Narratives to Nowhere
💋 I'd prefer a romance novel 💋
“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
I don’t have a leadership philosophy.1
Perhaps this surprises you.
Sometimes, I worry readers hope that there will come a point at which we will learn a single idea that can guide leadership practice instead of learning a constant stream of new ideas in no particular order.
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no all-powerful idea will be forthcoming.2
Ideas are tools in a toolbox. Skilled practitioners show mastery by knowing how to properly use certain tools in certain situations and other tools in others. A person who tries to find a single tool to do every job is someone who ultimately seeks a shortcut, and leadership has no shortcut.
However, like a late-night infomercial for a tool that meets all of your needs,3 there is always some well-credentialed person claiming to offer a grand theory of leadership. I read their books because I am a sucker, but the theory never delivers what it promises (although it often leads to decent book sales and speaking engagements for the author, which I suppose is something.)
At the same time, the desire to construct a grand theory of leadership (and my willingness to fall for it) is guided by a heuristic that impacts daily leadership work. So buckle up.
Narrative Fallacy
While I hope you’ll take the previous section seriously and be wary of anyone claiming to offer a grand leadership theory, I know this is a losing battle. Ultimately, well-meaning people consistently want to simplify complex situations by identifying an illusory underlying pattern.
This is the narrative fallacy.
The narrative fallacy is the idea that people seek larger patterns where none exist. The term tends to be attributed to our new friend Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Black Swan.4 He writes:
“We like stories, we like to summarize, and we like to simplify, i.e., to reduce the dimension of matters. The first of the problems of human nature…is what I call the narrative fallacy. (It is actually a fraud, but, to be more polite, I will call it a fallacy.) The fallacy is associated with our vulnerability to overinterpretation and our predilection for compact stories over raw truths. It severely distorts our mental representation of the world.”5
Taleb wants us to resist the narrative fallacy but acknowledges that this is impossible because people have a “limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them.”6 Humans want to figure out some explanation for problems with many causes, so we create a narrative that links a bunch of previously disparate stories into a single one. It’s flawed logic, but it’s our logic (even if it is illogical.7)
In the context of Jewish organizations, we are constantly inundated with attempts to fit the choices of millions of Jews into narratives that rarely hold up to scrutiny. In fact, many of the grand pronouncements this newsletter mocks are simply versions of the narrative fallacy:
Synagogues are dead
So are denominations…
But Jewish camping will save us
Or Israel trips
Or maybe social justice
(Unless social justice destroys us by tying our destiny to cancel culture)
However, none of this matters because Haredi Judaism is the only Judaism with a bright future because Haredim have the most babies
Seen in isolation, these narratives are mostly “harmless” as long as you don’t believe them. The minute you do, you start seeing patterns where none exists, which makes impactful communal action difficult because groups buy into flawed collective narratives. And that dysfunction can turn harmful when we look at the narrative fallacy in the context of debating the Simhat Torah Massacre in Israel this past October.
I wonder every day how this once-in-a-generation tragedy will change the long-term fates of Israelis and Palestinians. And truthfully, I do not think anyone is even close to answering that question. But that doesn’t stop people from pushing strongly held narratives that prove weak upon even modest scrutiny. And I’ve yet to see a single noted thought leader about Israel announce that their grand theory of the conflict completely changed because of this event. And I doubt I will…
Taleb urges us to “avoid the ills of the narrative fallacy…[by favoring]...experimentation over storytelling, experience over history, and clinical knowledge over theories.”8 In a sense, this is why I prefer to look at the ideas we explore as tools that are valuable in particular situations precisely because there is no grand pattern. Sometimes, a concept you will learn works great; other times, it won’t work at all.
But it’s a great excuse to keep reading.
The Fund
While I could show you plenty of leadership books promising to offer a grand theory of leadership, the most famous recent one to hit bookshelves is Principles by hedge fund titan Ray Dalio. I bought this book, read it cover-to-cover, and even read a distilled version of the Principles turned into a children’s book.
At the same time, I wasn’t proud of my purchases. Today, I’m even less proud of them after reading Rob Copeland's The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend to focus on Dalio. I have no investment in Dalio’s success or failure, but I would urge anyone who praises Dalio’s principles to read Copeland’s book.
Decades ago, Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates and turned it into the world’s largest hedge fund. As such, it’s not surprising that Dalio would prematurely buy into his own brilliance (he’s in good company.) However, Copeland notes in his introduction that Dalio,
“might be the first to claim that he alone has discovered the solution to what he sees as two of mankind’s greatest challenges: Our reluctance to disagree with one another, and our desire to pursue meaningful lives.”
Dalio is not just a billionaire; he’s a billionaire who believes that his pathway to riches is also a pathway to solving human conflict and misery.
(Yes, you read that right.)
Of course, managing disagreement and finding meaning in our lives are noble goals, and perhaps Dalio’s success has something to teach us about each. However, Copeland’s thesis is that Dalio’s commitment to his principles is betrayed by two primary sins: (1) the principles continuously change without an internal logic, and (2) those principles never seem to apply to Dalio.
The Fund describes an organization where every meeting was recorded, public tribunals were convened to resolve highly sensitive disputes, and employees could be ranked on baseball cards based on what only seem to be arbitrary changes. I could share the horror stories with you (and there are many), but the one that stuck with me the most is an exchange between Dalio and a high-profile hire named Jon Rubinstein.
When Rubinstein is hired as co-CEO of Bridgewater, he is tested on the principles like everyone else…and flunks. However, since Dalio claims to want honest feedback, Rubinstein uses this failure as an opportunity to see how much Dalio really wants feedback by sharing his main issue with the principles: the length. It does not go well:
Once Dalio caught word that his new prized hire had struggled in boot camp, he asked for some time to chat. Rubinstein, cognizant of everything he’d learned about the Bridgewater founder’s love of raw honesty, decided to tell Dalio what was on his mind:
“You’ve got three hundred and seventy-five Principles. Those aren’t principles. Toyota has fourteen principles. Amazon has fourteen principles. The Bible has ten. Three hundred and seventy-five can’t possibly be principles. They are an instruction manual.”
Dalio blamed himself. It’s my fault, the Bridgewater founder said, for expecting you to appreciate such a complex system so quickly. The Principles could not simply be memorized and then instantly absorbed—the only way to understand them was to live them. Dalio called The Principles “the way of being.”
It was around this time that Rubinstein thought to himself, Shit.9
Dalio claims that raw honesty is critical to his success, yet he cannot even take a relatively innocuous piece of feedback (i.e. “the principles are too long.”) This is a bad, bad, sign.10
You will have to read Copeland’s book to decide whether or not you agree with my assessment. That said, if you find yourself being devoted to Principles, I would say read them at your own risk.
The Bully of Bridgewater
28
The total number of books that sold more than 500,000 copies in the United States in 2022. Out of approximately 300,000 published titles…11
(Thanks to Jason Colavito for this information.)
What I Read This Week
Why Adults Are More Imaginative Than Children: My creativity muscles strengthen as I age. Apparently, I’m in the minority about my perspective, but apparently, there is science to back me up.
Soldier On: Tributes to Charlie Munger continue, and I found this piece particularly powerful. So much wisdom.
Jewish Workplace 2023: Leading Edge released its latest report on Jewish workplaces. No matter the findings or recommendations, it’s still the best data we have on Jewish workplaces.
Rethinking the Annual Performance Review: Annual Performance Reviews (APRs) are standard practice in most organizations, but does the status quo make sense? Corporate Rebels say “no.”
What Happens to a School Shooter’s Sister: Powerful piece.
I also don’t read romance novels.
At least not from this newsletter.
Like the Ginsu knife…
By the way, if you read the entire book in the week since I recommended it, I applaud you. But I will assume most of us mere mortals cannot do that.
Ibid.
As Josh Lyman once said, “That’s a permeating syllogism.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 145.
For someone who has a problem with brevity, telling me that my essay, speech, letter, etc. is too long is hardly a personal attack. If anything, the people who warn me about going on for too long are usually the people who want me to succeed the most (because they do not want my valid points to be lost in a sea of unnecessary words.) If I can’t take that feedback, it is likely I will react even worse to more substantial feedback.
Apparently, eight of these books were by Colleen Hoover, a romance novelist. Now footnote 1 finally makes sense.