Chapter 2

Snarled in Data, Saved by Clarifying Language

Escaping from Our Own Nets

Second, the language of clarity: We need to extricate knowledge from information. Data should lead to information, which creates knowledge and, ultimately, wisdom. Yet data (let along “big data”) too often confuses and obfuscates. This chapter deals with the best methods to speak and write about data and turn it into highly useful information, applicable knowledge, and even profound wisdom.

Analytic Arabesques

An arabesque is a dance position where the dancer precariously supports a movement on one leg, while the other is extended horizontally … oh, and also backward.

An arabesque is also an ornamental design consisting of intertwined and flowing lines, often found in Moorish and Arabic decoration. Visiting Istanbul recently, I saw these in every possible artistic combination in many mosques. The design often features interlacing foliage and tendrils.

Enough for our arts program. The point is that language often becomes this contorted, this confusing, this dazzling to the receiver. We have the luxury of reflecting upon art, but not so much so while trying to rapidly and effectively communicate.

The arabesques we speak of are those where we advertently or inadvertently distort meaning by creating convoluted patterns with the language. This is exacerbated by technology and unemotional, one-­dimensional e-mail as a primary communications form (we’d rate texting as 0.5 dimensional, in case you’re wondering).

A brief example is the feigned aesthetic of the television news reporter who says “Between you and I …” because it seems so decorous, even if every educated person knows it’s also wrong.* It’s like sniffing a wine cork, which does you as much good as licking the label in terms of evaluating the wine. It is an affectation.

We can watch arabesques create the more colloquial foot in mouth syndrome (think about the position, also very difficult to maintain), when very little thought is invested in the beginning of the sentence so that there is no control whatsoever in terms of the landmines, dead ends, and general wrecks it may encounter by its termination. Then there is FIMR, foot-in-mouth recovery, which always makes things worse.

Here is the conversation in a select, wealthy group’s cocktail party prior to an important meeting:

Suzie: So, Gunther, I’m impressed with your success. You can’t be older than 54.

Gunther: (Outraged) Did you say 54!? I’m 48! How can you think I’m 54? Everyone tells me I don’t look my age!

Suzie:I didn’t mean to say you look older than you are, only that you’re so well groomed and dressed that you look even better than you otherwise, well, I mean, no one would know just by looking at you, but I know because we’ve talked before …

You get the idea. It’s like finding yourself on thin ice when you happen to be carrying a flamethrower, and then you inexplicably turn it on and point it at your feet.

The arabesque happens so often in our language because we’re snarled in data. We find ourselves in painful and contorted positions because we don’t know what to disregard or what to cull out, so we try to make sense of it all. That’s why we wind up looking like a pretzel.

This is the usual sequence we’ve found that creates great power:

Data … information … knowledge … wisdom

Nothing fancy there. But a lot that may be hidden can undermine us.

For example, we tend to spew analytics like an erupting volcano because:

• We make the mistake believing that data speaks for itself.
• We have overconfidence in research, or what passes for research, especially when it appears to support our own conclusions and biases.
• We have a burning desire to impress others!

Let’s define terms:

Data: Units of statistics, numbers, words, and language that can be gathered and sorted.

Information: Facts derived from data that can be verified and validated.

Knowledge: Information combined with one’s talents that creates a grasp of subject matter, context, and application.

Wisdom: Information combined with judgment and experience to anticipate and apply solutions and make quality decisions.

Whether you agree with our precise definitions or not, the key is to understand that the terms imply different meanings and they occur in a certain sequence. We don’t believe it’s an accident that people can talk about smart people, but you seldom hear them refer to wise people.

Therefore, data without interpretation, validation, and relevance is useless or, at best, peripheral. It can confuse and obfuscate if it isn’t culled and disregarded. While we often focus on the art and science of presenting information, we seldom focus on what information really constitutes. (At this writing, there is a huge controversy about the wisdom of vaccinating children against measles, pitting scientific wisdom on one side and misinformation on the other.) We’ll deal more with this later in this chapter.

Data tends to be quantitative, emphasizing amounts, degree, scope, and so forth. But information that is gleaned from it begins the qualitative transformation to knowledge. What are our options? What are our risks? Who should be involved?

In 1989, a telecommunication firm introduced a new 800 (toll-free) product for small business and residential use (they were breaking ground in the industry with residential 800 plans). Many hours were invested in brainstorming and think tanks, along with advertising and branding consultations. The powers to be selected: 1-800-FREEDOM, with the accompanying red, white, and blue all-American theme. Marketing just needed to make sure that number wasn’t in use by an existing organization.

The director of product management immediately had his team on the data search. The data analyst spent days pulling data reports. They were like a pack of dogs digging for that one bone. (Remember, 1980s were the peak of greenbar, hardcopy data reports.)

