p. 165).

Problem solving requires getting to the root of a problem. In exposing the fallacies of the American dream, Jessie O'Neill reveals the root of problems that challenge both the few living in financial luxury and thousands of suburban wannabees.

Three Essentials for Corporate Health

His bio states that he has run 38,000 miles in pursuit of good health. At age 76 he still exercises regularly and if you've seen him in person you can't help noticing that he has a physique that could make guys 20 years younger envious. It's obvious that during the 39 years since Dr. Kenneth Cooper introduced aerobics to the world he has followed his own advice with remarkable success.

Dr. Cooper states that regardless of what your driver's license tells you, your real physical age is determined by five factors. The first three relate to your physical fitness and are:

1. Endurance
2. Strength
3. Flexibility

As I looked at these monitors of physical health I realized they are telling indicators of an organization's age/health as well. Companies with a high capacity to endure, the strength to respond rather than react to change, and the flexibility to adapt to the unexpected generally display a level of overall agility and responsiveness that other more sedentary firms can't demonstrate. These companies are healthier and the have a longevity that was glaringly absent during the dot com craze a few years ago.

People develop endurance, strength, and flexibility by engaging in a systematic process of regular exercise. Companies with a high degree of vitality generally have a systematic method for solving problems, making decisions, and anticipating and planning for future challenges. Healthy companies demonstrate robust critical thinking abilities, deliberately developed over time.

Corporate health is no more an accident than physical health. When problem solving is not a process it is usually a problem. When problem solving becomes a process, it becomes much less of a problem.

Munchausen Managers that Create Problems

Managers are hired to solve problems--not to create them. But in some cases a "need to be needed" management style can evolve into something more troublesome that parallels a serious psychological disorder.

Medical professionals occasionally encounter children like the girl that was hospitalized for over 40 surgeries before she was eight years old or the two-year-old boy visiting the hospital more than 20 times for conditions that left doctors unsure of the root cause. Both of these children were victims of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, a rare but dangerous condition that causes a child's primary caregiver to deliberately make a child sick or convince medical professionals that a child is ill by exaggerating or inducing symptoms in order to get the sympathy and attention of medical professionals. Doctors easily overlook MPS as a cause of a child's repeated illnesses because it is difficult to believe that a parent or caregiver will deliberately hurt his or her child.

This odd psychological malady lands in the corporate world when a manager discovers that his or her perceived value grows every time he or she solves another problem. From staff conflicts to supply chain delays to inventory inaccuracies the manager learns under-the-radar ways to fabricate problems that require intervention. When the manager solves the problem the recognition from others perpetuates the need to find (or create) another problem to solve.

A short, but insightful article by Georgia Tech Professor of Management Nathan Bennett, PhD in the November issue of Harvard Business Review titled Munchausen at Work presents some case studies of managers with Munchausen-esque behavior. What caught my attention are a couple of Bennett's questions for diagnosing the condition which I quote directly below:

1. Is the employee disproportionately involved in identifying and fighting fires?
2. Does the employee deflect management's efforts to understand a problem's underlying cause.

Frequent fire-fighting and the inability to get to the root cause of a problem are often indications that a manager or an organization needs a process for effective critical thinking and problem solving. Professor Bennett indicates that when these situations persist or appear to propagate themselves, a deeper problem may be in play.

Raising a concern that some managers might be creating their problems isn't meant to encourage break-room psychoanalysis. It does underscore the fact that problems are for solutions and managers should help the people they lead become more adept at getting to the root cause of problems and implementing solutions that result in long-term, positive organizational change.

Managers that thrive in problem-ridden environments may be culprits as much as heroes.