When Can-Do Conflicts with Candor

There will be plenty of post-mortem analysis of the US intelligence community’s failure to anticipate the precipitous collapse of the Afghan military over the past few weeks. It will take a lot of explaining (or rationalization) to show why, after spending more than $80 billion over 20 years to train the Afghan government forces, such a massive effort yielded such pitiful results.

Whatever transpires from the analysis, it will almost certainly contain multiple factors and reasons, and it would be irresponsible to speculate this early on all of these. When disasters happen, the dots line up and connect perfectly in hindsight, but of course the view is never that clear before it happens.

But one of the factors is worth discussing here, because it applies so well to the business world as well. An article in today’s New York Times states: “Part of the problem, according to former officials, is that the can-do attitude of the military frequently got in the way of candid, accurate assessments of how the Afghan security forces were doing.”

It sounds obvious, but it’s hard to prevent. Imagine being a junior officer being asked to report on how your training efforts are going. What would be the effect on your career prospects if you candidly reported that despite your best efforts, you were pessimistic about their impact?

Now imagine yourself being an account executive or a product manager in a forecasting meeting. Would you do it any differently?

Probably not. America has long been a country where the power of positive thinking is enshrined in our culture. And overall, I believe that has been a good thing. It has enabled us to accomplish incredible feats and helped build the most powerful economy in the world.

But it can go too far. Can-do is almost a religion, where pessimism is a sin and realism is suspected to be. So, when someone reports or forecasts to their managers, they’ll naturally tend to shade toward the bright side, even when they think they’re being absolutely candid. Those managers will in turn take those reports and shade them slightly when they report up to the next level, so you can imagine the possibilities for overconfidence when the “ground truth” gets to the top.

If you’re a leader, here are three things you can do to reconcile can-do and candor:

• Take this saying out of your vocabulary: “Don’t bring me a problem unless you bring me a solution.” If your subordinate finds out about a problem that they’re unequipped to handle, do you really want them to keep quiet about it?
• Go to the gemba. That’s lean-speak for going to the scene of the action to see for yourself.
• Break the path into detail. In his book, Perfectly Confident, business professor Don Moore cites the well-known example that 93% of people rate themselves in the top half of all drivers. But when they ask them to rate themselves on individual skills such as signaling, using mirrors, or backing up, their “overplacement” reduced substantially. Detail helps the dots line up into a truer picture.