Mean WORDS Over Crooked DEEDS

Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times Sunday Review that "Donald Trump is Making America Meaner."

And yes, anything that a Presidential candidate does that is bigoted or racist is wrong and should be utterly condemned. 

But what is concerning about Kristof and the liberal media's coverage of the election has been it's wholly one-sided nature and what that means in terms of election rigging. 

In fact, CNN recently admitted on the air that "We [CNN] could not help her [Hillary] any more than we have...we're the biggest ones promoting her campaign"

Similarly, in this case, Kristof hammers Trump's "harsh rhetoric" for things like wanting to build a border wall for Homeland Security, having a big loose mouth (too often), and not distancing himself from toxic advisers or followers. 

But interestingly enough, Kristof is silent about Clinton's numerous acts of (alleged) debauchery, corruption, and scandal and what that means in terms of that candidate's meanness! 

Some examples:

- Getting child rapists off the hook and laughing about it is not mean. 

- Protecting husband Bill in the face of 17 allegations of rape and affairs is not mean. 

- Endangering national security with secret email servers and the habitual lies to cover it up with a rating of "Four Pinocchios" is not mean.

- (Soft) Intimidation of the Attorney General and telling the Director of the FBI that he is full of "bull" is not mean. 

- DNC Collusion to rig the election against Bernie Sanders is not mean. 

- Money laundering, "pay to play" and cronyism through the Clinton Foundation is not mean. 

- Enabling racial divisiveness in America and the killing of civilians and police officers is not mean. 

- Not protecting those Americans murdered in Benghazi and making up a phony story about it being because of a video that is not mean. 

- 47 people associated with the Clintons involved in murder-suicides that is not mean. 

- Allowing Chemical Weapons use against civilians in Syria and not enforcing the "red line" is not mean.

- Making dangerous nuke deals with Axis of Evil, Iran, the #1 state sponsor of terrorism and human rights abuses is not mean. 

- Sowing terrorism, war, refugees, and crises around the globe that is not mean. 

I suppose what is most amazing is that while Trump has sharp words with and for people, Hillary stands accused of actually doing many absolutely horrible ("mean") deeds affecting all of America and much of the world. 

Interestingly, someone posted on Facebook yesterday the following:

"I'm voting for the candidate who got people killed, covered sexual assaults, and threatened national security, because the other one said mean things."

Yes the liberal media are themselves so biased and mean by not holding wrongdoers like the Clintons accountable and not treating the candidates equally and the election in a fair and balanced manner...we should all be very concerned by this mind-numbing brainwashing and absolute treachery by those that are supposed to be looking out for us. 

Maybe Kristof and others in the liberal media need to look at themselves in the mirror at what meanness and corruption they are creating and how dangerous that is to America. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Mean WORDS Over Crooked DEEDS

Fooling The Media And The American People

So finally the truth got spilled about the true rationale for the Iran deal that lifted critical nuke weapon sanctions on the world's leading sponsor of terrorism and human rights abuses.  

The advisor to the President has admitted to essentially lying and manipulating the media to seal the deal. 

The narrative of a Nuke deal with a "moderate" Iranian President Rouhani at the expense of hardliners was "deliberately misleading."

"Mr. Rhodes brags about keeping Mr. Obama's long-standing plan to elevate Iran over allies such as Israel and the Gulf States hidden from the public by manipulating liberal journalists and think tank analysts."

So what was once touted as a "good day" for America is now quite malevolent and disheartening, indeed. 

Moreover, rather than a "new political reality" with Iran, we have ongoing and increasingly hostile Iranian actions against the U.S., leading to the House Intelligence Committee opening an investigation into how Congress and the American public were misled by the administration on Iran. 

What happened to the promised transparency and truth espoused for the American people? What of Abraham Lincoln's sacred and compelling vision of a "government of the people, by the people, for the people."

Now instead of earnest dialogue, we get a blowharded "retail[ing]" of a predefined manipulated narrative--a "far-reaching spin campaign"--for the simple media "echo chamber" and hungry public consumption.

