Have you noticed how many people are running about spouting completely uninformed opinions? I have no problem with someone who has a lot of opinions – as long as those opinions are based on something. But we seem to have evolved into a world where everybody is an expert – regardless of their education, experience, or depth of research.
I just got off the phone with an uninformed-opinionator. We needed a new thermocouple for our AGA cooker, and when I called a local dealer to ask for their service department, the Opinionator informed me they didn’t have one. She said to call AGA directly.
“In the UK?” I asked, “Isn’t there someone closer to our time zone?”
“No!” she said. Well, her voice said ‘No Dummy!’ but she left out the adjective out of courtesy, I’m sure. “AGA isn’t made in the UK. They’re in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.”
“Maybe we’re not talking about the same thing,” I tried. “I’m referring to an AGA classic cookstove, made by Aga-Rayburn.”
“Ye-ess.” The woman replied, with barely veiled impatience. “I know what you’re talking about. I have one on the show floor right in front of me. They do make some ranges for other countries, but they are completely different from the ones in the United States. Now, would you like the Cherry Hill number or not?”
Desperate to get off the phone with this woman, I accepted the number in Cherry Hill. The young man who answered the phone promptly answered my first question regarding where AGAs are made by saying, “Oh, we’re very proud of the fact that our classic cookstoves are made in Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, United Kingdom. Why do you ask?”
He subsequently gave me information for someone who could supply me with a thermocouple by tomorrow, and I was on my merry way to getting my cooker relit.
Where on earth did that Opinionator get her information? I’m fascinated by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. This goes all the way back to Father K., a teacher in the Catholic High School I attended, who incorrectly taught the Rhythm Method to my 9th grade "Catholic Family" class. When I told my (Jewish) mother what we had been taught, she turned pale. Then she questioned whether I could have understood it incorrectly. Nope – I understood it right. God knows how many fertile teenage girls had been taught that the safe time to have sex was in the middle of their cycle before someone (my mother) got around to correcting Father K. It’s sort of a funny story, but each time I’ve reflected on it over the years the deep destructiveness of this misinformation becomes more disturbing to me.
Not that many years later I remember getting instruction from my boss, the daughter of the fellow who owned the chain of retail stores where I was a store manager. She hadn’t gone to college and had never worked for anyone but her father. I remember that she was six years older than me, and deeply impressed with herself and her business knowledge. As we sat discussing the folly of my proposal to keep the store open until 8:00 PM on weeknights, to accommodate women who worked full time, she said to me, only mildly condescendingly, “Andrea, imagine for a moment that I were going to the bank to ask for a loan to start a business. And imagine that I wanted to stay open until 8:00 PM, when every competitor in this area is staying open until 6:00 PM. What do you think they would say to me? Tell me, how does that feel to you? Does that feel right? Hmm??”
Well, it did feel right. But she was the boss. So we didn’t stay open late. Six years later they were out of business. Which was sad, because it was a good business. But what was really sad was that she had no idea how uninformed her opinions were.
There is deep risk in trusting the idea that just because we intuit something to be correct, it is. But how do we find good information? It’s not as mind-boggling as you might think.
If you really want to get to the heart of information, some research is necessary. Here’s one method I enjoy:
1. Go to the bookstore. Have a pad of paper and a pen with you. You’re not shopping – you’re copying.
2. Go find the business books on the topic about which you are interested. Grab all of them, and find a comfy chair.
2. Go find the business books on the topic about which you are interested. Grab all of them, and find a comfy chair.
3. Look in the back of those books for references. They may be offered as a reference list, a citation list, or an appendix.
4. If a book offers no references, there’s a good chance the author is practicing the fine art of MSU*.
5. Jot down the references. Finish your cup of coffee.
At this point, you have some knowledge regarding which authors are citing research to support their ideas and theories, and which authors are simply reporting their experience and opinions. Does that mean you only want to read the authors who present references? Not necessarily. If I accepted responsibility for security of a mid-sized city, I would read anything Rudy Giuliani has to say on the topic, whether he cited references or not. His experience counts. The point of this exercise is to know whether the information you are accepting is based on expert opinion or based on research.
If more business people would take this step, we would be making a lot more informed business decisions. And you can go further. You can learn the quality of research if you wish. Just jump on the internet and look up the references the authors cite. The most qualified reference information is that which has gone through an editorial or peer review. This is different than an edited book. Peer reviewed and refereed journals employ a panel of experts to scrutinize submissions. Work that can not be validated through review of research methodologies and rationale does not get published. Time Magazine, The Economist, and Fast Company are not peer reviewed. These publications employ writing staff and they have opinions and agendas. Should you stop reading these magazines? I don’t think so! But you should understand that they are not presenting vetted research – they are presenting news, and they are sharing ideas and experiences -- which may or may not stand the test of time.
On the other hand, publications such as Psychological Bulletin, MIT’s Sloan Management Review, and Marketing Science are publications that submit scholarly work to the scrutiny of experts prior to publishing. Does this make their papers bullet-proof? No, it doesn’t. But it does mean that the authors are thinking critically – i.e., strenuously challenging their own opinions – about their subject matter.
Then there are the not-scholarly-reviewed-but-not-newsmagazine publications, such as Harvard Business Review and The Economic Journal. These are not peer reviewed, but are among the echelon of peer reviewed journals due to the high level of the researchers and the fact that their publishing reputations depend on the quality and defensibility of their product. I’ll include a list of refereed journals on which I depend for business knowledge at the end of this post.
So, here’s my point (did you think I’d strayed too far? It’s a habit, I’m afraid). If your next-door neighbor advised you to put butter on a raging burn on your child’s hand, you wouldn’t do it. You’d recognize they were suffering from the inability to distinguish an old wive’s tale from good first aid. But what do you do with the business-person who is unable to distinguish between their opinion and good business? How do you make sure that person is not you?
By being engaged in your business knowledge. By looking for information from supportable sources. By knowing when you are listening to someone’s opinion, when you are learning from someone’s experience, and when you are receiving the results of someone’s research.
As we head into a time of economic contraction, the stakes will be higher for every business. Some will survive, and others won’t. But except for a few cases of dumb luck (you’re not planning on depending on that, are you?), the ones who survive will be those who are very serious about challenging their own opinions.
The Opinionator I spoke with today was laughable. Father K stopped teaching “Catholic Family” class the following year, after my mother spoke with the superintendent. The daughter of the retail chain owner? I ran into her seven or eight years after the stores had closed. She was a frustrated mess. She had started one business idea after another, but never could keep them going, and she didn’t like being “just a cog in a wheel” as she put it, so she couldn’t work for anyone else. The poor thing had never learned to suffer the indignity of having to justify her positions.
The next-best-thing in the world is to learn to be a good thinker by working for tough bosses who require you to justify your ideas and opinions. The best thing in the world?
Be your own tough boss.
*MSU. Making Stuff (or substitute other S-word here) Up
Here’s the promised list of journals and magazines. I’ve starred the ones I read regularly, just in case you’re curious.
Peer Reviewed Journals:
- American Economic Review
- International Journal of Applied Management and Technology*
- International Journal of Operations and Production Management*
- Journal of International Business Studies*
- MIT Sloan Management Review*
- Management Accounting Quarterly*
- Supply Chain Management: An International Journal*
Academic Journals (not refereed, but considered to present high quality, supportable research):
- Harvard Business Review*
- International Journal of Business*
- Journal of Administrative Sciences
- Journal of Economic Theory*
- Journal of Finance*
- Journal of Individual Employment Rights
(c) 2007, Andrea M. Hill