Based on the data, 1800FREEDOM was available, and was blessed as the new product name and promotion. It was approved and printed on everything from marketing collateral to pens and hats, and any other tchotchke that 1800FREEDOM would fit on. The new product was rolled out and introduced with grand fanfare.

It didn’t take long for the call to come in. The call came from a business customer … the Freedom Group, which had owned 1800FREEDOM for a few years.

The devastated and demoralized product director went to the Marketing VP’s office, with reams of green bar reports in tow, citing his defense of, “But, with all of this extensive data research, the number never once showed up.” Without hesitation, the VP vociferously challenged, “Did you ever consider picking up the ‘*#@?!’ phone and dialing the number to see if someone answered???”

Knowledge and wisdom (along with what could be viewed as common sense) trump data. Or, if you think you have the right answer, wait to see if someone answers.

When Everything Is a Priority Nothing Is a Priority

People are fond of pointing out that a photo of Einstein’s desk on the day he died reveals a profusion of books, papers, and notes apparently randomly scattered. They use this as proof that great minds need not be organized.

Don’t confuse a filing system (or lack of one) with the ability to set priorities. The theory of relativity didn’t emerge by accident from a warren of pigeonholes on Einstein’s desk.

Priority (and it’s formerly ungrammatical lovechild, prioritize) means “to establish what things are more important than other things.” In all candors, can you answer easily how that’s done in your life and your business?

How are priorities set in your organization? Who sets them? What criteria are used? How is the what and why (the expected end result and value) communicated? Ideally, priorities are in direct alignment with the organization’s strategy. Too often, that’s not the case. Frequently, priorities are set by what appears to be the whim of those with the loudest voice. More times than not, this would be a person of authority.

From the early days of apprenticeship through the Industrial Revolution, the person(s) in charge charted the path, barked the orders related to their own agendas, and expected everyone to fall in line to implement and execute accordingly. Others (even at an executive level) weren’t asked for their insights or contributions. In fact, the common cliché of old, “I didn’t ask you to think. Just do what I tell you to do,” was rampant. (The modern form, often issued by parents to argumentative children, is, “Do as I say, not as I do.”)

The opposite extreme of this autocratic priority setting is equally ineffective and damaging. This is where priority setting becomes decision by committee or a consensus process. There are hours and days of brainstorming and collaborative think-tank conversations in hopes of obtaining everyone’s buy-in so everyone leaves deliriously happy as to the game plan.

Sadly even when priorities are properly designated and aligned with strategy, they may morph or contort as they trickle through the functions and levels of an organization. They can get lost, confused, railroaded, undermined, and forgotten (or worse yet, totally ignored). So, too, with our individual priorities as we face the unanticipated issues that surface during our day.

The key questions here are, “As a leader, how should you effectively lead the prioritization process, which is a vital and critical leadership skill in setting, aligning, and implementing priorities? What language is useful in accomplishing this?” The answer lies in the following subsets:

• How should priorities be set in your organization?
• Who should set them?
• What criteria should be used?
• What language will aid and abet the process and ensure success?

Setting priorities in a crisis is similar to triage in a medical setting. In any television hospital drama, everyone on the medical staff immediately stopped what they were doing and positioned for triage as mass accident victims arrive. Injuries are assessed and classified on a spectrum from superficial to life threatening. The drama is indicative of medical triage in real life.

Triage, comes from the French phrase trier, meaning to select or sort out. Triage is, by definition, “the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties.” It is a standardized process and system of priorities to be used in an emergency or crisis situation. In the world of medicine, it is based on the very fact that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. (To put it another way, you may be successfully applying band aids to some, thinking you’re successful, while others are dying.)

Triage is a contingent action. It answers the question, “Once the damage has occurred, how do we best deal with it (fix or mitigate it) in the moment and what is the order (priority) of immediate and next-step actions?”

There is a time and place for the concept of triage in any element of a crisis in any type of setting. However, prioritization should be a proactive approach. It is intended to successfully chart a path. It creates a road map to get from here to there most expeditiously.

Let’s explore how you, as an effective leader, can master the art of prioritization proactively and preventively. Setting priorities isn’t rocket science, but there is a method and a system to the language.

To be proactive and not in the crisis triage mode, you need criteria in advance. We’ll suggest three that we’ve found to be simple and clear:

• Seriousness: What is the gravity or impact of the issue? Low may represent a minor disturbance, medium requires damage control or immediate action, and high could be a dramatic, organizationwide outcome. (Low could be a person resigning unexpectedly, medium the chance to gain a new client, and high an acquisition, for example.)
• Urgency: What is the compelling need to act quickly? Low may mean that you clearly have time without worsening affects, medium means that you have a definite window for action, and high means that you need to act immediately to seize an opportunity or to extinguish a fire.
• Growth: Is the situation improving, stable, or declining?