Iran has won a big round at the expense of Democracy and as we now know our National Security. 

Maybe the worst part is that no one even seems to care, because we're now in a new election cycle for the next President (and possibly chief manipulator). ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Fooling The Media And The American People

The Best Mother's Day Present Ever

So today is Mother's Day--one of the most important days of the year. 

My mom passed away from Parkinson's Disease almost 2 1/2 years ago, and I miss her and my dad every single day (more than I can say or even come to terms with)!

I see lots of gifts being bought and given today to the mothers of this world, especially flowers, chocolates, and cards.  

But what would be the best gift we could give all our collective mothers?

That is simple...EQUALITY.

Whether it's the glass ceiling that keeps women underemployed, left out of certain professions altogether, underrepresented in management and the executive suite, and paid 79 cents on the dollar for what men get...it's not fair and it's wrong!

Women can do what men do as good and sometimes better, and generally they complement men in the workplace and make us more productive, more innovative, more balanced. 

Diversity in thinking brings us better decision-making and more success in business and in government, 

Like in the photo, women can be architects or enterprise architects--they can also be vice president or president. 

Women should NOT have to endure any type of domestic violence or sexual abuse or discrimination...for G-d's sake, we are enlightened!

Forget the flowers this Mother's Day and give your mom a present that she will really love and cherish...a promise and commitment of respect and equality for women today and every day of the year. ;-)

(Source Photo: WSJ by Andy Blumenthal)

The Best Mother's Day Present Ever

Who Sells The Cookies

So we see the traditional setup with cookies being sold on the street corner by the Girl Scouts. 

My daughter says to me, "Why is it that only the Girl Scouts sell the cookies, while the boys learn outdoor and survival skills?"  

Good observation and I didn't have a good answer, except thinking to myself that sexism is unfortunately still alive, well, and institutionalized in America.

I'd be interested in hearing a comment from a representative of these organizations as why this biased, sexist nonsense continues, especially at a time when we have a viable women candidate for President of the United States (2016)--what gives here? ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Who Sells The Cookies

Conventional "Wisdom" On Terrorism

Define "Terrorism".

If a Jew/Israeli defends themselves or their ancestral homeland, it's illegal, deplorable, and will utterly be condemned by the United Nations and in the media. 

If a radical Islamist attacks innocent civilians and commits extreme violent acts, they're freedom fighters, resisting occupation, or maybe it's just workplace violence. 

(Source Comic: Andy Blumenthal)

Conventional "Wisdom" On Terrorism

UN Inhuman Rights

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calls for investigation of Israel for possible violations.

Hmmm, how does that make sense?

Israel abides by every ceasefire, sets up medical facilities for Gazans, provides advance warning of fighting to get innocents out of the way, and makes every attempt to withhold fire when civilians are at risk. 

This while Hamas and Islamic Jihad use babies as human shields and indiscriminately target vast population centers and critical infrastructure in Israel.

Incredibly, the UN Relief and Works Agency facilities in Gaza (e.g. schools) were being used to hide missiles for use against Israel and upon discovery, the UNRWA returned these to terrorists to continue to harm civilians. 

Unfortunately, in these cases, the UN is not protecting human rights, but rather is enabling the "rights" of dangerous terrorists to act grossly inhuman and immoral.  

Where politics trumps right and wrong...evil is permitted to flourish and good is diminished in the world.

Only 13 years since the 9/11 attack by Islamic terrorists that killed almost 3,000 innocent civilians here...is the world again getting amnesia on the very dangerous threat it faces?

(Source Photo: here from The Yeshiva World)

UN Inhuman Rights

On Friends and Enemies

Over the weekend, I read/heard two great quotes about the nature of friends and enemies:

1) The first was from Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal where she reminds us of a political rule that "Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate."  Really this applies in all of life, a few real friends may last over an entire lifetime, but most others are transient, such as in school, at work, or in a community, but when you leave that place or circumstance, the friendships often do not persist. However, enemies seem to last forever, where people never forget when they feel they've been wronged and these people may actually seek each other out and even join forces to get their contemplated revenge. The fight is not always fair or just, but people's feelings when they think they've been wronged, hang in the air, like the stench of decaying carcasses. Something to beware of. 

