My/Our research …

August 27, 2019

Ben white 4Bs9kSDJsdc unsplashI’ve long pointed out, to many over enthusiastic proponents of ‘story telling’; that the phrase has a double meaning in English.  The more dominant one is to tell a story;  to quote Eric Blair (George Orwell) “A story is a lie you see, it requires that facts are marshalled, summarised, distorted to fit a thesis” .  This has been clearly evidenced in recent weeks, in a whole set of emails  I’ve received from large consultancy firms and the odd Forbes blog post.  All have contained the words “Our/My research indicates …” followed by a set of percentages along the lines of “84% of senior executive believe ….” and the like.  I remember only too well the way this was done in IBM.  Firstly the ‘researcher’ (normally a consultant) identified what the current hot topic was.  They would then go and interview maybe 10/15 organisations using a strongly suggestive  hypothesis and from that limited sample draw conclusions that would be published to support a current business proposition.  

The IBV in IBM which took over from the IKM and others ,constantly did this.  They saw no issue (if they even noticed) that each fad was supported by the same type of data.  It might be BPR or Design thinking, whatever was the current executive sales tool would be supported by their ‘research’ to create a compelling sales proposition.  Said evidence was never published, the investigaroy process was run once and never duplicated, critically the material was never subjected to peer review or published in a reputable journal.  Virtually every email I get from McKinsey’s on Agile (the main but not the only current plague) replicates exactly that error.  The same statements, the same platitudes, endlessly repeated for each new revenue earning recipe.

Let me take a typical quote: “more than 90% of senior executives give high priority to becoming X, while less than 10% of firms are now highly X”.  That is oh so easy to set up.  Produce a buzz word with which people want to be associated then ask a questions which will force a restricted response, in this case ‘highly’.  You now have a figure, a statistic to drive people to adopt your idea.   The simple fact that you have used the same technique time and time again is ignored and never checked of validated.  It has no more validity than gossip; it is trying to deal with ambgiouty through pseudo-objective platitudinous statements.   It isn’t research its righteous promotion of ignorance and duplicity.

In text picture by Ben White, banner picture  by britt gaiser both on Unsplash

Leave a Reply

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

Recent Posts

About the Cynefin Company

The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. We believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems. We are the world leader in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world.
ABOUT USSUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER

Cognitive Edge Ltd. & Cognitive Edge Pte. trading as The Cynefin Company and The Cynefin Centre.

© COPYRIGHT 2024

< Prev

Coherent heterogeneity (2 of 2)

In yesterday’s post I said:  as you increase variety within the system to the point ...

More posts

Next >

“… save his own fame and gratification.”

A reminder that his blog is my personal opinion and is not an official statement ...

More posts

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram