My husband and I started as a small “ma and pa” non-union trucking company.  At first the union pretty much left us alone.  However, as we started adding employees, they began to pester us.  The pestering wasn’t too bad as long as there was enough work to go around.  However, when the housing market took a nose-dive a few years back and the number of job sites began to dwindle, the union BA’s needed to protect those job sites for their union members.  During those times, the little pestering turned into full-blown union warfare!

It seems you either believe in unions or you don’t.  The culture of our little trucking organization was non-union, through and through.  Not only were my husband and I of non-union mindset, but so were our employees.  In almost all cases, somewhere along the line, each of us had some bad experience with the union that soured us.

There came the point where this warfare became completely out-of-hand.  Threats were being made, job site stalking took place, vehicle chases ensued, the police were called on several occasions.  It became so serious that people’s lives were in danger.  We met with union officials to attempt resolve, but beliefs were so instilled on both sides, there was just no budging.

In his book, I Am Right – You Are Wrong, Dr. de Bono explains the inherent behavior of our brain that actually fosters this type of situation.  He explains that our experiences and our perceptions join forces to form our beliefs.  And then in a circularity fashion, these beliefs then begin to bias the way we experience things, perceive things. We see things in such a manner that reinforces our beliefs, essentially our experiences and perceptions are now being swayed because of our beliefs and vice-versa.  No logic nor reasoning can break this cycle.

This circularity of beliefs is just a very small facet of this book by Dr. de Bono.  His ultimate message is that our traditional “logical” thinking habits are letting us down.   He believes logic has served us well within the areas of technology, but within matters of human affairs, such as our world’s economic crises, environmental crises, terrorism, war, racism, we are not doing so well.  Dr. de Bono believes the key lies in a better understanding of perception and developing deliberate “perceptual” thinking skills.  He believes we have tended to evade perception and rely on logic because we have never truly understood perception.  Logic is so precise, A+B=C, but perception can have such variability, ambiguity, uncertainty.  Dr. de Bono believes logic must take a back seat to perception in our thinking abilities if we are to make the world a better place for future generations.

If I may, I’d like to return to the union/non-union issue for a moment.  And, if I may, ask a question that I am sure to spark debate.  Do we still needs unions today in the United States?  Unions were institutionalized many years ago to serve and protect our workers.  They were a needed driving force that has seen to it that our state and federal governments put regulations in place for the welfare of our nation’s workforce.  Have they now outlived their purpose?  Have they become a bureaucracy?  A bureaucracy comes to be when a body of people was originally formed for a specific purpose but over time, changes that purpose to solely the perpetuation of themselves.

Dr. de Bono uses bureaucracy as an example of one of many faulty institutions embedded within the framework of our society that impedes the process of change for the humanistic side of our existence relative to the amazing rate of change taking place within the technological side of our existence.

This book, I Am Right You Are Wrong, I believe is an excellent tool to open a leaders eyes to the variables and obstacles that hinder our creative thinking abilities.  Dr. de Bono insists it is our creative thinking, opposed to our critical thinking, that is going to take us successfully into the future.  It is our critical, logical thinking that fosters the arrogance and cleverness of I am right, you are wrong, but it is our creative thinking that fosters the vision and wisdom needed to take us successfully into the future.

Isn’t taking us successfully into the future the ultimate chore of an effective strategic leader?

When Mark made that bold declaration I’m sure each one of us class members had our own perceptions running through our minds, our own perception of leadership, our own perception of pornography, and wondering how on earth the two were alike.

If we were to have compared our perceptions, some would be similar, but each would be different as well.

Wait a minute … each would be different … but that’s what we each believe … what we each believe leadership to be … what we each believe pornography to be … that means we all believe something different … all of us, our beliefs are different … who is right? … who is wrong?

I Am Right You Are Wrong, written by Dr. Edward de Bono, is the title of our text for this course.

Wow!  I couldn’t help but think … Ouch! … the arrogance of that title!  But isn’t that really what each one of us is thinking, even if we don’t come right out and say it?… I am right you are wrong!

I’ll have to admit, I’m very anxious to dig into this book of Dr. de Bono’s and see what he has to say and how it might relate to strategic leadership.

By the way, would you like to know how leadership is like pornography? … each are difficult to define, but you sure recognize them when you see them!

I still listen to cassettes on my Walkman-
so wake me up when the next big thing develops…

I hope you like this poem.

(You can download it for free.)