2) The second was from a martial arts movie called Ninja 2 where one of the characters says to a martial arts expert, whose wife was brutally murdered, "The man who seeks revenge should dig two graves." Upon which, the martial artist wittingly responds, "They'll need to dig a lot more than that," and in the movie, the Ninja exacted his revenge on the drug lord and his gang for the murder they committed. 

My impressions are that we should try to be good people and have a broad positive influence in the world. With some people, we will find true friendship--and very often, there is an almost unexplainable chemistry to this, where it just clicks--and it's as if we've known this person not only in this lifetime, but in prior lifetimes as well. In other cases, the friendships are more temporal based on shared circumstance, camaraderie, or even an alliance or sorts, and these really are not sustained when one or both parties move on. And that's okay, not every friendship is deep and forever. 

In terms of enemies, you know it when you have it. Again, chemistry may play a role or one person may have indeed wronged the other. Sometimes, people can learn from making a mistake, they can apologize, commit to do better in the future, and there can be forgiveness. In other circumstances, the blood between people is bad and won't get better, because there is scarcity, misunderstanding, bias, or even blind hatred. In these cases, it often seems as if no amount of communication, negotiation, or bending over backwards will resolve it. You can try--it's always worth a try--but be prepared to circle the wagons and defend yourself, if all else fails. 

Finally, a wrongful act can be so brutal and egregious that at times it seems that only a "joust to the death" will do, but revenge in the end, does not bring anybody back or undue the harm done. Yes, when justice is done, the world seems somehow righted and the fallen can be released from their painful throes and go on in peace, and maybe the evil aggressor will be prevented from hurting others in the future. In the end, the smell of peace is the sweetest of all, when we can live and let live. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

On Friends and Enemies

We Don't Accept You Here

A number of years ago I had received an interesting job offer--not actually for a job I had applied to, but for "something else", and apparently the job was supposed to come without any questions asked. 

Because when I asked about the typical things that you like to agree on before you start a job, I found that it wasn't going to work out then for this executive because of "cultural fit."

At the time, it was quite clear that cultural fit was just another term used to discriminate not those that could do the job well from those that couldn't, but rather those who would be too thoughtful, innovative, or even challenging to the (failing) status quo. 

In this particular case, the leadership was highly corrupt (in more ways than one) and it came out in front-page investigations and findings not long after, with the actual sacking of many of the head honcho bunch.

When it comes to hiring, it is challenging for many leaders to not just punch the checklist for diversity, but too really embrace it, and this stems from many reasons including fear, bias and hatred of cultures that are different than our own, but also the need for highly insecure leaders to singularly "rule the roost" without any challenge of opinion. 

These leaders think that if everyone fits their mold and subordinates themselves to them alone, then they are by default always right--regardless of the actual consequences of their decision-making.

The problem is that there is no one to vet issues with, play devil's advocate or give an alternate viewpoint--and the insecure leadership with their minion of look-alike, think-alike followers will often drive the train over the cliff--without anyone so much as saying a boo. 

This last week, when a record number of women Senators (20) and congresswomen (82)--were sworn in to the 113th Congress, there was hope of their bringing to the old political mix a new sense and style of collaboration that could help the nation resolve the many issues that we are embroiled in heated negotiation and impasse (e.g. the debt ceiling, the national deficit, the budget, immigration, and more).

Similarly, Bloomberg BusinessWeek (3 January 2013) published an article called "Only BFFs Need Apply"--about how job applicant's cultural fit often trumps their actual qualifications.

BusinessWeek sums up the dilemma with hiring based on cultural fit: While it "may summon up obnoxious images of old boys clubs and social connections...a cooperative, creative atmosphere can make workdays more tolerable and head off problems before they begin." Put another way: the "American ideals about team diversity collide with the reality of building a cohesive, practical staff."

