Picking up where
we left off yesterday: Are David Maister’s, Bob Sutton’s, and Michael Lovaglia’s
views in conflict?
I believe they are different
perspectives of the same situation.
Sutton
seems to be describing how he feels decisions SHOULD be made based on
evidence. He also admits that they
aren’t actually made that way very often.
Lovaglia’s
Law is describing how decisions are actually made.
more people will resist using evidence to make it.”
Maister seems to be agreeing with
Lovaglia but extending his point. Why
aren’t business schools and other curricula teaching us how to be successful in
a corporate environment where decisions aren’t made based on evidence? Why
didn’t we also learn soft skills instead of learning only to scoff at their
value?
"So what!", you say?
This is a classic change
management dilemma. There is a “current
state”, a “desired state”, and a whole lot of people standing in between the
two! What do you do?
(I hope we all picked up some of those "soft skills" we didn’t learn in college – we’re going to need them!)
As for the “desired
state”, both evidence and intuition have a place in decision making. Sutton accurately points out that we don’t
base enough on fact. However, I believe we will never (nor should
we) base everything on fact
alone.
See Seth
Godin’s post today. Just to keep it
interesting, our customers don’t seem to base their decisions on facts either!