Everything Real is Not True
Harold Nelson
President of ADI
Decision makers want to be able to make good decisions. Decisions that will at the very least make the company money, the nonprofit effective, or the governmental agency politically popular. They want to make decisions that lead to better products, services, or organizational behavior. They also want to be seen as effective leaders worth the money, prestige and trust they desire or have invested in them. The problem is that good, let alone great, decisions seem harder and harder to come by.
Confidence in leaders or even the concept of leadership is very low at the moment. So low that much of the contemporary literature in business deals with how to get along without leaders. The remaining share of the literature deals with new recipes which, when followed, promise to bring certainty and success to decision making with or without leadership. The market overflows with workshops and training sessions that promise to provide the right sequence of experiences that lead to painless, accessible, and cost effective problem solving skills which can consistently provide solutions to complex problems embedded in confusing circumstances or better yet provide ready made answers.
The desire for consistency and certainty has been part of the human condition for as long as we know. The earliest cosmologies and associated rites and rituals were all meant to give structure to chaos and mystery but there always seemed to be less predictability than desired and more unpredictability than tolerable. Ancient decision makers would go through great effort and cost to ask the Oracle at Delphi for a simple answer to their straight forward question only to be given responses that by necessity required deeper thinking on the questioner's side. The early Christians found that their leader spoke only in parables leaving centuries of interpretation of what the true answers were. Despite the popularity of these and other traditional sources of wisdom, decision makers have continued to look for other means of inquiry that would provide information that was more accessible, straight to the point, accurate, consistent and stable over time.
In the Western tradition the right answer was soon identified as an outcome of rational thought using the protocol of scientific method. This approach worked so well for gaining a better understanding of the natural world and for the creation of sophisticated technology that it was only natural that managers, administrators and others in leadership roles in organizational systems would come to depend on the same design of inquiry for the determination of the right choice and the concomitant right action with the subsequent desirable outcomes outlined above.
The scientized approach, with some exceptions, however has not provided the kind of guarantee of outcomes imagined possible. This comes from what I believe is a confusion between what is true and what is real. Science deals only with what is true but managers and others must deal with what is real as well. I make the distinction between what is true and what is real in the following way. A painting by Cezanne is real, the atomic weight of copper is true. An experience is real, a scientific observation is true. An organization is real, a proven fact is true. An individual's perspective is real, a predictable event is true. The true comes from accurate descriptions and explanations through controlled observation (William James' "tough-minded"(empiricism)). The true can also come from careful abstract reasoning and logic (William James' "tender-minded"(rationalism)). The real on the other hand is a result of action taken through intention formed by judgment.
Right decisions and appropriate actions in human activities do not and cannot arise from what is true only. Not appreciating this leads decision makers into the dead ends commonly referred to as analysis paralysis. Decisions and actions must come from what is real in addition to what is true. This is a symmetry however, not a polarity. That is, it is a unity rather than a compromise between the two.
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REAL: INTENTION MULTIPLE JUDGMENT COMPOSITION INTERPRETATION SYSTEMS THINKING SYSTEMS |
TRUE: CHANCE NECESSITY CONTROLLED REASON DESCRIPTION FACT ANALYTIC THINKING TAXONOMIES |
SYMMETRY BETWEEN REAL AND TRUE
The pressure on educators of decision makers and educated decision makers to locate their work in the scientific tradition has led to the deformation of what is real to take on the appearance of what is true not even reaching the level of compromise. Formal educational curriculum, professional development programs and training methods supporting decision making and leadership roles have been well developed in the realm of what is true but not enough has been done in the development of similar areas of support in the realm of what is real. There is a clear difference between what business, civil and governmental organizations need from educational programs and what academic programs provide.
An example of this divergent relationship between education and business is represented by Foreman1 as a relationship between academic orientation and business needs which can also be seen as another type of split between what is true and what is real:
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School Orientation facts individual effort passing a test achieving a grade individual courses receiving information technology separate |
Business Requirements problem solving team skills learning how to learn continuous improvement interdisciplinary knowledge interacting & processing information technology integral |
In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review2 the professional intellect of an organization is said to operate on four levels of increasing importance: 1) cognitive knowledge, 2) advanced skills, 3)systems understanding, 4) self-motivated creativity. Only the first deals with what is true. The remainder are clearly in the realm of the real and true.
Decision making and leadership need to be grounded in the tradition of science and truth but not exclusive of the tradition of judgment and reality. Whole Systems Design is one of the newly emerging fields that is beginning to blend the distinction between what is true and what is real into a balanced relationship incorporating all four levels of the professional intellect.
1. Foreman, David C. 1995. "The Use of Multimedia Technology for Training in Business and Industry." Multimedia Monitor 13(7): 22-27
2. Quinn, James Brain, Philip Anderson, and Sydney Finkelstein. 1996 "Managing Professional Intellect" Harvard Business Review, March-April; 71-80
Harold G. Nelson, Ph.D. Director, Graduate Programs in Whole Systems Design Antioch University Seattle 2607 2nd Ave. Seattle, WA. 98121-1211