Like everyone in the world, I've been watching and listening to experts and trying to get insights into "the truth", the cause and who's responsible. As the pandemic quickly ascended, it became apparent that the seriousness of the circumstances were creating mass chaos, fear and confusion throughout America and the world. Within a few days, our whole country was in a state of lockdown and an invisible, unknown illness had taken leadership of our world. Never before in my lifetime had there been so many unknowns. Before I knew it, so much of the visible certainty that I had become accustomed to had vanished.
Initially the masses of information that came to me was through world leaders (politicians) who were translated by the news media. That information was quickly supplemented by scientists (epidemiologists) who provided a medical perspective of the health threat. The scientists information was translated by data analysts who were compiling masses of data from disparate sources to monitor progression of the invisible threat. The rate of the spread and contagious nature was enough to alarm most people around the world. As the obvious threat became reality to us, state governors and health officials began providing state and local information relevant to where we live. People on the front lines of hospitals, doctors, nurses and patients were providing information about the reality of the virus - COVID-19 and how it was affecting their lives first hand. And if we didn't have enough to worry about, the economists began providing alarming information about the dark future of our economy - jobs lost, no income, no savings and no way for people to help themselves or each other. As the fear and desperation landed in the lives of the American people, many wanted accountability and answers about who was responsible for preventing this kind of hurt and pain. Protests began and protesters were providing masses of information about injustice, inequality and the unrest it was creating.
Many of you are probably like me experiencing information overload that has left you with more questions than answers about the heart of the matter,truth and who is responsible.It seems like the masses of information provided by the experts has exacerbated the problems more than unifying the solutions. From my vantage point, I'm a baby boomer who majored in Business in college and spent most of my career helping businesses solve large, complex, fragmenting problems. I have used data driven decisions to help people get to the heart of the problem which help apply common sense solutions resulting in solutions impacting the common good. The fundamental principle and first step is developing "a single version of the truth". The goal overall is to gather relevant, unbiased, reliable data from reliable sources that is helpful in communicating to and uniting the people who will affect change. Communicating truth and building trust is an important part of the this whole process. The heart of the matter and solutions are in the people, not in the data because of the lack of reliability and biased assumptions that can be applied to it. data driven decisions should only be used at a hypothesis level for confirming the problem and not for defining the execution of the solutions. It is also why there is still confusion and inaccuracies in what experts are recommending.
The biggest threat to this process is getting people to trust each other, to trust a single version of the truth and to trust the outcome is for the common good. What I've learned from practicing this same process over many years is 90% of the changes and solutions fail because the people who are key to the solutions don't:
- Agree on a single version of the truth
- Trust the reliability of the source
- Understand the common sense wisdom of the solution
- Act for the sake of the common good
The relevance of this to the problems, pandemic, and politics of today is that the data is still presenting trending and not truth. In addition, the raw data does not complete the foundation for truth. Scientists and analysts are still taking the data and applying their expert assumptions to the analysts to try to prove or disprove the trends that are relevant in the data.Therefore, my caution about believing data conclusions by scientists, economists and other "ists" is the data is still verifying the problem so experts are closer to understanding the problem but still a long way from verifying the truth, defining the solution and motivating people to act on common sense and common good changes.
So what is the heart of the matter, what is the truth, who do you believe and who is responsible for the problems, pandemic, politics and protests? Based upon what I've learned, I would suggest that we are the leaders responsible, accountable and at the heart of the answers. The single version of the truth (the solution) resides in us. This very complex world problem can be simple to solve with common sense, if we take responsibility for our own hearts, thoughts and actions. In our new normal, the simple truth is working together for the common good to provide the unity, equality, justice, peace and hope we are all seeking.
So what do you think? What's your compass on the single version of truth? Who do you believe? Are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution?
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