List
Print This Post Print This Post

Many years ago, I got into Decision Analysis at the hands of my good friend Larry Philips of the London School of Economics. I learnt not just the techniques but also a whole conceptual and philosophical framework. One thing, above all, got stuck in my brain: the relentless need to seek, bring and assess options. Suddenly I learnt that the world before me was richer than it appeared, in the rather matter of fact business environment. It may not sound like a big deal, but options were under-stated in the scientific environment in which I was working at that time within the pharmaceutical industry. How come? You may ask.  Bear with me.

If I had to write a ‘Theory of Everything’, section on ‘Views of the World’, chapter on ‘Decision Making’, and I had very limited space, this is what I would say. There are two types of people: ‘Therefore People’ and ‘However People’. The ‘Therefore People’ think this way: ‘We’ve got data on A, the results on B, the views of C, what we have learnt before from D, and resources E, therefore we must do X’. The ‘However People’ think this way: ‘We’ve got data on A, the results on B, the views of C, what we have learnt before from D, and resources E, therefore it looks like we should do X’ – at this point, 3:45 pm, there is great hope in the room that the meeting will finish just in time to catch the 6 pm plane back home – ‘However, we could consider X and Y, because although all the variables are solid, we have not taken into account other criteria. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have options, we don’t have to just do X!’.

Needless to say ‘Therefore People’ and ‘However People’ tend to drive each other mad. [By the way, always beware of the 3:45 pm syndrome. This is that point in the agenda, the final part of the day, when somebody launches a grenade such as ‘I think the question we have been trying to answer since 9 in the morning is the wrong question’, or even one more bazooka style ‘But what is the strategy? We don’t seem to have one!’].

In my experience, for every ‘However’ person I find three or more ‘Therefore’ ones. Some scientific and technological environments are ‘Therefore Cultures’ (believe me, it sounds counterintuitive). Some corporate environments fuel the ‘Therefore’ further with the collective obsession with ‘closure’, to ‘get a resolution’, ‘make a decision’, ‘reduce uncertainty at all cost’. In a Therefore Benign Dictatorship, ‘However’ people are very irritating and a bit of second-class citizens.

I wish I could claim here that there is a ‘Therefore’ gene and a ‘However’ gene that would explain the differences between people. I am cynically sympathetic to the idea. But I know that there will be hundreds of social factors that would shape the way our brain heuristics work, and that would happen as early as from our primary education.

My favourite word for my work with organizations is ‘possibilities’. Possibilities need ‘However’ thinking: the need to look at options, to expect some contrarian views, to re-frame questions and anything else that prevents you from the trap of the single-track; one view, one path.

Perhaps we could just accept that, in many circumstances, there is only a clear ‘therefore’ in waiting. That would be sensible. However…

Keep up with the Daily Thoughts

Twitter Email

Comments

  1. Morag

    I am “coming out” as a “However” person 🙂 (However … nobody likes to be an “always x, y, or anything person).
    Robbins talks about coexisting contradictory human needs which sit aside one another althhough very different (like the need for certainty/security alongside the need for variety/surprise). I recognise the “However urge” in me…and also the need for colleagues who go for closure to curb my Howevers. Sometimes the need for closure is situational (the upcoming flight) sometimes it’s psychological (the need to decide, to move away from ambiguity) . Being able to “live with” ambiguity and ‘howevers’, to keep options open, maybe generate more, , is more needed than closure. It depends, however, on the situation 🙂 Going for closure on if you want cheese on your sandwich is one thing, deciding on company identity is another.

Would you like to comment?

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To search my website, please use the form below.

  Daily Thoughts

September 27th, 2023

Redefining Talent Wealth

The war on talent McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what it […]

September 8th, 2023

What I Learnt From The Monks: A Little Anthropology Of Leadership And Space On One Page

My friends, monks of a Benedictine monastery in the Highlands, Scotland, spend most of the time in silence. I mean, […]

August 23rd, 2023

Can We Rescue DEI From Its Trap (The Label)?

