How Do We Get So Dumb

Thomas Jefferson made a point of distinguishing between facts and
the truer facts. That’s an exercise business would do well to bear in mind right
now, because reality is not what it used to be. This is not simply a matter of recognizing that a woman’s Size 8 morphed, somewhere along the line, into a Size 6. Although that
seemingly trivial recalibration is probably more important,
metaphorically speaking, than a lot of corporations are willing to admit.
This is about customers, employees and executives who are living in a fourth dimension when it comes to the truth. We are all familiar with fat people who believe they are on the
stocky side, malicious prudes who see themselves as do-gooders and financial officers who’ve convinced themselves that they have the stockholders’ best interests at heart.
Such people are emblematic of a widening social phenomenon. It is as if we as a society can tell the difference between what is real and what is fake but only when pressed. That is, only when we are forced to make a special effort.
Why else would Sally Field, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek get to testify before a Congressional Select Committee on the plight of the American farmer? Their qualifications? They had all starred in movies set on farms. And how better to explain the Internet bubble? Along with the legions of people who repeated mantra-like that the stock market would continue to rise because people have to put their money somewhere and where else are they going to put it? Remember when colleagues looked at you funny (or grew hostile) if you even suggested that the party might, just might, someday have to come to an end? In the year 2000, Internet stocks represented 20% of all publicly traded equity volume. Even though the sector never made a profit. Was it five or ten trillion dollars of paper wealth that vanished in the bust? Does anyone even remember.
When the bubble finally did burst, I happened to hear one highly placed Wall Street mandarin sum up this particular history lesson in the following way: Never again, he said, will a 25-year-old with purple hair and a nose ring get to make a presentation at
Goldman Sachs. By saying that, he inadvertently confirmed that he and everyone
else at the top of corporate America was quite capable of distinguishing fantasy from reality.
But only when pressed.
What you might call business fantasy has become a fireball of media hype that inexorably feeds itself, creating ever more impressive pyrotechnic spectacles.
It has produced the phenomenon of ceo’s as rock stars. And made cnbc a kind of corporate mtv. More seriously, it made it possible for the mainstream business and financial press to present, as the next great thing, companies
like Enron, Tyco and WorldCom.

originally published in 'Managing the Apocalypse' 2005
MANAGING THE APOCALYPSE