Does the truth even matter anymore?

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” Marcus Aurelius

All of us have certain views which are immutable. We see them as absolute truths. We come to this conclusions through our experiences, our upbringing, our ingrained biases or any other number of subjective factors. What cuts across all of these ‘facts’ is that we hold them to be true on an emotional level, as well as objectively. We can make any number of logical arguments for them being the case, but they are usually rationalising a view that we ‘feel’.

At the uncontroversial end are things like ‘Don’t kill people’ or ‘Muhammad Ali knew a thing or two about boxing’. However, in the world of business and in particular in the world of organisational change, we are never working in the uncontroversial part of the world. We are specifically targeting the issues where there are going to be differing views and opinions. In all likelihood the split will be 50:50 with neither side understanding how the other could think as they do.

The key to moving forward these projects, is to appreciate that fact and then try to understand where others are coming from. It is impossible that they are 100% wrong and you are 100% right, yet much of our working lives is spent supporting this exact fallacy.

The ‘truth’ (in my view) is that everything is an opinion. No matter whether it’s got statistics to back it up, it is customer centric or enshrined in strategy, everything has an opposing viewpoint. Once you accept this, you can start to move things forward.

That’s because you can begin to understand an opinion, then you can begin to empathise with it. After that, you can begin to respect it which allows two people to build a level of trust, that can be used to move things forward.

Digital Transformation Training

At William Joseph we offer training to Digital Teams charged with driving organisational change covering this kind of topic and many more. If you’re interested then email me on james@williamjoseph.co.uk