False Conclusions
A friend and I were talking about what leads to a company’s downfall. It can be a lot of things. I thought it would be good to cover one cause.
Unfortunate as it is, “Gaslighting” has been a part of corporate culture in America for a long time. I come across it regularly. It’s usually not talked about. It can be company-wide or isolated to just one person. You see it in many forms, and it occurs in even the best companies, and sometimes without malicious intent, but often it’s in a form to put a spin on an uncomfortable situation. The company will insist the facts didn’t happen when they did, or that the employee was good or bad when they were neither. Here is a good article on the subject by Shonna Waters, PhD.
In 2019, we were screening PR firms for a client company, and one PR firm was proud of how they would spin falsehoods into positive press and steer perceptions. We were appalled, and of course they didn’t win our business. They were especially proud of their political spins for state politicians turning falsehoods into reality in Washington State elections. Gaslighting has now become a term more closely associated with misleading someone rather than convincing someone that what they thought was real, wasn’t. I’m talking about the term as applied to resetting history or the personal accomplishments of employees.
You see it most often when someone leaves a company, the ex-employee will unknowingly become the subject of gaslighting by their former coleagues. It happens without the employee having any awareness that it’s underway. Suddenly old friends in the company stop communicating and their reputations become tarnished without them knowing why, or for that matter participating in any way. It’s so common, few think much of it in day to day corporate life as if it’s become the new norm. “They left because…” or “We really didn’t need them, because…” and, “We pushed them out because…” and so on, but usually with a lot of negative so-called “facts” about the ex-employee that never happened.
One CEO will go out of his way to gaslight his senior team into believing who he fired, usually for no reason other than they were calling him out, deserved it. They employees knew better, but over time, they usually shifted their opinion after of that employee after a continued onslaught of gaslighting. Tell a lie long enough and it easy becomes the truth. In one case, it was someone stopping internal fraud who was forced out, only to be gaslit to damage their credibility. A CEO was committing fraud, someone in the company confronted him and he found a way to discredit their work and force them out.
Sometimes, it’s not gaslighting at all, but a misinterpretation of evidence related to someone’s habits. I thought about a recent example that had no harmful intent. A friend I know, who I’ll call “Jim,” was visiting another friend, “Tim” for a few days and commented that Tim’s entire kitchen pantry was packed full of sugary snacks. Jim commented that Tim who was already overweight, and obviously wasn’t eating healthy, and that it explained some of Tim’s health and fitness issues. He went so far as to tell others to help intervene. Jim was drawing what seemed like a reasonable conclusion, except, Tim had a different explanation, one that was the opposite of what Jim concluded.
As it turns out, the snacks were there because Tim had a large group with friends with kids who came to visit a few weeks prior. Not knowing what they ate and in the spirit of saving time, Tim bought lots of snacks of all types so he would be covered. As it turned out, nobody was interested in the sugary snacks and consumed everything else, leaving the sugar snacks behind. Tim was only guilty of making the wrong guess, and the visiting group didn’t at all eat what he purchased, so everything sat in the pantry untouched and unopened from weeks earlier.
It was easier to draw the false conclusion. The snacks were in the pantry because nobody ate them, not even Tim.
This is how gaslighting often works. Someone is accused of something that had nothing to do with the reality of the situation, similar to the pantry example, but it’s spun into the opposite of what happened. I saw it at one company where the COO was blamed for an office lease and buildout who’s decision occurred before the COO was even hired.
In our work, we’re often handed what turns into weak evidence about a company’s cause and effect. It shows up in many forms which is why we dig as deep as we do. Ultimately, it’s a massive cost savings when you nail the right diagnosis of the problem. Sometimes the person who’s blamed for a problem was innocent all along.
Gaslighting also occurs when protecting behaviors, or making a case to either shut down or fund various projects. Sometimes it’s in the form of false evidence that a market exists when it doesn’t, or that an employee is doing either a good or terrible job. Many times we’ve asked for an assessment of current employees and have drawn very different conclusions about their capabilities. What we’ve learned from experience is to keep an open mind and while we may have a hunch about a root cause, often things are not as first presented. We encountered a CFO who gaslit anyone who he didn’t like. Unfortunately he was effective until he was caught.
This is why it’s so important to dig deep into cause and effect. It also prevents the dreaded circular argument of identifying the wrong problem and solution, only to end up in the same place again and again. I recently concluded with one client company that their diagnosis of core problems was flawed. This explained why they never made real progress. The CEOs explanation was in error.
The best advice I’ve ever been given was to check my assumptions. It was the three words that led to my purchase of Open Interface North America. Had I not dug a little deeper at the advice of their CEO at the time, we never would have uncovered that the company was still for sale. Those three words changed the course of my entire life and the lesson still comes up again and again. When someone tells you about an employee, hold judgment until you can gather more data, all with the understanding that you could be entirely wrong about what seems so obvious.
The important aspect of any turnaround is knowing your options and know the truth behind the people who remain, including those who left who may have some valuable insights. Just because someone says there are few options, doesn’t mean that’s the case until you dig a little deeper and verify your data. In other words, check your assumptions.