Being Right vs. Being Effective
One of the hardest lessons of life
The first job of any young person setting out into the world should be to get good at something. When I was a young man, I made it my job to be right. Not about everything in the world, just about my job. My first job after high school was in the military doing aircraft parts requisitions. Learning everything needed to be right in that field, or any field, is a long process. There are so many things you don’t know as a young adult, that to become good at anything is a process that takes years, at least.
After three or four years of doing nothing but this one thing, and doing it longer than anyone else in my unit, I was the best. I didn’t know everything, but I knew more than anyone else. This is a heady thing, at least in my case. Growing up, I never got competent at much except school, which didn’t interest me much, didn’t require much effort, and didn’t seem very consequential. Those that played sports or music or gained competence and mastery of some activity before reaching adulthood were probably not new to this sensation, but I was.
So, when I asserted something in my realm of expertise, only to be contradicted or overruled by someone who I knew had less knowledge than me in this area I became confused and frustrated very easily.
I eventually changed occupations. I went into the intelligence field. There, it was not just process knowledge that made one correct, it was also attention to detail and mental analytic ability, both things that I was naturally gifted in. The process of gaining competence started all over. There were moments where my leaders saw something in my ideas and ways of solving problems that was somewhat exceptional. There was that heady feeling of achieving competence again. I was not the best in this field, but I was among them. Inevitably, however, I would run into the same problem. Someone with more rank than me would disagree with me when I was sure I was right, they would take some action that didn’t align with what I had told them, and I would get frustrated.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re right if you can’t be effective.”
It was some time in 2010 or 2011 when, by chance of being assigned to the same unit as the right mentor, that I learned what I was failing at. One day, he sat me down and explained it. I don’t remember the exact words, but it went something like this: “Look, you’re clearly a smart guy. You’re right most of the time, and you get frustrated when you tell superiors something and they don’t listen. But it doesn’t matter if you’re right if you can’t be effective.” I had to stew on this for a long time. It probably took years to sink in. In my world view, I was put somewhere to do a job, I’m paid to do it, and I’m the best (or among the best) at it because I have natural talents paired with an intrinsic obligation to be the best that I can be at it.
I could not understand why others didn’t understand that and so take what I said as correct unless they were more knowledgeable or better at it than me, which they weren’t (the people that were better than me at it were not the ones I was trying to convince of anything, i.e. other intelligence analysts, not leaders and policymakers).
It was a long, difficult process to assimilate this wisdom. I watched my mentor operate this way a few times. What I used to think was pandering or playing politics was actually him putting this wisdom into practice. This did not sit well with me. I always thought manipulating my words to convince others was somewhat dishonest. If they couldn’t see the truth when I gave it to them clearly and directly, then it was their failure, not mine. Unfortunately, in life, that’s not how it works. If you become expert in something, you know what to do, but frequently, you’re not the one with the power to do it. It becomes a moral responsibility for you to learn how to get those with authority to see things your way. This does not mean you should lie, because not lying is another moral responsibility.
It’s called tact.
We must ask ourselves, “how can I get this information across to those who do not have to listen to me?” Sometimes you have to navigate egos. Sometimes you have to explain why you’re correct. Sometimes you have to anticipate the other things the leader has to consider other than what you’re telling them. Sometimes this means politics. I hate politics. Even if I don’t want to be part of it, I need to understand how it affects the decision-making of the leaders. This means I can tailor or add to my presentation to preempt any political considerations.
If I can solve those problems in my pitch, I’m more likely to be effective. I have to convince them that I’m right. It turns out that that’s part of the job, too. Competence alone means nothing if you can’t influence things, which means influencing people. I eventually became more effective, but not as much as I’d like to be. Tact is still a weakness for me, as I told the interviewer in my last job interview.
During recent shower musings (where I do much of my best thinking) I was thinking on these stages of development I went through: right and then effective. I wondered if the order could be reversed, and it immediately hit me that of course they could. We all know people who are charismatic, who could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves. Many of these people go into sales or politics. It’s where their natural abilities lie, just as mine do in analysis and critical thinking. Let’s refer to these types as Type A and types like me as Type B. These two thoughts (“Can the order go the other way?” and, “oh, of course!”) immediately generated the third: “is this order better than the order I went through?” Maybe.
Being effective and then being right seems like a much better order for the individual. This way they go through life generally being very successful at what they want to do, regardless of their level of competence. This seems like a potential problem for the people they are effective at convincing. The problem with the Type A order is that of being wrong while being very good at changing people’s minds. Just as I didn’t realize for years that I was ineffective, Type As likely don’t realize when they’re wrong.
Being right and then being effective seems to be worse for the individual, but less harmful for those they have contact with. My (Type B) problem was years of ineffectiveness leading to frustration and essentially pointless expertise and work. Had I never lucked into the right person to illuminate my ineffectiveness problem, I might have forever toiled pointlessly at everything I tried. I imagine there are many out there like this, we just don’t hear from them.
Type Bs who don’t accomplish step two might toil away in ineffective obscurity. They tend to not move up in professional hierarchies. They might not be great as employees without a mentor to teach them step two or a manager who can harness their expertise and apply their own effectiveness to it.
