At Work Newswire

By Jefferson Flanders

The word “hypothesis” has been passed down to us from the Greek rhetorical tradition; it is a compound: “hypo,” which means “under,” and “thesis,” which can be translated as “a placing, proposition.” The word’s overall meaning, therefore, is “the basis of an argument.”

Developing a hypothesis, then, establishes the base—the foundation—for any argument or problem-solving. Starting with a tentative hypothesis remains a central element in both the scientific method, and in disciplined clear thinking.

Problem-solvers in management, government, law, medicine, or other disciplines often adapt elements of the scientific method: formulating the question, generating a hypothesis or hypotheses, considering the evidence, and settling on the most likely answer or conclusion. Whether corporate financial analysts trying to choose between capital investment projects, or accident investigators looking at the cause of an aircraft crash, or attorneys building a defense in a civil suit, the step-by-step thinking process they employ roughly resembles the practice of science, (albeit often without the experimentation and replication of results that are fundamental to the scientific method.)

This sequential, linear approach isn’t the only way to address problem-solving—there are more unbounded and perhaps more creative ways of thinking available—but it has the benefits of being time-tested and relatively transparent to others.

One or many suppositions?

One common question: is it more effective to start with a single likely hypothesis, and abandon it only if and when solid evidence disproves it, or to test multiple hypotheses before settling on the best possible explanation? While I favor the multiple working hypotheses approach, largely because it fosters a more open process, there are many successful problem-solvers who favor starting with the best initial supposition and looking for its validation.

Early in my career, I worked with an alumnus of one of the top New York management consulting firms who insisted on beginning any project with what he called “a go-in hypothesis.”

My colleague believed that his training and experience allowed him to quickly fashion a highly probable hypothesis, and that the task then became finding the supporting evidence and confirming his conclusions. This caused some tension between us—I wanted to research, fact find, and interview and then mull over the accumulated data before developing any tentative explanations.

He saw it differently, arguing that initial educated hunches usually proved to be correct and that his approach was faster and more decisive. If the “go-in hypothesis” proved wrong, it could always be altered or abandoned.

I had to concede that my preferred method took more time; I argued that beginning the process by listing all of the possible answers or outcomes helped minimize bias and surfaced unpopular or neglected ideas for consideration. We would be less likely to miss something, or overlook a solution. My colleague wasn’t convinced; he placed a greater value on decisiveness (understanding American business culture and its hunger for certainty better than I did) and so we did it his way (he also was senior to me). I did try to keep the process as open to second opinions and alternative explanations.

Since then, I have become more convinced of the benefits of starting with multiple working hypotheses—they naturally spark the questioning process that lies at the heart of critical thinking. A series of questions naturally follow. Have all possibilities been considered (including the bizarre and “unthinkable”)? What suppositions can be ruled out and why? How strong is the evidence supporting a given explanation? What additional information is missing? The simple act of enumerating the possibilities can lead to second thoughts—and second thoughts should be welcomed for the insights they can provide.

The dangers of locking in to a given hypothesis too early in the process has long been recognized. Geologist and university president Thomas Chamberlin noted this more than a century ago, observing:

If our vision is narrowed by preconceived theory as to what will happen, we are almost certain to misinterpret the facts and to misjudge the issue. If, on the other hand, we have in mind hypothetical forecasts of the various contingencies that may arise, we shall be the more likely to recognize the true facts when they do present themselves. Instead of being biased by the anticipation of a given phase, the mind is rendered open and alert by the anticipation of one of many phases, and is free not only, but is predisposed, to recognize correctly the one that does appear.

Moreover, there are practical reasons for considering a number of hypotheses. Whenever proposed solutions are controversial or may face opposition, a problem-solver should be better equipped to provide the reasons for why alternatives were not chosen if multiple hypotheses have been tested and found wanting. (In a way, this can be seen as the equivalent of a student “showing their work” when solving a math or physics problem.)

Considering multiple hypotheses will not insure arriving at the right answer. You may discover that new information supports a hypothesis you ruled out, or disproves one you have selected (in biologist Thomas Henry Huxley’s memorable phrase “…the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”) Yet starting with multiple hypotheses does encourage intellectual openness and broad fact finding; it furthers inquiry and focused questioning; and it recognizes the provisional nature of any of the conclusions we arrive at—all hallmarks of clear thinking.

Jefferson Flanders is an author, educator and independent journalist. He blogs on issues of the day at Neither Red nor Blue.

