The power of honesty, and a contest

This is an attempt to rewrite a long and insightful post from a week ago that was eaten by the Internet and my own stupidity. Chances are that it will be shorter and less insightful, but that's because I'm still kicking myself for losing the original post. I'm hoping it will be worth your time and mine. Special thanks this time to the people who maintain Wikipedia, without whom I'd have to do real research.

I spend a fair amount of time talking about the importance of honesty, transparency, and willingness to admit error as keys to maintaining a relationship with customers. The book "Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts" illustrates the mechanisms behind why those good qualities aren't more common in life and in business. The reason is self-justification. In brief, our brains edit our memories whether we want them to or not, in an effort to reduce cognitive dissonance between our self-image and the fact that we screwed up.

Self-justification is like the Dark Side of the Force: once you start down that path, forever will it dominate your destiny. It can be identified and controlled, but it's always something to watch out for. I've done it, you've done it, the person you admire most in the world has done it. It's like that old joke about masturbation -- "We know that 90% of men masturbate, and 60-75% of women do it...and the rest lie about it."

It's possible to get off the slippery slope (of self-justification, not masturbation ... that's a nasty image right there), but it takes courage. Again in brief, a great example of this is the incident involving Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of James Frey's fabricated autobiography "A Million Little Pieces." Yes, I know it's old news. It's still a fine illustration, and the authors of "Mistakes Were Made" use it.

When The Smoking Gun announced it had investigated Frey's story and found it to be crammed with falsehoods, Oprah initially backed Frey with strong statements about the emotional truth of the story and its value. As the truth became clear, Oprah could have done what most people would do, and stuck with her initial statements, justifying them as true as far as she knew when the book was presented to her, and the literal truth of it isn't an issue because it's such a strong story from which we can derive great lessons anyway. It would have ruined her reputation and destroyed her as a brand (yes, Oprah is a brand). Instead, she apologized, honestly and publicly, for her part in misleading the world and perpetuating a lie. It was a ballsy move, and it cemented her place of respect in American culture.

She brought Frey onto her show as part of her own apology, and took him to task for representing fiction as real life; even then, he weaseled around any admission of wrongdoing. Heard much from James Frey lately?

The last U.S. President to truly own up to the responsibility for a mistake was John F. Kennedy, regarding the Bay of Pigs invasion. When he admitted he screwed up, his approval ratings shot through the roof. Since then, we've had everything from "I am not a crook" to "it is best to defeat them there so we don't have to face them here"; from "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" to all the backtalk surrounding Iran-Contra. Is there any wonder why we don't trust government anymore?

Whether it's in business, politics, or personal life, please please PLEASE realize that if you might be wrong, it's better to admit it up front than to be found out, and have it dragged out of you later. Fight the urge to self-justify. Don't give in to the Dark Side.

================================

Now it's time for a contest. No matter how funny I find "Series of Tubes" to be as a title for a blog, I realize it doesn't really describe my subject matter. I'm opening it up to you, my handful of loyal readers: what should I call this thing, fer realz? The best suggestion (the sole criteria being my capricious nature and my twisted sense of humor) will get the job, as well as an outpouring of gratitude. Please note that I'm also incredibly lazy, so a sufficiently impassioned defense of the current title has as good a shot as something new.

Comments

[cheap aion kinah]

Now it's time for a contest. No matter how funny I find "Series of Tubes" to be as a title for a blog, I realize it doesn't really describe my subject matter. I'm opening it up to you, my handful of loyal readers: what should I call this thing, fer realz? The best suggestion (the sole criteria being my capricious nature and my twisted sense of humor) will get the job, as well as an outpouring of gratitude. Please note that I'm also incredibly lazy, so a sufficiently impassioned defense of the current title has as good a shot as something new.