With this language we can make a simple chart*:

Issue 1

Issue 2

Issue 3

Issue 4

Seriousness

Urgency

Growth

 

There’s no such thing as a stupid question, right? Wrong! There are plenty of stupid questions being asked. If you ask the wrong question—use the wrong language—you’re never going to get the right information. Hence, we’ve restricted our proactive priority setting to the clear and simple:

“What is the level of seriousness?” “What is your evidence?”

To that point, one aspect of the language of success is how you respond to questions being asked of you. Leaders are prepped, prompted, and promoted on their ability to respond and tell. Thinking quickly on your feet and not hesitating with a response is thought to be a sign of confidence and conviction. And, yet, the true language of success is not merely how good you are at telling and responding to questions. The language of success includes how talented you are at asking questions (especially of others and often of yourself) in order to gain relevant and pertinent information.

When it comes to setting priorities, leaders need to know when to tell and when to ask. And, more importantly, leaders need to be masters at asking the right questions at the right time. (There will be more on critical questioning skills in Chapter 4.)

Information Isn’t Knowledge

People are generally applauded for responding and reacting quickly—“thinking quickly on their feet, turning around on a dime, taking action immediately.” Often, the focus is acknowledgment of the immediate action, regardless of whether the desired results are achieved. I once took on a pharmaceutical consulting firm as a client to find that they applauded themselves on grinding out 30 proposals a month—but no one tracked their business closing rate! (Granted, there’s a time and place when information must be quickly assessed and immediate action is warranted—such as triage or crisis intervention. In those circumstances, the focus is taking the right action in order to obtain the best outcomes or results.)

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we deal with the scenario of analysis paralysis. Information is mined, collected, dissected, and regurgitated. It is profusely spouted and spewed like Mt. Vesuvius hovering over Pompei and Herculaneum. And, yet, knowledge may never be achieved through the grinding friction of never-ending analysis.

In any circumstance, acting on information without sufficient know-ledge can be destructive and deadly (figuratively and literally). What are the right amounts of alchemy? What is too much or too little? The key is that amount which transforms information into knowledge.

The pathway of information to knowledge is highly dependent on how we consciously and unconsciously obtain, filter, and process information. Everyone is subject to biased thinking and processing based on beliefs and experiences.

The following are some criteria to use to ensure that you’re using the language of success and not failure in three critical areas:

• Avoid confirmation bias: Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, translate, interpret, and generally apply information only insofar as it is consistent with our personal predispositions and beliefs. We find this with global warming debates, as each side uses only reports, scientists, analyses, and comparisons that support its position (and, hence, a scandal that crops up every so often on falsified research).

  In business, we need to search for and combine information based on empirical reality and evidence, not merely that which supports our position. We’re not on a debate team or trying to convince a jury as a defense attorney.

• Avoid recency bias: This is the tendency to believe the first or last things in a series as best, and those items in the middle the least. Pragmatically, it’s the phenomenon in business of getting the boss’s ear last.

  In a luxury hotel, no matter how much is spent on lavish décor or amenities, for front desk speed, the greatest impression is created by the doorman—the very first person and the very last person a guest encounters. That’s fine for hotels if their doorman is outstanding, but hardly the return on investment (ROI) sought for the property.

  We need to train ourselves to consider the entire path and flow of information as we create knowledge, not just the last thing we’ve been exposed to. This is especially true in strategy. Recency bias creates very poor chess players, who tend to focus only on the prior move of the opponent and not its implications six moves hence.

• Avoid illusory correlation: This is the false connection of otherwise legitimate information in flawed etiology. It is the erroneous perception that two unrelated events are related.

  In sports, a new coach’s winning season often ignores the prior coach’s carefully laid plans for the future (the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won a Super Bowl after firing Tony Dungy, who had laid all the groundwork, and who would win a future Super Bowl with the exact same preparation in Baltimore).

  People have tended to connect performance with higher pay, yet countless studies have shown that performance most relies on autonomy and pride in one’s work. The danger with illusory bias in business with this issue, for example, is that if you pay an unhappy employee more money, you simply have a wealthier, unhappy employee!

Even empirical evidence (experience or observable behavior) is subject to and influenced by our own biases.

When taking action, why are we sure we have the right answer and then turn out to be wrong? After the fact, people are quick to reply in defense of their ineffective actions, “We didn’t have the right information, or enough information, or we didn’t trust the information we had.” In reality, it’s seldom about the raw information. It’s typically due to a lack of knowledge by those making the decisions.

I attended an ethics discussion years ago to which two dozen tough executives were invited by an ethics foundation. The guest speaker was at first halting stumbling, and you could feel the disappointment in the room. And he kept fidgeting with a piece of rubber he had brought with him.

In 1986, the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster,—the information and evidence regarding the O-rings were there. Based on the known information, the knowledge was known by those who escalated the concern. This man before us was one of those engineers begging his supervision to delay the launch.