By D. Quinn Mills

Crises of all sorts arise, confronting leaders with major challenges. Sometimes the crisis is major; sometimes it is minor. Sometimes people think it is more important than the facts suggest; sometimes they think it is less important than merited. The responsibility of the leader is to put any crisis in proper perspective, and to lead people out of it, to resolve
the situation for them.

There are many elements to resolving a crisis, but among the most important is the communications surrounding it. Fortunately, we have more and better methods of communication at our disposal today than ever before, ranging from broadcast (mass media) to narrowcast (e-mail). But can a leader use them well?

The September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City represented a crisis of first order for the United States and, more specifically for the people of the city and their mayor. fire and death and a crisis for the major of New York. Rudy Giuliani responded well—so well that he is now a candidate for President of the United States. Communications with the people of the city of New York were central to his response to the crisis. What did he handle communicating during this crisis?

Communicating in a crisis: 9/11

First, Giuliani got in touch with the mass media (TV and radio) and made himself available to them at almost all times. His message was simple: the authorities of the city were in charge and were responding and that the people of the city should keep calm. It is important to remember that at this key juncture, neither the mayor nor the people of the city had any idea if the attacks on the World Trade Center were all that was to come—they were worried that there would be more, and perhaps even more devastating attacks.

Giuliani’s first responsibility was to prevent a panic in the city. He did not lie to the people of the city; he told them that he didn’t know if there would be more attacks: but he assured them that the city’s leadership was alert and would inform them of the situation as it developed and do all that could be done to protect them and their families and friends. “Stay calm!” was the first message, delivered with conviction by the mayor through the mass media.

Second, the mayor did more than talk to the people, he went to the scene of the tragedy and there directed the efforts of law enforcement officers to keep order and of fire fighters to control the conflagration. With him he took the mass media reporters so that they could show and tell the people of the city that the authorities were actually on the scene acting effectively. The message was sent not just by words, but through actions. The actions gave credence to the words—people heard the mayor call for calm and they saw him on the scene of the disaster, in control and calm himself.

Third, the mayor communicated compassion and concern for the victims of the attack and for their families, many of whom were in terrible ignorance about who had been spared and who had been lost. Compassion was as important to the mayor’s message as coolness and competence in the emergency.

Fourth, communication was continual. In the absence of authoritative and accurate information, rumors abound and people are driven to extravagant emotions and acts by exaggeration and other misinformation. The mayor and his staff were almost always there on the media when people looked. It was an admirable performance by Mayor Giuliani.

But it was not a perfect performance by New York’s embattled mayor. While communicating effectively with the people of the city, his first responsibility, Giuliani failed to communicate as effectively with elements of the uniformed services coping with the disaster—so that there remains today bitterness among some elements of the uniformed services about the mayor’s performance on that critical day.

The Johnson & Johnson example

The classic effective performance in a business crisis communication involved the Johnson & Johnson company almost two decades ago, when its pain reliever Tylenol was tampered with in a few locations. The mass media coverage sparked rumors of tampering on a huge scale, presenting the company with a very serious emergency. Johnson & Johnson’s leadership was urged by some to try to minimize the situation, because to remove the product from shelves all over the country would be very expensive, something no for-profit company wants to endure unless it must. But the leadership of the firm decided that the best way to confront the crisis was with a powerful communication package of words and actions. The actions would give credibility to the words.

The firm promised the American customer that Tylenol would be safe on the shelves of the nation’s stores, or it would not be there. To prove the words true, an announcement was made that the product would in fact be removed from shelves nationally ­ so that there could be no risk of any further poisoning. This was done; the tampering was isolated and ended, and the product was returned to store shelves repackaged for greater safety and very quickly resumed its position as the leading product for sales in the pain relief area. Again, the leaders involved did an outstanding job of communicating concern and a resolve to set matters right—communicating at the same time the underlying values of Johnson & Johnson.

In recent years allegations of corrupt management have seriously embarrassed some major American not-for-profit organizations, among them the United Way and the Red Cross. Such allegations threaten to undermine popular support for the organizations, imperiling their financial base (people won’t give to an organization they think is corrupt) and their ability to give assistance in time of disaster.

In these crises leaders had to communicate with the public as a whole and with the employees of the organizations. The message is much the same: the incidents are isolated to certain chapters of the organizations; they are being investigated and will be dealt with; immediate action is being taken to stop any misbehavior; contributors and employees alike can trust the national leadership of the organizations to prevent any further problems of the type.

