Fact Is ... and Isn't
A Woman Plans is pinned to the front page of this newsletter.
I’m going over posts at my old blog. Most of the good ones have been published here already. There are many bad ones, however. Back then, I was so sure of my opinions. Now? I wait to be proven wrong. Fortunately, this one - from 2003 - comes entirely from someone else.
Time after time in those early ITT management meetings, I would question a man about his facts, Where did he get them? (Usually from some other man.) How did he know they were correct? Were they facts? So I wrote a memo about 'unshakeable facts.
Yesterday, we put in a long hard-driving meeting mostly seeking the facts on which easy management decisions could be then made. I think the most important conclusion to be drawn is simple. There is no word in the English language that more strongly conveys the intent of incontrovertibility, i.e. 'final and reliable reality' than the word “fact.”
However, no word is more honored by its breach in actual usage. For example, there are and we saw yesterday:
”Apparent facts”“Assumed facts”
“Reported Facts”
“Hoped-for facts”
“Facts” so labeled and accepted as facts - i.e. “accepted facts” - and many others of similar derivation.
In most cases these were not facts at all.
In many cases of daily life this point may not be too important, but in the area of management momentum and decision, is all-important. Whole trains of events and decision of an entire management can be put in motion in the wrong direction - with inevitable loss of money, time and morale - by one 'unfactual fact' accepted by or submitted by YOU - however unintentional.
The highest art of professional management requires the literal ability to “smell” a “real fact” from all others - and moreover to have the temerity, intellectual curiosity, guts and/or plain impoliteness, if necessary to be sure that what you do have is indeed what we will call an “unshakeable fact.”
So . . . start now IS IT A FACT? but more important, IS IT AN UNSHAKEABLE FACT?
No matter what you think, try shaking it to be sure.Send this message down the line.
Cite.1
(Thanks to my Critical Thinking and Computer Logic Instructor)
Geneen, H. (1984). Managing. Boston: Doubleday.
Thanks!
Absolutely essential in the fair administration of justice.