However, the problem with relying on cultural fit is not only that you don't often get the best candidates, but that it is used not just to describe common values and work ethics, but rather inappropriately "as an excuse for feelings interviewers aren't comfortable expressing" such as not being able to accept a person's accent or that they cover they head for religious reasons. 

While hiring lackeys may have a short-term benefit of cohesion, in the long-term, the lack of diversity may result in groupthink and even that "the one person who has a different thought could have saved a business."

Of course, there is also legal prohibitions against discrimination in hiring and personnel management, as well as the ethical issue of hiring unfairly and what that does to the moral fiber of the organization and its people--it's corrosive to their values and capabilities and will lead to the revulsion and loss of good employees, customers, stockholders, and others over time.

Here's the enterprise architecture slant on this topic: "you have to decide if you're hiring for the culture you have or the culture you want." ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Tobucil and Klabs)

We Don't Accept You Here

Can a Computer Run the Economy?

I am not talking about socialism or totalitarianism, but about computers and artificial intelligence.

For a long time, we have seen political infighting and finger-pointing stall progress on creating jobs, balancing trade, taming the deficits, and sparking innovation. 

But what if we somehow took out the quest for power and influence from navigating our prosperity?

In politics, unfortunately no one seems to want to give the other side the upper hand--a political win with voters or a leg-up on with their platform.

But through the disciplines of economics, finance, organizational behavior, industrial psychology, sociology, geopolitics, and more--can we program a computer to steer the economy using facts rather than fighting and fear?

Every day, we need to make decisions, big and small, on everything from interests rates, tax rates, borrowing, defense spending, entitlements, pricing strategies, regulating critical industries, trade pacts, and more.

Left in the hands of politicians, we inject personal biases and even hatreds, powerplays, band-standing, bickering, and "pork-barrel" decision making, rather than rational acting based on analysis of alternatives, cost-benefits, risk management, and underlying ethics. 

We thumb our noises (rightfully) at global actors on the political stages, saying who is rational and who is perhaps just plain crazy enough to hit "the button."

But back here at home, we can argue about whether or not the button of economic destructionism has already been hit with the clock ticking down as the national deficit spirals upward, education scores plummet, and jobs are lost overseas?

Bloomberg BusinessWeek (30 August 2012) suggests using gaming as a way to get past the political infighting and instead focus on small (diverse) groups to make unambiguous trade-off decisions to guide the economy rather than "get reelected"--the results pleasantly were cooperation and collaboration.

Yes, a game is just a game, but there is lesson that we can learn from this--economic decision-making can be made (more) rationally by rewarding teamwork and compromise, rather than by an all or nothing, fall on your sword, party against party, winner takes no prisoner-politics. 

I would suggest that gaming is a good example for how we can improve our economy, but I can see a time coming where "bid data," analytics, artificial intelligence, modeling and simulation, and high-performance computing, takes this a whole lot further--where computers, guided and inspired by people, help us make rational economic choices, thereby trumping decisions by gut, intuition, politics, and subjective whims .

True, computers are programmed by human beings--so won't we just introduce our biases and conflict into the systems we develop and deploy?

The idea here is to filter out those biases using diverse teams of rational decision-makers, working together applying subject matter expertise and best practices and then have the computers learn over time in order to improve performance--this, separate from the desire and process to get votes and get elected.

Running the economy should not be about catering to constituencies, getting and keeping power for power sakes, but rather about rational decision-making for society--where the greatest good is provided to the greatest numbers, where the future takes center stage, where individuals preferences and rights are respected and upheld, and where ethics and morality underpin every decision we make.  

The final question is whether we will be ready to course-correct with collaboration and advances in technology to get out of this economic mess before this economic mess gets even more seriously at us?

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Erik Charlton)

Can a Computer Run the Economy?

Apples or Oranges

There are lots of biases that can get in the way of sound decision-making.

An very good article in Harvard Business Review (June 2011) called "Before You Make That Big Decision" identifies a dozen of these biases that can throw leaders off course.

What I liked about this article is how it organized the subject into a schema for interrogating an issue to get to better decision-making.