The keys a leader for effective communication in a crisis? A leader should stay cool and reflect confidence; he or she must match words and deeds; and recognize that decisive steps should be taken and communicated. People watch closely in a crisis to see whether the leader is backing up the public message with concrete action and that whatever is said, is done. Whether a government, corporate, or non-profit leader the “rules” for communicating in a crisis remain the same: stay calm, remember that symbols matter, show your concern and empathy, and provide the most accurate information possible.

D. Quinn Mills, the Alfred J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (emeritus), consults with major corporations in the U.S. and globally. He has written extensively on leadership, strategy, and management issues.

By D. Quinn Mills

We usually think of a career path as a series of jobs of increasing responsibility in a single organization—but that is too narrow a view. Many people assume different roles during their working lives, sometimes they may even pursue multiple careers. Doing very different things can both enrich a person’s life and can sometimes contribute to moving up the ladder in the most important of his or her career paths.

For example, in New York there is a woman who is an investment banker and a gospel singer, and whose singing performances, for charity, have greatly enhanced her reputation and effectiveness as a banker, even though she sometimes faces difficult competition for time between the two.

Why do people pursue different roles? There are many reasons, most of them good.

Some people are good at more than one thing and want to do them both, so they do, even though they can be as different as banking and gospel singing.

Some people want to do one thing, but can’t make a living at it; so they work at another and do the first on the side. This is the case for many artists, musicians, and actors—each of whom would like to make a living at his or her art, but often must work in less interesting jobs to survive.

Sometimes people’s lives take them in different directions—a business person becomes a public official or even a politician; a medical doctor becomes an author of thrillers; a teacher becomes an inventor.

Each of these situations of different roles—sometimes simultaneously, sometimes one after another—are likely to lead a person to a fulfilling career.

However, there can be a less positive reason for pursuing different roles—that a person can’t make up her or his mind what she or he wants to do, and so wastes time and effort without being able to focus on a course of action. This sort of indecisiveness is a career killer. It’s acceptable to experiment with different careers to see what we’d best like to do, or to find what is most advantageous to us, but it’s a terrible error to be unable at some early point to make up our mind to focus on a key direction.

A strategic shift in roles

Sometimes a person shifts roles for strategic reasons—because she finds the ordinary path to promotion blocked. Then she might do what Gayle did. Gayle was hired by a large firm when she graduated from college to work in the information technology area. She was an individual contributor, but was given some assignments to manage project teams and discovered that she liked to manage. However, the department in which she was working was not growing, and consequently her path up the promotion ladder was blocked.

So Gayle looked for a low level management job, and found one in another department. Then over the next few years she was promoted twice, only to come to a stop because the path up was again blocked by other people. So after two years in the same job, and with no prospect of near-term promotion, she looked for a position at the same level in another department, and found one. While this was a lateral transfer, in her new department there were promotion opportunities and soon she was again climbing the corporate ladder.

Gayle formulated a personal rule: she wouldn’t remain in a single job for more than two years. If there was no promotion likely, she’d move laterally. In one instance, she actually took a down-grade in moving to another department. But it was growing rapidly and in six months she was promoted to what had been her previous level, and then soon after another promotion put her above where she’d been before her lateral move. With each shift of departments she was also getting valuable experience in different aspects of the business. With another lateral move, she found herself on the path to the top of the firm.

What was most instructive about Gayle’s career was that although she was continually switching roles, she was in fact pursuing a deliberate course of action that was leading to a high position. What might have been in another person an aimless wandering among roles was in her case the imaginative avoidance of career blocks by shifting her activities several times.

D. Quinn Mills, the Alfred J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (emeritus), consults with major corporations in the U.S. and globally. He has written extensively on leadership, strategy, and management issues.

By D. Quinn Mills

Managers looking for a novel solution to a problem must become creative decision makers.

The right side of the brain is always processing information even when we are not conscious of it, and so we can learn from it if we can bring that thinking into our conscious minds. If we make right-side thinking conscious, we can surface valuable associative and integrative ideas. Since the right-side of the brain is associated with pattern-recognition and creativity, it is thought that by focusing less on formal analysis (the left-brain’s strength) and more on right-brain activities, managers can reach more creative solutions.

There are numerous means of trying to reach the right-brain. For example, many managers use exercise to get in touch with their right-brain thinking, relinquishing their left-brain analytic focus. Similarly, a manager will say that he got a great idea while shaving; or having her hair done. The point is to escape the limitations of analytic approaches to decision-making, to let some imagination creep in.

There are other means of creative problem-solving than reaching to the right-brain for inspiration, effective though it may be. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the most effective means of creative problem-solving is an almost completely analytic process, but one which is rarely commented upon or used.

