Leadership and relationships in a post-truth world
To what moral standard should we hold leaders, governments and even competitors?
Unless you have been somewhere very remote, you can’t have failed to notice that something important is happening right now in Britain.
And NO! I am not talking about the election…
Though even as our would be leaders gear up for battle, marshalling the facts as they would have them be (😊), I find myself starring at a new reality beyond the hustings.
This new reality includes ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’. And at a time of great change for ASEL, our industry and out country, I wanted to delve deeper to recognise to what standard – what moral code – should we, our leaders, partners and even our competitors be held accountable to.
I discovered that in the Word of the Year Competition 2016, Oxford English Dictionary’s entry was “post-truth”. A phrase that subsequently went viral and has become the subject of much debate.
Here is how the Dictionary defined it…
Post-truth is “the public burial of ‘objective facts’ by an avalanche of media, appeals to emotion and personal belief”.
In an election year, with all of the ubiquitous claims and counterclaims, accusations and counteraccusations from political figures, to what extent are we indeed living in a post-truth world and what does that mean for us in terms of being able to believe our leaders our governments our commercial partners and colleagues, and even our competitors?
Is it now widely acceptable to lie, cheat and deceive? Do those words even count anymore?
And NO! I am not talking about the election…
Though even as our would be leaders gear up for battle, marshalling the facts as they would have them be (😊), I find myself starring at a new reality beyond the hustings.
This new reality includes ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’. And at a time of great change for ASEL, our industry and out country, I wanted to delve deeper to recognise to what standard – what moral code – should we, our leaders, partners and even our competitors be held accountable to.
I discovered that in the Word of the Year Competition 2016, Oxford English Dictionary’s entry was “post-truth”. A phrase that subsequently went viral and has become the subject of much debate.
Here is how the Dictionary defined it…
Post-truth is “the public burial of ‘objective facts’ by an avalanche of media, appeals to emotion and personal belief”.
In an election year, with all of the ubiquitous claims and counterclaims, accusations and counteraccusations from political figures, to what extent are we indeed living in a post-truth world and what does that mean for us in terms of being able to believe our leaders our governments our commercial partners and colleagues, and even our competitors?
Is it now widely acceptable to lie, cheat and deceive? Do those words even count anymore?
It is clear that ‘post-truth’ is not simply the opposite of ‘truth.’ It is more complicated…
Post-truth encompasses a set of interconnected phenomena.
First, it includes old-fashioned lying, where speakers say things about themselves and their world that they recognise are different from what they have in their heads. They lie for effect. For example when Donald Trump claims that during his inauguration the weather cleared, when actually light rain fell throughout his address.
Post-truth also includes a lot of hot air. Stuff and nonsense that simply ignores veracity and probity. What you might otherwise call salesman’s puffery… “that car is a good little runner… I’d stake my life on it!”
Post-truth depends on exaggeration and manipulation. What we might call spin. Colourful communication designed to attract and distract public attention and to interrupt the background noise of conventional politics and public life. This includes nonsense moments, jokes and boasting. It embraces clever quips, pedantry and wilful exaggerations (like Marine Le Pen’s description of the European Union as “a huge prison”).
Disturbingly, there’s abundant talk of the importance of “truth”, by which is usually meant utterances whose veracity is self-confirming, thus proving that truth can attract rogues.
And evasion has become common. When subjected to forensic questioning by reporters about Hungary’s imprisonment and brutal maltreatment of refugees and operations by vigilante citizens’ ‘hunter patrol’ border forces, Zoltan Kovacs the Orbán government’s spokesman says:
What you are trying to portray here is non-existent, a gross simplification. Next question.
And that’s that!
Politics as the art of evasion and obfuscation isn’t new. Lying in politics is an ancient art. Think of Harry Truman’s description of Richard Nixon as:
And that’s that!
Politics as the art of evasion and obfuscation isn’t new. Lying in politics is an ancient art. Think of Harry Truman’s description of Richard Nixon as:
… a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.
At ASEL we are forging a new path in this post-truth era. One that relies upon transparency.
Whilst others turn to obfuscation, distraction and sleight of hand to try and fool their customers into thinking they are doing a good job (or that their competitors are doing a bad one) we allow our customers to see for themselves what we are doing and make their own minds up.
Recently when demonstrating our most advanced systems to a group of elite retailers at Retail Risk – London, we demonstrated our solution using real time data from real clients (anonymised of course). Because at the end of the day anyone can hide behind prepared statements, flummery or deviousness. But transparency and reality are key.
I hope that in my early months at ASEL it is obvious to the engaged observer that things have changed a very great deal under my watch. And I know that is for the better because of the new work we are picking up at an astonishing rate.
Of course I work as part of a terrific management team, with a great record. And that includes those in the USA.
I mention that only to introduce an advertisement that I saw in the New York times recently. I think it sums up how relationships with customers, partners and colleagues works at ASEL.
The advertisement simply said:
TRUTH
At ASEL we are forging a new path in this post-truth era. One that relies upon transparency.
Whilst others turn to obfuscation, distraction and sleight of hand to try and fool their customers into thinking they are doing a good job (or that their competitors are doing a bad one) we allow our customers to see for themselves what we are doing and make their own minds up.
Recently when demonstrating our most advanced systems to a group of elite retailers at Retail Risk – London, we demonstrated our solution using real time data from real clients (anonymised of course). Because at the end of the day anyone can hide behind prepared statements, flummery or deviousness. But transparency and reality are key.
I hope that in my early months at ASEL it is obvious to the engaged observer that things have changed a very great deal under my watch. And I know that is for the better because of the new work we are picking up at an astonishing rate.
Of course I work as part of a terrific management team, with a great record. And that includes those in the USA.
I mention that only to introduce an advertisement that I saw in the New York times recently. I think it sums up how relationships with customers, partners and colleagues works at ASEL.
The advertisement simply said:
TRUTH
It has no alternative
The New York Times…