You don't have to be wrong in order for me to be right

We appear to live in a world of absolutes, of solutions that are expressed as simple and measurable. I am not sure what happened to make the world so black and white. For all our battles for various freedoms it certainly feels as if we as a society have actually become less tolerant of differing viewpoints.  There is a tendency for many in our society to range themselves on either side of a great divide and to hurl personal abuse at the perceived opposition because they have attached themselves to a particular viewpoint or way of thinking. While it is understandable in a mock debate to take sides and argue vociferously for our point of view in order to have victory, real life situations are seldom so simplistic.

Why do we have such a desire to label everything and to confine our judgements of people and organizations into a well-defined and very small box? Perhaps there is a measure of security in defining something so clearly as to eliminate all dispute. I have noticed a plethora of measuring tools on the consultancy market since I have moved to the United States and these tools seek to explain, to define, to measure down to the finest detail. Explanations make us feel safe and are designed to instill confidence in our decisions and our choices and even better still if there is a beautiful looking chart just to prove it. (Mind you I love a good looking chart.)

Now I am not decrying psychological tests or nifty measuring tools at all but merely suggesting that we are in danger of looking for the easy way out to come up with the 'right' answers, that we are not looking at a wide variety of qualitative as well as quantitative data. Part of the problem is the belief in the black and white assumptions that everything and every decision is either "right" or "wrong". What happened to the principle that there are a number of rights possible? I would respectfully suggest that in our desire to simplify our choices we may miss out on the richness of having a variety of possible routes to success.

I almost began to fall into this myself but have you noticed the number of postings on LinkedIn recently that begin with "5 steps to....." or "7 ways to.....". The message is clear, just follow these simple steps and all your problems will be solved. I confess that these kind of headings are attractive because they promise something quick and easy to remember and apply. I am drawn to their simplicity and I want to know how to get that simple solution. However, where have the consultancy/change management/coaching etc processes gone that involve great analysis work to understand the underlying issues. Whether as a consultant or as a manager within an enterprise there is a real skill in being able to look at a wide range of data to form the basis of our recommendations and decisions.

I heard a fascinating marketing story about a North American manufacturer wanting to market a soap powder to the Arabian market. A top marketing firm in the USA was engaged to come up with a marketing campaign for this soap powder and set about doing their homework: what color of packaging would attract the buyer, what kind of straight forward message would most succeed? The marketing firm came up with a very straightforward concept that appeared to have all the hallmarks of success. On the left of the page was a picture of a woman holding dirty clothing. She is seen to dip the clothing into the solution containing the new product (found in the center of the page) and then finally to the right, she is seen to take out a sparkling clean piece of clothing. Unfortunately, the marketing campaign failed and there was no increase in market share for this product. The marketers were sent in to make an analysis and they made changes, to the color and to the wording but all to no avail. Finally, these American marketing specialists were exasperated and decided to seek out the advice of marketers based in one of the Arabic countries. They took one look at the campaign and this was their assessment:


The colors were great, the wording was wonderful but there was a fundamental flaw in the presentation. Arabic is read from right to left! If you were a house wife in the middle east would you buy a cleaning product that turned your clean clothes into dirty ones? The marketers had made a basic oversight and had made decisions based on their own paradigms rather than trying to reflect the paradigms of those receiving the service.

These were two different viewpoints and yet both actually valid in their respective contexts. When we can understand that our viewpoints are not the only 'correct' ones then we will open ourselves to a richer, more lucrative field because we will be able to have a bow with multiple strings.