Its primary exponent in recent decades was a physicist who was perhaps the most creative thinker of the twentieth century: Richard Feynman, a MIT-trained physicist who taught for many years at Cal Tech. A key contributor to the development of quantum mechanics, which he referred to as “the jewel in the crown of physics,” he was also a world-renowned resource for physicists and mathematicians trying to resolve difficult problems in their fields.

What was the source of his astonishing skills of creative problem-solving? Those who knew him described him as having an “unstuck mind.” What they meant was that he was able to escape the mental trap into which so many of us fall of trying to approach a problem in a pre-disposed way.

Feynman had a method for resolving difficult problems. From years of experience with various sorts of problems he had a memory of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of techniques for resolving difficulties. When confronted with a new problem, he’d start to sift through the many techniques with which he was familiar until he’d finally find one that either applied directly or could be modified to successfully fit the problem at hand. In this way his mind was completely unstuck.

But note that his method was not at all a matter of inspiration—it was a thoroughly analytic shifting of alternatives and measure of their potential success in application. It was a left-brained approach that led to very creative solutions. (For more on Feynman, see James Gleick’s 1992 book, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman).

Employing the Feynman method

Each of us could employ Feynman’s method. It’s a matter of memory, and of mental discipline. Faced with a problem that refuses to yield to the expected approach, we should pull our minds back and ask: what if I were to approach it as I did another problem that on its surface seemed very different?

For example, faced with a problem with a supplier, and looking for the correct decision, and unable to find it in the way we usually deal with suppliers, we might ask ourselves, “What if we thought of the supplier as a customer? How might I handle the problem then?” Or, we might ask, “What if we thought of the supplier as an employee? How might we handle the problem then?” And from this process might emerge a novel solution to the problem.

The key to dealing with a difficult problem, Feynman demonstrated to us, is not impatience, but flexibility in the approaches we try. Put differently, Feynman was a genius at generating alternatives for problem-solving; while, as we’ve noted before, many managers are unwilling or unable to generate more than a single possible solution.

This is an excerpt from D. Quinn Mills’s book “Principles of Management” (MindEdge Press, 2006). Mills, the Alfred J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (emeritus), consults with major corporations in the U.S. and globally. He has written extensively on leadership, strategy, and management issues.

By D. Quinn Mills

Becoming a general manager often means changes in the way a departmental or staff manager thinks, reacts, and manages.

A general manager is a line manager—that is, he is responsible for directing the basic business of a firm. But there are many other managers in a business, most of whom are involved in a particular function—like accounting, or finance, or marketing, or human resources. Many people start their management careers in a function —a staff activity—and then move on to general management.

Managers are always responsible for the work of other people—this is true in general management and in functional management. So a person who is a successful manager has already made the substantial transition from being an individual contributor (a worker, whether blue collar, clerical or professional) to being a manager. But there is an additional change of mindset to be made when moving from being a functional manager to a general manager.

A general manager is responsible for how functions in a business or government organization come together to make the whole effort work successfully. General management requires two things:

• A focus on the overall result; and
• An understanding of how the different functions fit together to achieve the overall result.

It is this broad—and general—orientation that distinguishes general managers—they are expected to focus on the organization writ large.

Making the transition

The first thing that a person who leaves a function to become a general manager must do is focus on the overall result and give up any effort to manage a former function. We are all attached to where we came from—it’s our home in a sense. We have friends in the function; we know how to manage it well. But for these very reasons, we have to be careful not to retain our focus on the function but instead we must master the other functions and allow them their full contribution to the overall success of the business.

We must let go of the function we’ve left. We have to give it up to a successor who is now the manager of the function, and we have to turn our attention to all the other functions we are now managing. People often fail as general managers because they can’t let go of their previous function. “He runs the business like the only thing that matters is marketing,” a frustrated employee might say of a general manager who can’t let go of his former role in marketing.

A general manager too attached to his former function continually leaves his new duties undone to continue to run his former function. This is a great error.

To avoid this error, a new general manager should devote most of his time and attention to learning what the other functions contribute to the overall result. She should meet with the functional managers who report to her and learn what they do. A new general manager will have an overall concept of how all elements relate, but she’ll be more limited in her understanding than she realizes by her previous focus on one function primarily. She must keep an open mind about how the whole thing operates.

Management is partly about people, as well as systems, schedules and results. A new general manager must show impartiality among people from his former function, who were likely his close associates and friends, and people from other functions who now report to him. He or she must not show favoritism to his former associates in the function from which he came. He must even, sometimes, give higher performance ratings to people in other functions when they have earned them.

