This is like one of those orange cone ice creams that you used to get from the ice cream truck. All the way at the bottom, there was a little gum ball, that made the whole cone worth struggling through. I hope you make it to the end.
I have always felt that subjective thought was not less accurate than objective thought… nor less valuable.
In fact, I believe that subjective thought is so very often more accurate and valuable than objective thought and reasoning…
It is simply not transparent and harder to explain.
I have always understood that subjective criteria is simply criteria that we have not gotten smart enough to explain discreetly. Once we come up with a way to explain and speak to subjective criteria… it becomes objective.
The concept of subjective to objective works on so many levels of everything. If concepts, decisions, situations have a hierarchy of complexity… subjectivity is the bottom level of the mountain.
Artists like fluidity and subjectivity. They reject those who try to define things into words. They feel like some things should simply be felt, because there are feelings that we have and experience for which words don’t exist.
Then there are those who need to see everything in a formula. “If it’s not measurable, it doesn’t exist” says Brene Brown in the Power of Vulnerability. She is a sociologist that wants to measure the otherwise unmeasurable.
In business, there is a massive push for “KPIs”… key metrics… you get what you measure… there is this relentless push to measure key drivers. But, so very often organizations, processes, are not easily measurable.
And, when we measure them, we occasionally oversimplify them.
I have had vendors who measured their success metrics and SLAs (service level agreements) and tried to convince me that they were doing great – when the organizational vibe was that they were unresponsive and flailing.
We want so desperately to be objective in business, and yet we are constantly preaching the power of “culture”. And, even then, we want an explicit culture. We want to define it in words. And, so often when we do, it seems corny and unauthentic.
Why can’t we simply accept that business & life require and benefit from a constant tension between what we can measure and what we can feel?
There are those organizations with too many smart people that want to measure everything, and succeed despite their inability to be fully metric driven by objective measures.
At EMG, we work hard to have objective goals and strategies – but I am constantly reminding myself that we must allow ourselves to grow into objective thought and rich metrics.
When you force metrics and too much process into an organization or a process that is too young, you make it artificial. Think dot com era… too much process, too much objectivity… too little subjectivity… too little understanding.
Richness in understanding, maturity in organizations comes from allowing and embracing our subjective thought.
Great management and leadership, I believe pushes toward objective measures, while accepting and embracing subjective leadership where its appropriate.
Our brains are complex tools. Our ability to understand and evaluate happens on so many dimensions. When we consider something, when we evaluate something… using a 1 – 5 number scale is great, but after you measure it…. You must ask yourself… does that rating make sense, and specially does it make sense relative to the other things that I have measured.
Business pushes for objective thought as it should.
But so many successful business people mock objectivity as superficial and overly simplified summaries of experience and expertise.
Managing by “gut feeling” is a dangerous approach that few would preach as a “current best approach”…
And, yet most great businesses have a leader that has used his subjective criteria to develop his vision.
Subjective thought and leadership cannot be evaluated until after results are accomplished or not. It is not explainable (otherwise it would be objective). And, thus it has greater variability potentially.
There are many people that I have worked with, who are fantastic contributors to a business, but whom I would never suggest follow their subjective direction, because they are skewed by their own desires. They are overly selfish or discounting of actual effort required or out of balance in some aspect of their business acumen. When forced to participate in a more objective decision making process, they ultimately align with reason, but left on their own their subjectivity would lead them askew.
NOTE THIS
Those people who allow their subjective thought / criteria to be CONSTANTLY EVOLVED AND EXPANDED and influenced by new information, new thoughts, new learnings are powerful.
Those people who take every piece of new experience to simply CONFIRM what they already knew, end up very "one dimensional" in their subjectivity.
That makes ALL the difference.
You can't express subjective thought and criteria so we lump it all together into one category... but those WHO TRULY LEARN through life become masterful with subjectivty... and those who THINK they learn, but are simply leveraging everything they hear to support what they already believe are dangerous and simple minded.
I so often see the world divided between those looking for the objective explanation, the granularity of understanding. These concepts exist in knowledge.
And I see it in decision making and planning. I see cultures of companies built around the passion for objectivity. And, often the cultures of companies built around the passion of subjectivity are more the artistic, the creative, and the developmental.
I have a VISCERAL reaction to “simple steps to success” or “happiness” or anything. Because in my mind I know…
It just cannot be captured in “7 steps”…
And, yet I almost always read the steps. I tend to agree with some of them – finding great wisdom, or most often remembering great wisdom because there is so much overlap in all of the lists. Disagreeing with some.
Why do I read them?
Because each one of those lists…
EVERYTHING we see,
EVERYTHING we read,
EVERYTHING we learn,
EVERYTHING we value,
EVERYTHING we love,
And EVERYTHING we fear,
Becomes part of our subjective criteria and subjective thought…
The SUBJECTIVE makes our OBJECTIVE mind work…
And, the OBJECTIVE makes our SUBJECTIVE mind work…
Why can’t we just accept a world of AND, not OR?
Why must we be so hell bent on believing only ONE of these two as the “better” way?
Why can’t we allow ourselves to bounce between the two in thinking, in decision making… using the objective as much as possible to COMMUNICATE the why, to CONSIDER the what… but always acknowledging and checking in with the SUBJECTIVE to make sure that it still makes sense in OUR GUT?
Our “gut” is simply our brain, using all of its power to try to guide us in ways that cannot be captured clearly in thoughts or words (otherwise it would make it objective).
My point is simple… don’t try to figure out if objectivity or subjectivity is better.
Don’t demand objectivity before understanding is rich enough to deliver meaningful objective measures.
Allow organizations, decisions, human beings to drive based on subjective thought in part….
ALLOW YOURSELF the willingness to check in with your subjective self…
Part of our disharmony in life is by trying to compare ourselves objectively with others.
When we oversimplify success into an objective set – we very often fail to capture the true value and UNIQUE BEAUTY of every individual, including ourselves.
When we oversimplify success into an objective set – we very often fail by summarizing it into material things first (because they are easy to quantify) NOT because they are more important… and so we feel less than we really are.
Because our unique beauty and value as human beings is COMPLEX…. And often hard to put into words. But those who truly know you… Those who you truly allow into your mind and heart… they know and feel your beauty… they love you… with words they can’t often describe.
And obviously never stop watching closely for results and expected outcomes… just allow how you feel and how others feel as part of it all to be an important consideration.
Subjectivity, fluidity, feeling isn’t so terrible. It is, I believe, very often with rational beings a much more cognitive and comprehensive guide and compass.
Strive for objectivity.
Embrace subjectivity.
And, leverage them both.
And, somewhere in that… give yourself permission to find the very amazing and unique beauty and value that you bring upon your family, your business and the world.
Just because you can't put it into words... doesn't mean it is not real.
And, always fight to capture it as best as you possibly can.
Because once you do, it becomes more objective...
And, you can share it, and yourself, more deliberately with the world!
Think about it...
Think about the greatest successes you know...
They didn't start out deliberately knowing their vision, their strategy, their product, their calling... They unearthed it, evolved it, constructed it, and delivered it by embracing so sincerely what they felt and thought... before they could really put it into words.
Yours in harmony,
Nestor
Nestor