Can Culture be a Truth Seeking Machine?

04/05/2024

In my post Culture and Product Strategy is Truth Seeking and Truth Telling, I start out by talking about the role of truth in strategy, and how, in the end, a good product strategy is only successful if the underlying beliefs are also true and little-known.

The question then is, "How does my company find this truth?"

Typically, it starts with the founder who has a deep insight, one that few others in the market also have, and is able to execute on it. The more right and the more contrary to popular opinion, the more dramatic the result.

Apple is perhaps the canonical example. At a time when Windows was very modular and worked with everyone on the peripherals, chips, and manufacturing side, being both a hardware and software manufacturer probably seemed a losing proposition.

Yet, Steve Jobs was, in fact, right in his decision.

But the expectation that the founder is a Steve Jobs with a similarly-sized opportunity is likely a bit of a rarity.

So what's really needed then is a culture that empowers the team and the leadership to hone in quickly on the truthful strategy and execute it.

Some may argue that the only way to do this is through more of a dictatorship: the founder must have that clear vision and insight.

I'll break down this into two scenarios: 1) the founder is right; but the rest of the team and company don't see it as clearly -- this is also not good (although a meaningful percentage of founders probably do not care); 2) the founder is, in fact, wrong, but the rest of the team or key players of the team do have an insight that needs to be aligned by removing or reducing the founder blindspot.

The latter, if done well, gives the founder scale and scope.

I suspect that Amazon's Jeff Bezos had something akin to this given the vast empire. I can't imagine that he birthed every successful idea alone; instead, something about the company gave them an innovation engine within that allowed these them to activate these new opportunities.

What, then, are the mechanics of this machine?

Culture of Truth Seeking

One of the common "strategies" of start-ups (probably most companies) is to follow the opinion of the highest-ranking person. Often this will be the CEO or founder.

But this is the opinion.

In the case where the founder is correct, and the opinion is not just a vagary that comes and goes, but is a conviction and a truth, this is fine.

But many times, it's just an opinion, and it may change based on the news, a Tweet, a conversation with someone influential, a change in mood....this is not truth seeking.

In order for a company to be successfully truth-seeking, it needs to be sufficiently empowering to truth-telling.

Alas, this is far easier said than done.

Truth-telling can also appear to empower the opinions of people who are not the CEO or founder, but who are the loudest, most direct, most preferred or trusted by the CEO.

That, too, is not going to result in a truth-seeking culture.

But this can be the default model of a founder who isn't sure, or has built an inner-circle of people who often tell the CEO what they want to here (securing their place in the inner-circle).

It's far too easy to have a culture statement or values statement which says it honors the truth; but it's a very different thing to actually live it out.

Why is this?

Because "speaking truth to power" is how most martyrs die.

There's asymmetry everywhere:

By its very nature, building upon truth from people outside of the founder's self (or in some cases, the inner-circle) is inherently hard. There are too many mechanisms in place to create a false reality.

What then can be done?

Technically the product management skill of having "crucial conversations" and negotiating with stakeholders comes into play.

It's a vital and necessary skill -- and the more people who exercise this skill well can collectively make a difference.

But this is not something that a leader can easily foster.

Sure, those books can be placed as a required reading list. But the best outcome is that they get read. The worst outcome is someone actually tries to apply the principles and get punished.

The short, simplest answer is to reduce the power asymmetry: higher someone external who doesn't have downside for telling the truth.

Consultants notoriously have filled this type of role, but even they face an incentive problem: if they say something unpopular, they can also get canned and lose out on future work.

And for consultants, the key that they need is that future revenue stream to pay down the cost of acquiring the initial engagement.

So the cost can't be as big as hiring a firm of a team, making it hard keep the revenue stream contractual despite the tough news. But it also needs to be meaningful enough to retain someone who can speak the truth in a credible way.

This isn't the only solution, but if a leadership team or CEO isn't willing to entertain at least this level of truth telling by directly addressing the power imbalance first, then it's a clear signal there's no point in trying anything else.

What happened to culture?

I started this article about culture eating strategy, and that the root of this culture must be truth-telling and truth-seeking.

Yet, I'm starting with an outside consultant, which could mean nothing is cultural.

But that's not necessarily true.

While culture persists and is embraced from the bottom, it's set from the top. And so having someone with the access and credibility to seek truth and engage the CEO in a truth-seeking mindset is the first step.

Once the CEO becomes comfortable with a framework for seeking the truth and having truth-seeking conversations to understand the direction of the business, this leader will be encouraging of genuine, authentic truth-telling. In fact, the leader should not only be equipped to encourage the truth-telling, but to sniff-out the bs to redirect people to provide clarity in the truth.

This cultural influence starting with the top does need an outsider.

Not just because of the power asymmetry.

But because of the nature of the conversations. These can't just be about the facts or product strategy of the business.

For there to be cultural impact, these need to be