It is a general manager’s role to see that work gets organized, that individuals take responsibility for particular tasks, that tasks are coordinated so that they add up to accomplishing an overall objective, and that the work is done on schedule and to the necessary standards of quality. It’s the basic objective of a general manager to create out of the various functions of an organization a top performing unit.

D. Quinn Mills, the Alfred J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (emeritus), consults with major corporations in the U.S. and globally. He has written extensively on leadership, strategy, and management issues.

By D. Quinn Mills

One of the hardest choices a leader faces is when to compromise and when to stand firm. Making a mistake in this choice can destroy a leader’s effectiveness. But there is no simple method of making a correct choice. It’s a matter of judgment—and good leadership turns on how sound our judgment proves to be.

Mistakes in this realm are common. For example, throughout World War II, Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, refused to let his soldiers abandon positions even when they were threatened with destruction by attacking forces. He believed that only by standing firm against any retreat could he force his soldiers to fight. But the reality was that if his officers had been allowed to withdraw at critical times, and then counterattack, they could have avoided disastrous defeats. Hitler made a basic error of leadership—refusing to compromise with his own officers.

Some critics charge that our President, George W. Bush, is making an error in standing firm on his policy in Iraq, when they think he would do better to compromise with Congress and find a way out of the conflict, even if it means withdrawal and the perception of defeat. If they are right, and Bush has made an error in standing firm, then it will permanently affect history’s evaluation of his leadership. Supporters of the president’s policy point to Winston Churchill’s resolve during World War II, and Harry S Truman’s tough stance against Soviet aggression as examples where not compromising proved to be the correct response.

Mistakes about compromise or standing firm occur in business as well. When the personal computer was first becoming a major product, IBM’s sales of mainframe computers began to fall. The company’s vice president for sales explained to the company’s CEO that customers were turning to networks of mini- and personal-computers in preference to the more expensive and less flexible mainframes. The CEO refused to compromise with his sales vice president; held firm to his targets for the sale of mainframes; and fired the sales VP. The CEO’s adamant insistence on standing firm in his sales objectives lead to a huge financial loss for IBM and to the loss of the CEO’s job.

Leaders sometimes compromise when they should have stood firm. Political leaders often give in to people who urge them to one course of action, then give in to people who urge them to an opposite course of action, so that the political leader seems to be all compromise and no direction. Charges of this nature are being leveled in the current presidential campaign against several Republican candidates.

In business, Ford Motor Car Company’s CEO was urged to diversify the company’s product and brand line by acquiring brand name auto companies in Europe. The CEO had his doubts, but he compromised with the advocates of the diversification, and bought several companies—including Jaguar and Volvo. Ford spent a great deal of money trying to build the brands and failed. Today, the European brands are on the market, and Ford is trying to focus again on its core brand names.

A rule for compromise

Is there a general rule for a leader about when to compromise and when to stand firm? Possibly. A leader should stand firm when it is a matter of principle or of core beliefs. A leader should never compromise when there are questions of integrity or legitimacy involved. It is vital that a leader differentiates between those decisions which are significant and touch upon these factors, and those that do not.

Compromise for a leader is possible in the following situations:

1. When the issue isn’t crucial;
2. When there is something to be gained from letting others have a major influence on the decision;
3. When repairing an error of judgment or recognizing that conditions have changed.

There is a special temptation which leaders often confront which can be very dangerous—the temptation to stand firm even where it is not necessary (nothing crucial is at stake, and something is to be gained from compromise), in order to pose as firm and decisive.

When leaders do this—posturing as being firm, as “a strong leader”—it can end in disaster. Remaining firm when there is no good reason often leads a country or a firm into a mistaken situation that rapidly worsens. Usually, people trying to be leaders who make this error do so to avoid admitting an error in the original decision. They know they made a mistake, but don’t want to admit it, and so they persist in the error, not compromising, hoping that they will appear firm and decisive. But the original error compounds itself; things get worse; and soon the leader appears not firm but stubborn; not decisive but divorced from reality. Often the leader is forced to a compromise at the end, but then looks not accommodating and wise, but defeated and weak. It is the worst possible result for the leader.

There are times when it may be necessary to compromise even when the issue is crucial (albeit not involving principle or core values), but there is no alternative—that is, when nothing can be done without a compromise and something needs to be done. Leadership then means acknowledging the reality, and making the best of it for all those impacted by the change.

D. Quinn Mills, the Alfred J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (emeritus), consults with major corporations in the U.S. and globally. He has written extensively on leadership, strategy, and management issues.

By Jefferson Flanders

One of the quirky appeals of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the way author Lewis Carroll constructs a world where the fundamental rules of logic—of sequential thinking and cause and effect—are slyly inverted or distorted.