Type As, on the other hand, tend to be much more popular and prominent in public life. Hopefully, they also complete the second step and get competent and then expert at whatever it is they’re doing. But it’s also possible that they never do. This is where Type As are more of a problem than Type Bs. Type As who don’t accomplish step two can influence a lot of people while being wrong. Beyond the salespeople and politicians already mentioned, cult leaders and despots come to mind, as do Type As in the romantic domain, though I don’t know of a term for them. All of these people tend to be great at manipulating others for their own gains.
That’s not to say Type As are inherently bad, only that there are more potential negative externalities for Type As that fail to reach step two than for Type Bs that fail to reach step two. Most Type As are good people. Think of the person in the office who is the social butterfly and gets ahead by their connections. This is a Type A that hasn’t gotten to step two. They’re frequently looked down on by others, particularly Type Bs who value expertise. In fact, both types tend to look down on the other before reaching step two. After reaching step two, they then tend to see the value in the other type.
Type As who do reach step two will be far more likely to get the right things done than Type Bs who reach step two, simply by virtue of their experience at being effective. The dream team is one of each that have both reached step two, see the value in the other, and work together to cover each other’s weaknesses. This is likely the best way to start a business, particularly in tech where the expertise of a Type B is essential. Type As tend to be Chief Executive Officers while Type Bs tend to be Chief Technology Officers in this model.
Allow me to present some current examples of this right vs. effective problem. I’ve been volunteering a lot with a political movement trying to create unity (www.ArticlesofUnity.org) and a group that’s trying to create unity socially, rather than politically (here). I found myself repeatedly trying to teach the lesson I’m sharing here. I’ve tried as often as not to impart it to people I disagree with because I think there’s value in ideas I don’t agree with, and I want those ideas to get just as much engagement as ideas I do agree with.
For example, Black Lives Matter (BLM) (and associated movements) has a lot of public attention right now. It’s been very effective at recruiting people to its cause, but I believe it could be far more effective. Let’s assume its goals are objectively correct and that everyone in the country should get behind them. It needs to work on being more effective. Crowds marching through residential neighborhoods with sirens, flashing lights, and bullhorns after dark shouting at people to get out of their houses and into the streets are very unlikely to be effective. Similarly, disrupting diners eating outside at cafes seems completely ineffective. Even those who agree to raise their fists in response to protestor demands probably don’t convert to supporting the cause once the mob moves on.
A good friend of mine telling me not to look to Martin Luther King as an example of how to achieve racial equality because I killed him (by virtue of being white), something I’ve written about previously, was certainly not effective, even though I shared much of his concern and was open to listening and engaging with him. BLM has certainly been effective in some ways, but there are far more effective ways than those I’ve shown here. Being ineffective is one thing that I had to figure out how to overcome. Being counter-productive is a whole other level of ineffective that BLM in particular needs to figure out how to stop doing. This is rich territory for exploration, but beyond the scope of this essay.
To take a generally contrary position to that of BLM is that of Trump and his staunchest supporters. Let’s again assume that Trump is objectively correct and that everyone in the country should get behind him. To me, Trump is clearly what I’ve laid out as a Type A. I don’t have enough information to determine whether he’s reached step two, but he’s clearly capable of influencing people to a great degree. He could also be much more effective. If one looks at his enacted policies, most people would agree with them in a vacuum. As it is, some may only agree if it were Obama that had enacted them, but that’s beside the point. I’m referring to peace with North Korea, pushing back on unfair trade with China, the 2018 income tax changes, the peace deals between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan. His generally crass and divisive demeanor, his confrontational engagement style, and his seeming incapability of listening to any criticism not only make him less effective than he could be, but are certainly counterproductive too some degree. If there’s a best example of lack of tact, Trump is on the short list.
I still have to remind myself of this lesson when I’m interacting with ideas on social media. I see something wrong or obviously biased or that in some way has left me an opportunity to show off my superior knowledge, perspective, or idea and I want to write some response that consists of a ‘gotcha’ followed by a lesson. I’m sure many others do this, but we know it’s not effective. We do it to make ourselves feel superior. If, on the other hand, we actually want to help improve someone’s understanding or perspective, this is the wrong way. It is almost guaranteed to make the other person defensive. This isn’t as bad in face-to-face conversation for two reasons: first, the ‘gotcha’ isn’t (as) public, so there’s less of a sense of embarrassment; and second, people just get less defensive in person because we can see from unspoken cues that the other person isn’t attacking or trying to embarrass us.
The key to being effective over just being right in these instances is again tact.
Since you can’t smile at them while delivering the correction or nod while they’re speaking to indicate approval of their general idea before bringing up a specific correction, you must find another way. I find it fairly effective to, instead of pointing out the mistake directly, ask questions about the assertion that cast it in another light, or ask questions about something that contradicts the point they made. Basically, questioning someone is more effective at getting them to question their position or assertion than telling them it’s wrong. I could fill volumes with the number of posts I’ve written to correct someone and then deleted when I realized what I was doing and what response it would likely get.
If you take nothing else away from this essay, remember this: if you’re trying to actually improve someone, some situation, or the world at large, it’s not enough to be right. You have to be effective.
If you’re only concerned with being right and not effective, then you being right has no meaning, and the efforts you’re making aren’t intending to make anything better, they’re just there to make you feel superior, and you’re going to make things worse in the process. This is true regardless of the subject and whether I agree with you or not. What is right here is entirely up to you.
In anything you do, let’s assume you’re right. Now, are you being effective? If not, no one cares if you’re right.
