One of the most annoying arguments I must endure is listening to people complain that X management style or practices is a scam or failure because it doesn’t apply inside a context it wasn’t supposed to operate. When I try to explain there’s different types of systems a business department may find itself in, and these must have different types of logic applied by the very nature of the system they’re in, and different management practices focus on applying a certain type of logic into a certain type of system and this can make the management practice succeed or fail in said specific contexts, I get a blank stare. It’s impossible to make this point across by the mere fact of them being incapable of understanding these concepts, or they wish to refuse to even consider it since it affects their little ego and self identity as an intelligent person or social status by setting a precedent and accept their moronic world views are wrong.
So here’s the premise:
There are three fundamental types of logic:
- Deductive Logic: This is the classical “if A equals B and B equals C then A equals C.” It tends to create a certainty on the conclusion assuming that the premises are correct.
- Inductive Logic: This type of creates a likelihood in the conclusion, and the conclusion is narrowed into an X number of possibilities. Example: If I wake up and see water drops on my window I can apply inductive logic and assume it was raining last night. While this is a likelihood, it isn’t a certainty. Another possibility is that the sprinklers came on and hit the window. Another could be that some children were playing with water guns. You match certain possibilities, but this isn’t certain. These possibilities must also be coherent, I can’t say I see water on my window because the stock market is down or someone threw a rock at my window.
- Abductive logic: With abductive logic you start out not being sure what the premises are to explain X phenomena. You try to get rid of any preconception and do some observations, and based on these observations come up with a reason for the conclusion.
There are three basic types of system businesses operate in:
- Closed Systems: This can be a factory: You put an input and a predictable output comes out every single time as long as there’s no failure in the process. It’s what you call a causal system, because we know if we do X in one end it will always cause Y in the other and this can be predicted. In this type of system deductive logic works well, Example: If you were to do X in the assembly line you can predict with certainty that Y would happen.
- Open Systems: Open systems work well with inductive logic and are applicable to departments such as sales and customer service. If a sales rep were to pitch for X product and service, his prospect will react in a predictable range of responses. While he can’t say with certainty which specific reaction the prospect will react with, the salesman will probably have seen the same objections hundreds of times before, and be able to overcome them in a similar way he closed deals in the past. There is a level of adaptation the sales rep must perform, but it becomes predictable within a range. This system is dispositional: This means when you do a sales pitch there’s a range of reactions the prospect may have, you can’t know for certain which reaction within this range you’ll see, but you’re certain you’re going to see something within a familiar range. This is unlike the factory example with the closed system above where doing X in one end of the manufacturing process will cause Y with certainty.
- Complex Systems: This is where you apply abductive logic. The book The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems by Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel B. Rasmussen is a great resource on how to apply abductive logic in the right context. This type of system can apply on the creation of a new product design or service: If you were to develop something, how will your prospects react to it? The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is another example of abductive logic applied in complex systems (but he doesn’t use these terminologies originally in the book as far as I can remember). The basic idea is: You don’t understand your customer base entirely, the system has invisible strings pulling at it that you don’t understand (called “drivers”) and these drivers can change and may not remain constant. The systems structure affects the agents in it (in this case you, your prospects, your competitors, complementary products depending on your, your suppliers, the government, etc), and the agents affect the structure of the system. In this system you want to be like an anthropologists going into a foreign society you don’t understand, observing it for a time, and from these observations trying to determine how it’s structured, how social relationships work, motivations, beliefs, attitudes, status structure, etc.
Once you understand the three types of logic and the three types of systems, you can start understanding how to critically think in X context and figure out an appropriate management technique for a particular context. For example: You’re not going to use deductive logic for a sales pitch because there’s no certainty of the reaction you’ll get from a sales pitch. You can do the same exact pitch to different people and get different reactions, the salesman is in an open system.
In a close system you also are able to apply what is called “best practice,” you repeat the same thing again and again and this always gives you the best result. While a salesman can get same sales by repeating the same crap like a parrot, he needs to be able to also adapt within a range, ask some good questions and based on the answers to these questions, voice tone and body language of the prospect find the best way to satisfy the prospects pain points / needs. This is like in baseball: A batter that does the same repetitive movement will hit the ball from time to time, but the batter that can adapt to what the pitcher does will have a far better average. In an open system you want to apply what is “good practice,” this is to say you adapt to best suit the situation within a range of possibilities. It’s very common to see “best practice techniques” derived from case studies being forced down as magical solutions for open and complex systems, where the very nature of these systems makes it impossible to repeat something and have the same outcome.
In this context, management techniques like Six Sigma may work well in closed manufacturing systems, but be a complete failure outside of a close system. Therefore criticizing Six Sigma for mailing to work in open or complex systems is a fallacy since it’s not supposed to work outside a closed system. It’s like arguing that abductive logic itself doesn’t work in open and complex systems and therefore deductive logic doesn’t work: deductive logic is not supposed to work outside its appropiate context and it’s not a fit all solution. If a boat can’t fly like an airplane is this a faioiure in the boat design?
In a similar way we aren’t going to use abductive logic in closed systems: If we own a water pump, we aren’t going to try to figure out how it works through abductive logic, we need to use deductive logic to understand the water pipe, which will work exactly the same as long as there’s available water and it’s not malfunctioning.
One of the issues with “business managers” is that many truly aren’t very smart and/or knowledgeable. They don’t know that there’s multiple types of logic or systems to begin with. Offer them a simple Wikipedia article explaining these and they won’t be able to understand it (much less a book, these peoples reading comprehension and attention focus borderlines mental retardation). I’ve been told by multiple people that pointing out logical types is irrelevant, I’m just using big words I don’t understand and when challenged they can’t produce a definition themselves (they weren’t even aware that these different types of logic exist), or altogether claim that to say logic has a structure or was invented by someone is ridiculous (ahm, Aristotle) because logic is something you intuitively know to be true and this fluffy bunny feeling in their tummy can’t be invented by someone. These are people with bachelors and masters telling me this, they’re idiots who self identify as intelligent and usually will try to humiliate in order to maintain their false self perception and status in the group. It’s fun to break the wings of their ego and kick them from an abyss and watch humility arise as their ego slowly falls and becomes ever smaller.
There’s obviously much more to this (example: the premises of deductive logic only work within a specific context or field) but won’t dabble in it here. But this does a good job to illustrate the massive level of incompetence most “educated professionals” encounter.