Carroll’s imaginative tale offers its readers all sorts of illogic. Consider Alice’s conversation, early in her adventures, with the Cheshire Cat:

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

What better example of circular reasoning could there be? The Cat posits that only the mad inhabit Wonderland—since Alice is in Wonderland, consequently she must be mad.

When Alice questions whether the Cheshire Cat is mad, the Cat gets her to “grant” that a dog is not mad, and then argues:”…a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.” Alice spots the semantic flaw in the Cat’s thinking, though, noting sharply: “I call it purring, not growling.”

Alice could also have challenged the underlying, and unspoken assumption, made by the Cheshire Cat: because dogs are sane, anyone who deviates from what the Cat defines as proper canine behavior (growling when pleased, for example, instead of when angry) must consequently be insane (mad). The flaw, of course, is that the Cat—and Alice—are not dogs.

Sometimes the illogic in an argument stems from the premises, sometimes from the assumptions. With the Cheshire Cat, both assumptions (what constitutes a definition of sanity) and premises (that purring and growling are one and the same) are faulty, leading to an amusing, if flawed, conclusion.

Authors and comics know there’s humor in arriving at an absurd conclusion through a seemingly logical train of thought. Take, for example, Woody Allen’s Sleeper, where the movie’s protagonist, Miles Monroe, has been transported 200 years into the future. Monroe is shocked to learn that scientists now consider deep fat, steak, cream pies, and hot fudge to be healthy and have life-preserving properties, unlike “wheat germ, organic honey and tiger’s milk.”

Allen counts on his audience accepting this assumption: we want to eat foods that will help prolong our lives. But he plays with the premises of the argument, with our notions of what is healthy (conventional wisdom holding that “wheat germ, organic honey and tiger’s milk” are wholesome, and foods with fat and cholesterol are not). What’s funny is Monroe’s discovery of this sudden contradiction—the substitution of what’s “good” for what’s “bad”—and what it says about our relative confidence in current medical knowledge.

Comic illogic can teach us something valuable about the thinking process; we can sharpen our critical thinking skills when figuring out the flaws in an absurd or fanciful argument (they’re usually what makes us laugh). Finding the shaky premises or flighty assumptions in the comic can be surprisingly good practice for de-constructing the more serious non-Wonderland arguments we encounter.

Jefferson Flanders is an author, educator and independent journalist. He blogs on issues of the day at Neither Red nor Blue.

By D. Quinn Mills

Coaching and mentoring both play an important role in developing managers. A manager needs both. Mentoring helps for complete career development. A mentor helps us understand the business and our role in it, and how we can advance our careers. A mentor is usually a senior person in the firm or in our profession who knows the ropes of our organization and industry or field.

Coaching is more focused on job performance. A coach is a person who may not know our business or company at all, but who can help us improve the way we handle ourselves and interact with others. A coach can help us change what we’ve been doing, where changes are needed. Many of us advance into managerial ranks on the basis of our performance as individual contributors or by earning a degree that makes us eligible for a management position. But we have never learned how to relate well to others. Some of us even get into high positions without having learned that top leadership requires a different interpersonal style than we used to have.

Coaching is about is getting rid of bad habits and obtaining good ones in how we deal with others. It’s just like a sport – we may be good at it but as we play over weeks and months and years, we develop bad habits that begin to limit our success. A coach can see those habits, even when we are unaware of them. He or she can point them out and advise us how to change or eliminate them.

What kind of bad habits does a coach help a manager shed? Here are few:

• The habit of having to be the smartest person in the room – always needing to have the last word to show that you really know more about the matter than anyone else. This behavior is a common demonstration of insecurity; we may think, “Unless I’m the most knowledgeable person, I’ll not keep my job.” But management is about getting things done through other people, not by ourselves. Always satisfying our egos that we’re the greatest interferes with successful management; other people don’t like it and find it de-motivating.

• The habit of playing favorites. As managers, we like some people better than others. We appreciate people who perform best. We are often taken in by people who ingratiate themselves with us intentionally. The result is that we end up playing favorites; we prefer some people and it shows. Sometimes the people we prefer have earned it by real effort; often not. Other people see whom we favor and it angers them. They think that our favorites are getting special treatment, and it demotivates them. A coach can often see when favortism is occuring, and can encourage and help us to treat everyone equally.

• The habit of taking credit ourselves for what others have done. “After all,” we managers think, “I am the manager and a success in my department is my success.” Yet, since managers get things done through others, there are likely to be people who work for us who actually did the work and achieved the success. It’s very important that we give them credit and recognition. We will not lose by this–because their success is also ours–for we are the manager who led the effort.