Here are some of the major biases that leaders need to be aware of and inquire about when they are presented with an investment proposal:


1) Motivation Errors--do the people presenting a proposal have a self-interest in the outcome?

2) Groupthink--are dissenting opinions being actively solicited and fairly evaluated?

3) Salient Analogies--are analogies and examples being used really comparable?

4) Confirmation Bias--has other viable alternatives been duly considered?

5) Availability Bias--has all relevant information been considered?

6) Anchoring Bias--can the numbers be substantiated (i.e. where did they come from)?

7) Halo Effect--is success from one area automatically being translated to another?

8) Planning Fallacy--is the business case overly optimistic?

9) Disaster Neglect--is the worst-case scenario imagined really the worst?

10) Loss Aversion--is the team being overly cautious, conservative, and unimaginative?

11) Affect Heuristic--are we exaggerating or emphasizing the benefits and minimizing the risks?

12) Sunk-Cost Fallacy--are we basing future decision-making on past costs that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered?

To counter these biases, here are my top 10 questions for getting past the b.s. (applying enterprise architecture and governance):

1) What is the business requirement--justification--and use cases for the proposal being presented?

2) How does the proposal align to the strategic plan and enterprise architecture?

3) What is return on investment and what is the basis for the projections?

4) What alternatives were considered and what are the pros and cons of each?

5) What are the best practices and fundamental research in this area?

6) What are the critical success factors?

7) What are the primary risks and planned mitigations for each?

8) What assumptions have been made?

9) What dissenting opinions were there?

10) Who else has been successful implementing this type of investment and what were the lessons learned?

While no one can remove every personal or organizational bias that exists from the decision-making equation, it is critical for leaders to do get beyond the superficial to the "meat and potatoes" of the issues.

This can be accomplished by leaders interrogating the issues themselves and as well as by establishing appropriate functional governance boards with diverse personnel to fully vet the issues, solve problems, and move the organizations toward a decision and execution.
Whether the decision is apples or oranges, the wise leader gets beyond the peel.

Apples or Oranges

Match Me With You

eHarmony and Match.com and other matchmaking sites are all the rage on the single scene with recommended partners for people being done by computer algorithm.

Now this concept of matching of people is going beyond people’s love lives and into the world of business.

CIO Magazine (1 Nov. 2010) reports in an article called “Call Center Matchmaking: Analytics pair customers with the right agents for better service” that companies are using similar technology to match customers and call centers reps in order to get higher satisfaction ratings and increased retention rates—and it’s working!

Since implementing the IBM system called Real-Time Analytics Matching Platform (RAMP), for example, Assurant has increased customer retention rates by 190 percent.

Other companies have been doing customer matching on a more elementary level for some time—for example, financial service firms route calls from high-net worth or high-balance customers to “premier agents.” Similarly, calls made at certain time are “routed to Boise instead of Bangalore.”

With computer systems like RAMP, there is a recognition that customers can do better by being matched with specific customer service representatives and that we can use business analytics to examine a host of data variables from sex and age to persistence in calling to match a customer to “the right” representative to handle their issues.

Based on success rates, computers have been shown to perform sophisticated business and data analysis, and to successfully match people for more successful business (and life) transactions.

If we can successfully pair people for love and for customer service, it makes me wonder what’s next (maybe happening already)? For example, will we pair people to “the right”:

• Potential adoptee parents?
• Neighborhoods?
• Schools?
• Jobs?
• Bosses?
• Coworkers?

In essence, as the “bar is raised” in a highly global and competitive environment, will we be pushed to seek to maximize our potential for success interaction with others—for developing high-performance and highly profitable interactions—by pairing exclusively with those that “screen” positive for us?

With genetic testing already being used to screen for babies that people want—like an order at Burger King—“hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us…”—we are already well on our way to “special ordering” the people in our lives.

Companies have also started to use intelligence and personality tests to weed out applicants, and the use of personality tests like Myers Briggs is already being employed for better understanding each other and working together.