Most of the problems and challenges in organizations, together with most of the solutions, are behavioural in nature. It’s about […]

August 10th, 2023

Restructuring to force collaboration, is likely to create more anxiety than collaboration. Structural solutions for behavioural problems hardly work.

Sometimes restructuring is done with the intention of solving a collaboration problem. ´A people´ don’t talk to ´B people´; if […]

July 18th, 2023

The ‘Impossible To Disagree With’ School Of Management

‘Good leaders have empathy, respect employees and set the example. If you want to change things, you need to have […]

June 29th, 2023

Large scale change is not small scale change repeated many times. Small wins repeated are lots of small wins.

Large scale change, as a series of cascading small scale interventions (often under the philosophy of ‘small wins’) has dominated […]

June 6th, 2023

Culture change is not long and difficult. But we make it so…

I suppose the question is how long is long and how difficult is difficult? In general, business and organizational consulting have […]

May 19th, 2023

Value is an overused term in business and, as such, it’s becoming meaningless

Value, as usually used, means transactional monetary value. Usually it doesn’t mean intrinsic value, or value per se. For example, […]

May 4th, 2023

The importance of ‘critical thinking.’ Your own critical thinking is more effective at making your workplace better than any generic employee survey.

Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong. Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket […]

April 21st, 2023

´Busy-Ness’ Is A Trap

I went to a big conference where I was introduced by the chairman like this: “Welcome everybody. Lovely to have […]

April 14th, 2023

Training and culture change. The love affair that ends in tears.

It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that if we just put individuals […]

April 11th, 2023

Teamocracies and Networkracies have different citizens: in-Habitants in team-work, riders in net-work

The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]

April 5th, 2023

3 Ways To Get Approval From Your CEO Or Your Leadership Team

Way number 1: My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us […]

March 29th, 2023

A Cheat Sheet To Create A Social Movement Tip = to shape organizational culture since both are the same.

Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]

March 16th, 2023

Critical Thinking Self-Test: A 10 Point Health Check For Your Organization And Yourself. If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ in the water supply.

Test yourself, and your organization. Do any of these apply? Doing lots, too fast without thinking. High adrenaline, not sure […]

March 9th, 2023

A culture of safety or a culture of training in safety?

Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. Safety is at the core of many industries. Significant budgets are allocated […]

March 2nd, 2023

Empowerment is an output. If you can visualize it, you can craft it.

The real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’? Employee […]

February 24th, 2023

A simple question will jumpstart your organization into change. It will also save you from months of pain spent reorganizing your people and teams.

The following line will short-cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, and any situation in which Peter, […]

February 20th, 2023

Lead Via Peer-To-Peer Networks – If you don’t lead via peer-to-peer networks, you’re only driving your car in first gear.

Peer-to-peer work, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is the […]

February 7th, 2023

Write a script, not a strategic plan

If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, […]

January 26th, 2023

3 self-sabotaging mechanisms in organizations

Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]

January 10th, 2023

Who should be involved in culture change? All inclusive versus going where the energy is.

Many times, in my consulting work, I find myself facing a dilemma: Do I involve many people on the client’s […]

December 23rd, 2022

Tell what won’t change – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

In any change programme that any organization wants to start, they will start by thinking of the things that they […]

December 16th, 2022

Scale It – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

When creating effective change in any organization, there are 40 rules that, in my experience, are the key between success […]

December 5th, 2022

Assets & Strengths Base – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

For more than 30 years I have been involved in ‘change’ in organizations. Again and again, some fundamental principles, and often […]

November 25th, 2022

Campaign It… is 1 of my 40 rules of change

When you filter out the noise, when you try to extract the core, the fundamentals, those ‘universal rules’ of change […]

October 31st, 2022

Hybrid or not hybrid? That’s not the question…

Culture is the new workplace If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of […]

October 24th, 2022

‘Powered by Viral Change™’: A Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

When we started to work on Viral Change™, as a way to create large scale behavioural and cultural change, and […]

October 14th, 2022

Corporate tribes, intellectual ghettos and open window policies

We talk a lot about silos in organizations usually in the context of Business Units or divisions. But these are not […]

October 7th, 2022

Peer Networks are the strongest force of action inside the organization

Peer-to-peer works, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is […]