An effective coach will do more than guide us away from bad habits; they will also encourage us to adopt positive management practices.

A coach will encourage us to listen, something many managers do not do. Too often we are thinking about what we are going to say next, rather than focusing on what is being said to us. Consequently conversations can become full of misunderstandings and unheard messages. A good manager listens carefully; he or she hears what people say and responds directly. A coach can help us do this.

Controlling our emotions is vital in management. There is nothing that is said in a moment of anger that cannot be as well or better said when emotions have subsided. A good manager doesn’t explode when things are done wrong; he bites his tongue and returns to the matter when he is calm and can act and speak carefully. Again, a coach can help us by role-playing and rehearsing what we should do when confronted with an emotionally-tense scenario.

Many managers don’t bother to praise enough. The habit of thanking people for their accomplishments, small as well as large, is coachable. A paycheck is not sufficient recognition for the efforts people make, especially when an effort is imaginative and made with good will. Encouraging people is very important to effective interpersonal relations.

While these may seem to be common sense fundamentals for a manager, all too often they are neglected. Just as an athlete or musician needs to practice the fundamentals, so do managers—and coaches can help greatly in making sure that we focus on those areas where we need further development.

D. Quinn Mills is the Alfred J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He consults with major corporations and teaches at Harvard on subjects of leadership, strategy, and financial investments.

By Jefferson Flanders

Wikipedia, the “user-generated” online encyclopedia, has gradually become the research tool of first resort on the Web. Nielsen//NetRatings now reports that Wikipedia was the top online news and information destination in May with 46.8 million unique visitors.

That domination should grow, based on usage trends and the search-friendliness of Wikipedia’s massive and constantly growing database, with its more than seven million articles in some 250 languages.

Jonathan Dee recently noted in the Sunday New York Times Magazine (“All the News That’s Fit to Print Out”) that Wikipedia has moved beyond its original mission of free reference and has morphed into a leading spot news provider. Millions turned to the site for updates after the Virginia Tech murders and the arrests of several young Muslim men in an alleged plot to attack Fort Dix.

Issues of accuracy

Yet Wikipedia has its detractors; if you use the site, you understand some of their concerns about the site’s reliability and accuracy. These critics question the “wisdom of crowds” (the site’s volunteer collaborative editing process with its emphasis on consensus over credentials) and point to Wikipedia’s inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Many college professors, wary of the quality of the online encyclopedia’s entries, prohibit students from citing Wikipedia as a reference. Author Nicholas Carr has decried what he calls the “cult of the amateur,” arguing: “What the Wikipedia community should do is put a warning notice on the top of every page: ‘WARNING: This page may include factual errors.’”

There is no question that Wikipedia must be employed with great caution. (I would look for an independent corroboration of any information you find on it). Despite its flaws, however, it can be used as a helpful starting point in research, a usefulness Carr concedes (just as an initial Google search is valuable for its quick scan of what the Web offers on a given topic). Wikipedia often provides a bibliography and a number of source citations from credible authors or institutions that can be used to dig further.

Moreover, researchers and scholars can testify that the problem of omissions, errors, and distortion is not confined to the Internet; as the Modern Language Association notes, sources are not “equally reliable or of equal quality,” whether in print or on the Web. Flawed sources, and flawed information, existed long before the creation of the Web; peer review and other checks-and-balances were developed to root out error in academic sources. The open access model of the Internet, where traditional information gatekeepers (librarians, academics, editors) hold less sway, leaves individual users to figure out what information is credible, accurate, reliable, and relevant. In the past, researchers confronted the challenges of access and scarcity; today they must struggle with an embarrassment of riches, a glut of information, accessible at the click of a mouse.

Evaluating information

Whatever the purposes of your research—whether for a marketing report, college paper, newspaper article, or for personal education—the key is to evaluate the quality and validity of the information you find. It’s vital when you are developing premises, establishing assumptions and reaching conclusions that your factual foundation is solid. (The dangers of GIGO—garbage-in-garbage-out—apply not only to computer programming, but also to critical thinking).

The careful researcher reviews the raw source material (ranging from published reports or documents to personal interviews to scholarly articles to Web blogs and postings) and looks to establish basic facts, to balance conflicting accounts, and to independently evaluate each source (all the while alert to potential error, distortion, and incompleteness.)