However crude all this may be, it is essentially a high-tech way of trying to optimize our performance. The question is can we use technology to enhance personal interactions and elevate performance without subjecting people to undue bias, criticism, and violation of their privacy? This is a very slippery slope indeed.

Another potential problem with computer matching is that when we rely on computers to “tell us” when we have a good match, we are potentially missing potential opportunities for matches with others that cannot be easily quantified or summed up by a computer algorithm? As they say, for some “two birds of a feather flock together” and for others “opposite attract”—we shouldn’t limit ourselves to any creative, positive possibilities in relationships.

Match Me With You

Revenge of the Introverts

I am an introvert.

Does this mean I am among a minority of the population that is shy, anti-social, “snooty,” or worse?

Many people have misperceptions like these, which is why Psychology Today’s current issue has a feature story on the realities vs. the myths of introverts. Actually half of the people you meet on any given day are introverts.

According to the story, introverts are:

“Collectors of thoughts…(and) solitude is the place where the collection is curated…to make sense of the present and the future.”

Most of us don’t realize that there are many introverts, because “perceptual biases lead us all to overestimate the number of extraverts among us.” (Basically you extraverts take up a lot of attention :-).)

To me, being an introvert is extremely helpful in my professional role because it enables me to accomplish some very important goals:

- I can apply my thinking to large and complex issues. Because I gravitate to working in a quiet (i.e. professional) environment, I am able to focus on studying issues, coming up with solutions, and seeing the impact of incremental improvements. (This will be TMI for some, but when I was a kid I had to study with noise reducing headphones on to get that absolute quiet to concentrate totally.)

- I like to develop meaningful relationships through all types of outreach, but especially when interacting one-on-one with people. As opposed to meaningless cocktail party chatter – “Hello, How are you today?” “Fine. And how are you?” “Fine.” Help, get me out of here!

- I get my energy from introspection and reflecting; therefore, I tend to be alert to areas where I may be making a mistake and I try to correct those early. In short, “I am my own biggest critic.”

So while it may be more fun to be an extrovert—“the life of the party”—and “the party’s going on all the time”—I like being an introvert and spending enough time thinking to make the doing in my life that much more meaningful and rewarding.

[Note: Lest you think that I hold a grudge against extraverts, not at all—you all are some of my best buds and frequently inspire me with your creativity and drive!]

Revenge of the Introverts

Why We Miss the Planning Mark

We’ve all been there asking why we missed the signs while others saw them head-on and benefited in some way. This happens with financial investments (e.g. I should’ve sold before this recent meltdown like my good buddy did), business opportunities (e.g. I should’ve opened up a chain of coffee stores like Starbucks before Howard Shultz got to it), military strategy (e.g. we should’ve seen the attacks on Pearl Harbor and 9-11 coming and been better prepared to try and stop them) and other numerous “should’ve” moments—and no I’m not talking about that” I should’ve had a V8!”

Why do we miss the signs and misread information?

Obviously, these are important questions for IT leaders, enterprise architects and IT governance pros who are often managing or developing plans for large and complex IT budgets. And where the soundness of decisions on IT investments can mean technological superiority, market leadership and profitability or failed IT projects and sinking organizational prospects.

An article in MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2009, provides some interesting perspective on this.

“Organizations get blindsided not so much because decision makers aren’t seeing signals, but because they jump to the most convenient or plausible conclusion, rather than fully considering other interpretations.”

Poor decision makers hone in on simple or what seems like obvious answers, because it’s easier in the short-term than perhaps working through all the facts, options, and alternative points of view to reach more precise conclusions.

Additionally, “both individual and organizational biases prevent…signals from getting through” that would aid decision making.

How do these biases happen?

SUBJECTIVITY: We subjectively listen almost exclusively to our own prejudiced selves and distort any conflicting information. The net effect is that we do not fully appreciate other possible perspectives or ways of looking at problems. We do this through:

• Filtering—We selectively perceive what we want to and block out anything that doesn’t fit what we want to or expect to see. For example, we may ignore negative information about an IT investment that we are looking to acquire.
• Distortions—Information that manages to get through our mental and emotional filters, may get rationalized away or otherwise misinterpreted. For example, we might “shift blame for a mistake we made to someone else.”
• Bolstering—Not only do we filter and distort information, but we may actually look for information to support our subjective view. For example, “we might disproportionately talk to people who already agree with us.”

