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105
committed to “open access to information and communica-
tion on a global basis.” The company was also committed to
“providing individuals with easy access to information and
opportunities to openly communicate and exchange views
and opinions.” Another of its values was recognizing that
“each country enacts its own laws in accordance with its own
local norms and mores, and we must comply with applicable
laws.”
16
Most companies around the world have a similar
range of fundamental commitments, beliefs, and values.
Some are stated, some are implicit. All are typically import-
ant but, quite often, particularly in gray area cases, some of
these values and commitments contradict others.
The third practical challenge is that basic values, like those
in Yahoo!’s statement of its beliefs, are typically expressed
in vague, abstract terms. What, for example, do integrity or
quality really mean? As a result, managers have to fill in the
expansive blanks and decide what these broad, aspirational
terms actually mean in particular situations. And, when
managers try to do this, they have no exemption from biased
thinking. You shouldn’t assume, even if you have spent years
working in an organization, that you know with certainty
what its defining commitments mean in a particular situation.
Aaron Feuerstein seems to have made that mistake, with his
sweeping, initial, instinctive decision to rebuild everything.
The title “manager” and its accompanying authority provide
no exemption from distorted thinking.
Even worse, working with others often doesn’t necessarily
solve this problem, and the reason is groupthink. The orga-
nizational version of this problem, which we can observe
almost every day, is relatively benign. We see the full danger
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106
of groupthink in the many vast, horrendous, social crimes
that are the perverted achievements of people whose defining
relationships are suffused with the wrong values and norms.
The Nazis, for example, may have enacted what were widely
shared, yet heinous values.
17
Montaigne’s observation—“I
know of no greater miracle or monster than myself”—also
applies to organizations and communities.
18
It seems likely
that we humans have a factory-installed instinct to be vigi-
lant and suspicious about outsiders and to prefer our fellow
insiders, and we sometimes do this blindly, passionately, and
immorally.
19
In short, the fourth crucial question creates serious chal-
lenges when we try to use it to resolve a gray area problem.
Relationships, values and norms are powerful forces. They
shape, define, and express some of our highest aspirations.
We should not and perhaps cannot ignore them. But when
we try to answer the fourth question, we have to somehow
decide which norms and values matter most. We have to fig-
ure out which ones go to the head of the line when conflicts
occur. And we have to find ways to see, clearly and objec-
tively, what our most important norms and values tell us to
do in particular situations.
Practical Guidance
Fortunately, there are four steps you can take—each reflecting
important, long-standing ideas—to meet these challenges
head-on and put the fourth question to good use.
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107
Don’t Start Here
The first guideline is simple—and surprising. It says that you
should think twice before you follow a standard piece of advice.
Managers often hear that, when they face hard problems, they
should put the norms and values of their organizations and com-
munities front and center. But this approach is risky, and the rea-
son is the murkiness and ambiguity of these norms and values.
To reduce this risk, it is useful to start thinking through a gray
area situation by first focusing on the three questions discussed
in the previous chapters. They have stood the test of time because
they are, among other things, strong antidotes to subjective bias.
The first question says to look at the full range of possible conse-
quences. This means working hard, with other people, to think
broadly, honestly, and objectively about all the important ele-
ments of a situation. The second question focuses on duties. This
means asking: What duties do I have to other people because
they are my fellow human beings, because of the law or because
of commitments my organization has made? The highly prag-
matic third question pushes you to look as realistically as you can
at the risks, uncertainties, and politics of situations.
These first three questions ask you to look externally, objec-
tively, systematically, and factually. Will this wring out all the
bias? No. But nothing can do that. Whatever decisions we make
are—inevitably—as Nietzsche put it, “human, all too human.”
20
But starting with the first three questions is a way to create the
best possible foundation of reliable facts and sound judgments
for whatever decisions you have to make. Once you have this
foundation in place, you can step back from the problem and
think about it in terms of relationships, values, and norms.
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108
Shut Down the Analytical Machinery
For managers facing hard problems, answering the ques-
tion Who are we? requires a different kind of thinking.
Managers typically want to analyze the issue, figure out what
to do, and get started doing it. But answering the fourth
question means looking away from the intricacies and nuances
of a problem and trying instead to see its full context. This
means dimming the sharp, bright light of analysis and try-
ing to get a fresh perspective.
Chester Barnard, one of the great organizational theo-
rists of the twentieth century, was a penetrating thinker who
spent the early decades of his career running companies. He
believed that understanding the larger human and organi-
zational context of problems was a crucial skill of successful
executives. He called this skill “the art of sensing the whole.”
21
This was a partly conscious, partly intuitive sense of how an
organization really worked and what really mattered in the
organization. It was a feel, in part, for all informal, subtle, psy-
chological, and emotional relationships among its members.
Sharply focused analytical effort can make it much harder
to develop a “sense of the whole.” Consider the example of
Sherlock Holmes. He is known for his steel-trap deductive
analysis. But Holmes did more than simply observe and ana-
lyze. His creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, sometimes described
him slouching in an armchair in his small sitting room,
smoking a pipe and staring aimlessly into space. In these
moments, Holmes was musing on a problem, turning it over
in his mind, and looking for new angles.
22
Holmes was doing
a version of design thinking.
23
This is a way of working on
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109
problems that many organizations have recently adopted. It
is open, flexible, relaxed, looks from different angles, toys
with possibilities, and avoids rushing to judgment. Design
thinking is qualitative rather than quantitative, zigzag rather
than linear. It involves alertness to underlying themes and
emerging patterns. It avoids quickly intuited or carefully
calculated “right” answers and depends instead on looser,
ruminative approaches. This kind of thinking draws on our
full humanity—on instinct, feeling, intuition, and sensibility,
rather than raw brainpower and acute analytical focus.
In a talk several years ago at Harvard Business School,
Warren Buffett told students that they should find some way
to “give away” any IQ points they had above 130.
24
Buffett
was clearly suggesting that analytical intelligence is valuable
but can also be a trap. To answer the subtle question of Who
are we?, you need to stop hammering on the anvil of a prob-
lem and take time to reflect on its context. The next three
guidelines offer ways to do this. Each suggests a different
focus for this reflection: your real self-interest, your organiza-
tion’s story, and others’ likely perspective on the problem you
are dealing with.
Reflect on Your Real Self-Interest
Underlying the fourth humanist question and all the practi-
cal guidance in this chapter is a radical idea: that we may not
really understand our own self-interest, if we think of ourselves
simply as autonomous actors. Of course, this is a natural way to
think and, from Machiavelli’s perspective, it makes particular
sense. As he sees it, we live and work in an uncertain, competi-
tive, and political world. When we are with family and friends,
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