This evaluation should take into account five key factors in establishing the accuracy and validity of information, whether it is found by surfing the Web or in the dusty stacks of a university library. The five are:

• Authority. Who stands behind the information? Is it from a primary or secondary source? What expertise do authors or editors have, if any? What are their credentials, academic or professional? Is the information subject to peer review or an established editing process? If documents are involved, where did they come from? Who vouches for their authenticity?

  Clearly these questions reflect a bias towards establishment sources (academics, scholars, scientists, journalists), where there are professional standards and practices, and where authors or editors are generally selected for their expertise. This kind of authority does not automatically mean trustworthiness (witness recent embarrassing scandals involving plagiarism and falsification in journalism and academia), but there are more checks-and-balances and accountability when established institutions are involved.

• Point-of-View. What are the biases or prejudices of the creator(s) of any given information? Are they neutral or partisan? Are they looking to advance a cause or ideology? Do they try to pass off opinions as facts? What other motives may be at work that could introduce bias (personal aggrandizement, professional jealousy, institutional pride, etc.)?

• Transparency. How easy is it to trace the origins of the information? Are there citations or references? Can other researchers access the information (especially important with primary source documents)?

• Scope and Depth. How broad and deep is the information? What questions can this information help answer? How much detail is offered? What is missing?

• Accuracy. Has the veracity or accuracy of the information been challenged? Does it match other sources of information on the same topic, or on the facts? How current is the information? Is it the most up-to-date?

Asking and answering these basic questions will naturally reduce the amount of information you need to consider. Some sources will prove unreliable or biased; some will not offer enough detail; experienced researchers recognize that they will have to weed out and discard information as part of the process. At the end of this review, ideally you have refined your collected information into the most accurate and reliable research findings.

As more and more information migrates to the Web, the need for careful evaluation and examination (what the British call “vetting”) will grow. While Google’s plans to digitize the contents of the world’s libraries have been scaled back, largely because of legal concerns from publishers, information is nonetheless being transferred to the Web at a staggering clip. It is not hard to imagine a future where one mark of an educated person will be their ability to navigate this amazing digital repository of information, sorting and evaluating and extracting the information they need, confident of its relative reliability and accuracy.

Jefferson Flanders is an author, educator and independent journalist. He blogs on issues of the day at Neither Red nor Blue.

By Adrian Brown

Innovation in the public sector is particularly tough to pull off and those managers that are able to achieve it must be a particularly special breed. Consider Bill Strickland, a social entrepreneur who founded the Manchester Bidwell Corporation (MBC) in Pittsburgh.

MBC is an organization providing educational programs for struggling middle and high school students and unemployed adults. Strickland himself had struggled from a poor background and felt he had been “saved” by a local ceramic artist who took interest in him a taught him to be a potter.

MBC had grown from operating out of a row house basement in 1968 to a multi-million dollar social organization. Few doubt that the main driving force behind this extraordinary success has been Strickland’s intense passion and determination. He has toured the country for the past two decades giving “The Speech,” a passionate exposition of MBC’s work and call for donations. Strickland’s work was recognized in 1996 with a MacArthur Foundation no-strings “genius” award of $295,000.

The MBC story is not unfamiliar. Often we find that those public sector managers who are able to continually innovate are a rather special breed. Professor Robert D. Behn has called them “nuts.” Behn writes (in “Replication (continued): It takes a Nut!”, Management Insights, April 19, 2006): “These innovators want to accomplish something, and they realize that to make that something happen they have to think and behave differently.”

The most successful innovative public sector managers tend to adopt two tactics in particular:

• Persuasion. Showing the benefits of an innovation, establishing demonstration projects and social marketing.
• Accommodation. Consulting with affected parties, co-opting affected parties by involving them in the governance of the innovation, compensating losers and making the program culturally sensitive.

It is notable that strong-arm tactics rarely appear to be successful in the public sector, with an almost universal emphasis on consensus-building approaches. Successful innovators are also adept at marshaling a wide range of supporters from within their own agency as well as from other agencies, politicians and the wider community.

If innovation is driven by “nuts” then what happens when they move on or when you want to replicate their success in other areas? MBC has struggled to replicate its particular model in other cities. Only Strickland himself has been successful at selling the idea and establishing the sort of relationships that led to million dollar donations and his schedule was already punishing, delivering “The Speech” dozens of times a month and attending board meetings at affiliate organizations.

This is an excerpt from Adrian Brown’s book “Creativity & Innovation” (MindEdge Press, 2007). Brown has worked as a consultant and advisor in both the public and private sectors. From 2002-2005 he served as an advisor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair covering a wide range of policy areas including health and transport.

Copyright © 2007 Adrian Brown