GROUPTHINK: “a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas.” (Wikipedia)

“In principle, groups should be better than individuals at detecting changes and responding to them. But often they are not, especially if the team in not managed well, under pressure, and careful not to rock the boat.”

Interestingly enough, many IT investment review boards, which theoretically should be helping to ensure sound IT investments, end up instead as prime examples of groupthink on steroids.

Concluding thoughts:

If we are going to make better IT decisions in the organization then we need to be honest with ourselves and with others. With ourselves, we need to acknowledge the temptation to take the simple, easy answer that is overwhelmingly directed by personal biases and instead opt for more information from all sources to get a clearer picture of reality.

Secondly, we need to be aware that domineering and politically powerful people in our organizations and on our governance boards may knowingly or inadvertently drown out debate and squash important alternate points of view.

If we do not fairly and adequately vet important decisions, then we will end up costing the enterprise dearly in terms of bad investments, failed IT projects, and talented but underutilized employees leaving for organizations where different perspectives are valued and decisions are honestly and more comprehensively vetted for the betterment of the organization.

If we shut our ears and close our eyes to other people’s important input, then we will miss the planning mark.

Why We Miss the Planning Mark

The Perilous Pitfalls of Unconscious Decision Making

Every day as leaders, we are called upon to make decisions—some more important than others—but all having impacts on the organization and its stakeholders. Investments get made for better or worse, employees are redirected this way or that, customer requirements get met or are left unsatisfied, suppliers receive orders while others get cancelled, and stakeholders far and wide have their interests fulfilled or imperiled.

Leadership decisions have a domino effect. The decisions we make today will affect the course of events well into the future--especially when we consider a series of decisions over time.

Yet leadership decisions span the continuum from being made in a split second to those that are deliberated long and hard.

In my view, decision makers can be categorized into three types: “impulsive,” “withholding,” and “optimizers.”

1. Impulsive leaders jump the gun and make a decision without sufficient information—sometimes possibly correctly, but often risking harm to the organization because they don’t think things through.
2. Withholding leaders delay making decisions, searching for the optimal decision or Holy Grail. While this can be effective to avoid overly risky decisions, the problem is that they end up getting locked into “analysis paralysis”. They never get off the dime; decisions linger and die while the organization is relegated to a status quo—stagnating or even declining in times of changing market conditions.
3. Optimizers rationally gather information, analyze it, vet it, and drive towards a good enough decision; they attempt to do due diligence and make responsible decisions in reasonable time frames that keep the organization on a forward momentum, meeting strategic goals and staying competitive. But even the most rational individuals can falter in the face of an array of data.

So it is clear that whichever mode decision makers assume, many decisions are still wrong. In my view, this has to do with the dynamics of the decision-making process. Even if they think they are being rational, in reality leaders too often make decisions for emotional or even unconscious reasons. Even optimizers can fall into this trap.

CIOs, who are responsible for substantial IT investment dollars, must understand why this happens and how they can use IT management best practices, structures, and tools to improve the decision-making process.

An insightful article that sheds light on unconscious decision-making, “Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions,” was published this month in Harvard Business Review.

The article states: “The reality is that important decisions made by intelligent, responsible people with the best information and intentions are sometimes hopelessly flawed.”

Here are two reasons cited for poor decision making:

• Pattern Recognition—“faced with a new situation, we make assumptions based on prior experiences and judgments…but pattern recognition can mislead us. When we’re dealing with seemingly familiar situations, our brains can cause us to think we understand then when we don’t.”
• Emotional Tagging—“emotional information attaches itself to the thoughts and experiences stored in our memories. This emotional information tells us whether to pay attention to something or not, and it tells us what sort of action we should be contemplating.” But what happens when emotion gets in the way and inhibits us from seeing things clearly?