But that knowledge was not accepted and absorbed by those in authority positions, those who made the ultimate call of go or no go. The knowledge was ignored (discounted or dismissed) with devastating results. The Challenger disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program. The Rogers Commission, assigned to determine cause, focused on the technology of the compromised O-rings.

But, ultimately, the commission found NASA’s organizational culture and decision making were key contributing factors to the accident. They accepted information supportive of their positions, but rejected others’ knowledge that contradicted it. That was a disaster. But every day, this same phenomenon is dooming business decisions, undermining profit, and sidetracking success.

Knowledge Isn’t Wisdom

We’re now at the ultimate bastion of the language of success: wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to apply one’s experience, education, knowledge, talent, and judgment to an issue in order to solve, improve, create, innovate, and so forth.

Wisdom can also be considered as a body of knowledge that develops within institutional and historical basis for conveying successful and positive values and lessons from one generation to the next. There is wisdom in families, schools, neighborhoods, organizations, and cultures.

In Figure 2.1, we can see the components of wisdom in a more formalized fashion and how they interrelate.

Figure 2.1 Wisdom pyramid

At the lowest level, we all have experiences that help form our lives and beliefs. Those vary from person to person, and are affected by geography, parents, affluence or poverty, environment, and so forth. Next is education, which may be formal or informal, and may range from relatively little to higher degrees. Then we have talent, which is often changing in many of us, as we grow passionate or grow bored, as we have the opportunity to learn and experiment or are stultified. Many of you reading this are refugees from large companies (or wish to become refugees) because you feel entrapped and constrained. Realizing one’s talents, and being recognized for them, is a key component of employee motivation, as we discussed earlier. These are not strictly correlated with size. Large companies, for example, Apple or FedEx, can create productive and rewarding corporate cultures, while some entrepreneurs find themselves miserable because they have become lone wolves without affiliation needs being met and without external regard for their work.

Following that there is knowledge, which we described earlier as the intelligent assembly of information, gained by experience and education and the exercise of one’s talents over time.

We next have judgment, which is an accrual of the prior factors. Judgment tends to improve as experiences and opportunities to try one’s talents improve. Educations tend to improve judgment as well. Whether taking the potentially game winning shot with a second on the clock or deciding whether to launch a new product in the coming year, judgment is aided by familiarity and a sense of comfort. Launching the invasion of Normandy on the last day that the tide permitted in June with risky weather was a command decision of Dwight Eisenhower’s based solely on his judgment.

Thus, the apex is wisdom, the capacity to apply these various factors with great power and focus to a single issue or a complexity of issues.

How does this work in practice? Let’s start at the beginning. The Magi were called wise men from the East. (It’s thought they might actually have been early astronomers tracking a bright star.) They decided, despite King Herod’s invitation, to avoid seeing him after seeing the baby Jesus and took another route because they wisely thought he wanted to do the infant harm. According to the Bible, that just might have created an important step for humankind.

Let’s move from the sublime to the entirely pragmatic: Uber. Uber’s founders took a common need (urban transportation) with a mediocre current solution (dirty, poorly maintained cabs that often stank) and employed technology (GPS and apps) to create what is currently an operation rapidly spreading globally and with a capitalized worth of over $40 billion—larger than 359 of the 469 publicly traded companies in the Fortune 500!

That was nothing as simple as creativity or a good idea. It was wise. The knowledge of the market and technology, talents of the founders, experiences of the public, and terrific judgment created this new behemoth.*

The reaction of the National Football League to physical assaults by its players has not been wise. It has left almost everyone without a feeling of closure or confidence. The owners and commissioner were hardly the Magi.

The shutdown for certain periods of Boston’s mass transit system (trains, trolleys, buses) was not wise, even though it may have been deemed safe. How can we say that? Because the management knew—had the knowledge—that the system was old (one of the oldest in the United States), that the winters can be severe, and that its shutdown would strand tens of thousands. Yet, the management went blithely on (the general manager resigned after one blizzard in 2015) as if this knowledge wasn’t enough for a call to action, just as the O-ring warnings weren’t enough to prevent a tragedy.

What language do you need to create and perpetuate wisdom? The following are our wise suggestions:

• What are my options in terms of what we know (instead of jumping to an arbitrary action)?
• Do I have all the information I need? If not, do I know what’s missing and how to get it (the key ingredient for knowledge)?
• What can I use from my own experiential base—and from those I trust around me—to assist in this decision?
• Are there models or precedents in my past?
• What is the maximum upside (benefit) and downside (risk)? How can I exploit the former and mitigate the latter?
• On balance, what is the best outcome to be achieved within reasonable risk limits and with minimal or zero unvalidated assumptions?

Let’s turn now to the bulwark of wisdom: truth.

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