Relentlessly Objective Reality
Those who have worked with me, even for a short period of time, know that I am a big fan of Ayn Rand and objectivism in general, and I use the terms Relentlessly-Objective-Reality (ROR) and Relentless Objectivity to define my personal, as well as the Ideasphere approach of defining any problem we work on, and structuring the search for solutions to it. Even though it can be painful at times, and requires extra effort from all of us to engage in dialogue and hold Crucial Conversations rather than debates and witch-hunts, that practice is what makes the work we do at Ideasphere so effective in the long run. Relentless objectivity enables any executive, interim or permanent, to see what current reality is before the start of an operationally oriented transformation or corporate renewal project, and to develop realistic plans to deal with it. It also ensures that actions and strategies are meaningful and will produce the desired results.
Unfortunately relentless objectivity is neither easy, nor generally practiced (kinda-like common sense). Over the years I have been surprised by unintended consequences that were a result of a team missing a key reality, or deploying a “going through the motions” solution that sounded good but did not work. Teams that missed something that lurked in the background during the initial phase of a project, that should have been obvious, or an failing to conduct an objective assessment of the impact of a proposed solution that could have prevented an ineffective solution being deployed. Even though some teams eventually recover, their transformation takes longer, or costs more than it should. Even though the kinds of projects we work with are high risk/high reward projects, this situation is not unique to transformational projects. Some research indicates that more than half of strategic projects fail to deliver on their promises. Even more depressing is the acknowledgment by two thirds of senior executives participating in a McKinsey survey of executives from around the world, that their organizations rarely succeeded in achieving major change objectives. Since making promises to clients and keeping them is what pays the bills around our office, avoiding becoming a part of that statistic has been one of our major goals. So in the process of continually improving the way we work, I have kept a running list of projects where I’ve seen bad things happened, and kept looking for answers to the question “What caused that?”.
So, with apologies for the bad Star Trek analogies, I think there are four wormholes that transport a team from the Relentlessly Objective Reality (ROR) universe to one of the four Fake Abstract Reality (FAR) worlds. Because these universes are parallel (or at least that’s a common view), a transformation team can be operating in one, or more, of those environments at any given time. Frankly, I’ve seen at least one team operating in all four simultaneously. So, based on my experience, here are the Four FAR worlds and the wormholes that lead teams there:
1) The Content Free world through the Executive Arrogance wormhole
2) The Lake Wobegone world through the Cognitive Dissonance wormhole
3) The Borg world through the Groupthink wormhole, and
4) The Cardassian world through the Confirmation Bias worm-hole
Some times a book comes along that is a must read for anyone who hopes to be an operator. Being an operator, sometimes requires you to be the Designated Asshole, without actually becoming an asshole. A legitimate authority on the subject, a Stanford Professor by the name of Robert Sutton has written a