The authors note some red flags in decision making: the presence of inappropriate self-interest, distorting attachments (bonds that can affect judgment—people, places, or things), and misleading memories.

So what can we do to make things better?

According to the authors of the article, we can “inject fresh experience or analysis…introduce further debate and challenge…impose stronger governance.”

In terms of governance, the CIO certainly comes with a formidable arsenal of IT tools to drive sound decision making. In particular, enterprise architecture provides for structured planning and governance; it is the CIO’s disciplined way to identify a coherent and agreed to business and technical roadmap and a process to keep everyone on track. It is an important way to create order of organizational chaos by using information to guide, shape, and influence sound decision making instead of relying on gut, intuition, politics, and subjective management whim—all of which are easily biased and flawed!

In addition to governance, there are technology tools for information sharing and collaboration, knowledge management, business intelligence, and yes, even artificial intelligence. These technologies help to ensure that we have a clear frame of reference for making decisions. We are no longer alone out there making decisions in an empty vacuum, but rather now we can reach out –far and wide to other organizations, leaders, subject matter experts, and stakeholders to get and give information, to analyze, to collaborate and to perhaps take what would otherwise be sporadic and random data points and instead connect the dots leading to a logical decision.

To help safeguard the decision process (and no it will never be failsafe), I would suggest greater organizational investments in enterprise architecture planning and governance and in technology investments that make heavily biased decisions largely a thing of the past.

The Perilous Pitfalls of Unconscious Decision Making

Information: Knowledge or B.S.?

With modern technology and the Internet, there is more information out there than ever before in human history. Some argue there is too much information or that it is too disorganized and hence we have “information overload.”

The fact that information itself has become a problem is validated by the fact that Google is world’s #1 brand with a market capitalization of almost $100 billion. As we know the mission statement of Google is to “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

The key to making information useful is not just organizing it and making it accessible, but also to make sure that it is based on good data—and not the proverbial, “garbage in, garbage out” (GIGO).

There are two types of garbage information:

1. Incorrect, incomplete, or dated
2. Misleading /propagandistic or an outright lie

When information is not reliable, it causes confusion, rather than bringing clarity. And then, the information can actually result in worse decision making, then if you didn’t have it in the first place. This is an enterprise architecture that is not only worthless, but is harmful or poison to the enterprise.

Generally, in enterprise architecture, we are optimistic about human nature and focus on #1, i.e., we assume that people mean to provide objective and complete data and try to ensure that they can do that. But unfortunately there is a darker side to human nature that we must grapple with, and that is #2.

Misinformation by accident or by intent is used in organizations all the time to make poor investment decisions. Just think how many non-standardized, non-interoperable, costly tools your organization has bought because someone provided “information” or developed a business case, which “clearly demonstrated” that is was a great investment with a high ROI. Everyone wants their toys!

Wired Magazine, February 2009, talks about disinformation in the information age in “Manufacturing Confusion: How more information leads to less knowledge” (Clive Thompson).

Thompson writes about Robert Proctor, a historian of science from Stanford, who coined the word “Agnotology,” or “the study of culturally constructed ignorance.” Proctor theorizes that “people always assume that if someone doesn’t know something, it’s because they haven’t paid attention or haven’t yet figured it out. But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop hearing about what’s true and what’s not.” Thompson offers as examples:

1. “Bogus studies by cigarette companies trying to link lung cancer to baldness, viruses—anything but their product.”
2. Financial firms creating fancy-dancy financial instruments like “credit-default swaps [which] were designed not merely to dilute risk but to dilute knowledge; after they changed hands and been serially securitized, no one knew what they were worth.”

We have all heard the saying that “numbers are fungible” and we are also all cautious about “spin doctors” who appear in the media telling their side of the story rather than the truth.

So it seems that despite the advances wrought by the information revolution, we have some new challenges on our hands: not just incorrect information but people who literally seek to promote its opposite.

So we need to get the facts straight. And that means not only capturing valuable information, but also eliminating bias so that we are not making investment decisions on the basis of B.S.

Information: Knowledge or B.S.?