2023 Q2 | Edition 2 | Article 2
Subjective Objectivity
If your lessons in science ended at school around the age of 18, you probably learnt that there was a clear distinction in meaning between the terms ‘a subjective view’ and ‘an objective approach’. By using data, we are, of course, doing our best to remove biases from the decision-making process. We are trying to take a sensible, objective approach. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we achieve it.
The subjectivity of Spreadsheet culture
We’ve become a little too familiar with spreadsheet culture in our offices. Under spreadsheet culture, the decision-making is left to a charismatic leader. A leader often passes a rigorous selection process by performing well at working with other people. That has historically been the best way to secure promotion and avoid major setbacks.
Once the decision is made, we all wait. Then some time, say 12 months later, a spreadsheet is produced. The spreadsheet often has one key aim - to show that the leader, in fact, took the correct decision and the sales are up. It may have a secondary aim. If the sales are down and no amount of filtering or manipulation can hide that fact, it might be necessary to produce a spreadsheet chart that shows some mitigating circumstances.
Spreadsheet culture may have a ‘mathy’ feel to it, but it’s not what we mean by data-driven, objective decision making.
A new type of leader has clearly emerged
Taking just a little time to reflect, we would see that a new type of leader has emerged since around 2002, when a few tweaks in web code pivoted data to new heights. The new leaders don’t necessarily come across all that well on TV interviews. Mid-management under their rule might be employed for their PhDs, a qualification that demands hours of solitary study and isolation, not years of networking.
Those new leaders have something else that makes them successful in the new competitive world. They have a knack for shifting through the data and allowing the next best step to make itself known. They don’t engineer a solution. They wait until they can observe a pattern that points the way to a new product, or a new form of efficiency. The data isn’t brought in after the decision is made to justify that it was the correct choice. It is native to the decision making process itself. The data points the way.
Taking a researcher’s perspective
The best researchers know how to tackle a tricky and evasive problem - a wicked problem with no clear solutions. We can take a lesson from the experts by taking a researcher’s approach.
Taking objectivity a step further
A machine can certainly do much of the heavy lifting in decision-making, sifting through vast data sets for a potential new product to make itself known. But the best leaders take objectivity one step further. They don’t cling to the truth or to the one best solution like our fathers and mothers before us. They know that the ‘best option’ or the ‘truth’ are transient ideas that may prove wrong just a month from now. True objectivity is incredibly rare and fundamental laws belong to the physicists, not the business managers. They use subjective objectivity.
Under subjective objectivity, we agree to collate evidence to better understand a situation, but we never let go of the possibility that the evidence could be wrong or biased. There is always the chance that we’re missing some important and essential point.
Are charismatic leaders more successful than the subjective objective leader? In any generation, a few people will get lucky and have extraordinary success, and they also tend to be quick to attribute their success in retrospect to personal qualities that explain their brilliance. Star city traders have always existed and been celebrated, but they have rarely been able to maintain show-stopping performances after that first promising flush of success. Until, that is, the data-driven investors moved onto the scene.
By taking subjective objective approach we take one step closer to making good decisions, while remaining open to the possibility that we may need to backtrack pretty quickly at some point in the future. We take some of the guess work out of things that really matter to many of us – our jobs, professions, and an organisation we can be proud to work for.
