I am amazed at how good we humans are at describing “reality” to suit our needs – in other words, justification. Last holiday season, I heard two of my relatives describe the same trip in ways so different that you would have thought they came from different planets. One described the 90-mile trek as “close to two hours drive with major traffic issues and lots of road construction” while the other described the identical trip as “only about a 100 minute drive, with newly-constructed roads that make traffic no problem.”
As I tried to make sense of just which description actually matched the voyage, it occurred to me that I have been guilty of this in my role as the CIO. I have, on more than one occasion, found a reason why one of my folks should not be invited to a certain company function. I am not alone. I heard a colleague once say that his network administrator wasn’t the “staff meeting type.” Besides, my colleague argued, “those computer folks just start talking ‘technese’ and nobody understands them anyway.” Absence justified, meeting averted.
Read more at:
http://www.cio.com/weighin/column.html?CID=19054