Robert Anton Wilson died recently. Among many excellent responses to his passing, a brief one at Early Days of a Better Nation hits a personal bullseye:
What stuck in my memory were two concepts: the reality tunnel, and the SNAFU principle. The ‘reality tunnel’ refers to the tendency to notice only what confirms our beliefs. The SNAFU principle points out that in a hierarchy, each person tends to tell their superior what the superior wants to hear, i.e. what confirms their beliefs. By the time information reaches the top of a hierarchy it may be degraded beyond recognition. These two ideas explain much that is otherwise incomprehensible. We tend to assume that, whatever else may be said about them, our leaders are better informed than we are. If RAW’s insight is correct, they are likely to be far worse informed than the average citizen. (See? Suddenly, it all makes sense!)
Add these to your model of the world.
I’m not so convinced about the SNAFU principle – it does provide an explanation for leadership failure, but I don’t think it’s all that sufficient compared to the first mentioned “reality tunnel.”
Based both on my own experience in a large government department, and from general awareness from media sources, I’m pretty sure that in any but the smallest organisations there will always be someone in there who tells their boss the truth. These people, of course, will probably never achieve the highest levels of management, but they’ll normally be there through the low to upper-middle levels of most large organisations.
The impact these people can have on the organisation is, of course, immensely limited by the “reality tunnel” mentioned. This is particularly notable in organisations where due to either poor structure or poor resourcing the decision makers are swamped by huge amounts of information each day. In such cases, information the boss either didn’t want to know about, or that would appear to take to much effort to address, gets lost or ignored.
And only when the problem becomes apparent through some external or obvious source (i.e., negative media coverage, disasterous failure, peasant revolt) does the importance of that overlooked email about the faulty widget in sector 7E become apparent.
Also, the impact of the reality tunnel is increased tenfold if the important information is given to the boss in late December or early January =)
Id’ also say that where the model of information degradation helps provide an explanation for leadership failure, it’s a non-sequitur to assume that this means the average citizen is better informed than their leaders.
But is that part of Wilson’s theory, or the extrapolation of a devotee?
I’ve recently been reading Barbara Tuchman’s “The March of Folly,” which seems to confirm Scott’s observation in spades. Throughout historical fiasco after historical fiasco, there have been people telling their bosses that they’re on the wrong track, but the folly persists. (“Groupthink” is another aspect of the “reality tunnel” thing.)
Scott: my instinct is that you undervalue the SNAFU principle, but your abundant experience trumps my instinct.
Andrew: extrapolation. My interpretation of the statement, which reflects my own biases I guess, is that its a mistake to assume the systems around leaders serve to ensure they are better informed.
Ivan: Groupthink and Reality Tunnel do seem like very related concepts, although different. I’d like to see someone more on-to-it than me come up with a paragraph on how they fit together.
I guess a possible flaw with the SNAFU principle is it tends to assume that the leader’s only sources of information are the people below them in the hierarchy. Surely people in leadership roles have an obligation to inform themselves more widely than that? However, the reality tunnel helps account for this…
On a management course recently I was told by a fairly experienced manager that the way to avoid problems in one’s research group was to be very careful about how you employ… extending this, maybe it is not so much that people tell their boss what their boss wants to hear, but that managers tend to employ people who will affirm their own wiorld view.
My boss likes a good argument. This has its own problems (-: