It is not done to call “bullshit”

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It is not done to call “bullshit”.

Is this the first principle, or the last word, in practical risk management?

The JC once spent time in the employment of a financial services firm , a new CEO decided the firm needed an explicit purpose. He convened working groups all around the organisation to settle on something pithy, memorable and meaningful. A diverse cross section of staff, it must have been for they even invited ne’er-do-wells like the JC, were invited to workshops at which we were presented with suggestions formulated for our consideration by the executive board. One was something along the following lines: “Collaborating with our communities to eradicate global inequality”. It wasn’t exactly that, but it was not far off. It definitely aspired, without qualification to global fairness.<ref>They wound up with something predictably anodyne and meaningless like “Reimagining the possibility of investment by connecting the digital world.” The marketing goons loved it.

All around the room nodded in a thoughtful, if non-committal way — it pays not to be too enthusiastic in situations like this, in case it is a trap — except your correspondent, who asked gingerly, whether a bank whose most significant line of revenue accrued from its ultra-high net worth wealth management business — one which, by aspiring to make the super rich richer was really rather committed to increasing inequality — really ought to be saying such a thing.

Given that any commercial organisation is a self-perpetuating autocracy, we should expect a great deal less licence to the free expression by the rank-and-file of uncomfortable opinions than is virtue-signaled by the boss in his daily lectures on the telescreen.

Those who survive in an organisation are shaped and enculturated by it. They do not so much learn not to call “bullshit”, but rather are selected for the sort of sunny disposition from which it does not to occur to them to call “bullshit”.

Such “brand ambassadors” in turn, are a crucial part of the recruitment process — almost everyone is part of the recruitment process, somehow, these days — and so they select people who they think are a “good cultural fit” — that is, rather like them: similarly disinclined to call “bullshit”, or even notice it.

Now, “calling bullshit” might not be actively repressed in the organisation — to the contrary, the politburo may implore their people to do so at every opportunity, and may even mean it. For people are not punished for calling bullshit: they just don’t. It is bred out of them.

But for every well-intending manager who encourages the frank exchange of views, there will be three in HR who wish the world were a safe space were everyone was kind, all points of view respected, and those feeling fragile should free to lie down or have a cry.

Thus, organisations thrive and flourish despite, and not because of, their internal governance.

See also

• Call bullshit
• Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about
• Consultation
• Otto’s razor: don’t assume malice where incompetence is an equally good explanation.
• Thought leader