StrategyDriven Decision-Making Warning Flag Article

Decision-Making Warning Flag 1c – ad hominem: Personal, Not Issue Attacks

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StrategyDriven Decision Making Article | ad hominem“An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: “argument to the man”, “argument against the man”) consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.

It is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem abusive, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.”

Ad Hominem
Wikipedia

The ‘Old Boys Club’

Product defects plague a company’s profitability; warranty repairs, returns, and lost sales robbing the organization of its already slim profit margins. Executives assembled an engineering team to assess product designs and material quality in hopes of identifying a root cause to the defective product issue. A junior member of the assessment team, a young, recently hired assembly line supervisor, identifies the lack of routine calibration of critical cutting tools as a contributor to the poor fit of key product components. The tenured company engineers on the team discount the supervisor’s observation because he’s too young and too new to know what’s really important. These senior engineers have just made an ad hominem argument to advance their position.

Ad hominem arguments are bias-based logic fallacies made to support business decisions every day. As with all logic errors, decision-makers fall prey to the appearance of reasonableness, especially when the assertion supports their desired course of action. Although difficult, recognizing and eliminating the use of ad hominem arguments in decision-making is absolutely necessary.[wcm_restrict plans=”49461, 25542, 25653″]

Ad hominem occurs when a decision-maker asserts that because there is something objectionable with the individual offering a particular solution that the solution itself is also defective. In the product defect example, senior engineers inappropriately correlate the relative inexperience of the junior assembly line supervisor with the quality of his recommendation. Breaking down the product quality example reveals the correlation weakness:

Person 1 makes Claim X
The assembly line supervisor identifies a lack of tool calibration as resulting in poor component manufacturing quality.
There is something objectionable about Person 1
The assembly line supervisor is relatively young and new to the company as compared with the senior engineers on the assessment team and therefore is naïve.
Therefore Claim X is false
Lack of tool calibration as a potential cause is a naïve solution and should be rejected.

The fallacy associated with ad hominem arguments is that they seek to establish a relationship where none exists. Subsequently, decision-makers consumed by this false logic risk omitting a strong, if not the best, possible solution to the issue they are addressing.

Recognizing Ad Hominem Arguments

Logic errors are often difficult to recognize, ad hominem arguments being no exception. Questions decision-makers should consider in order to avoid ad hominem arguments include:

  • Was the rejection of an individual’s recommendations or opinions based on personal factors such as age, past associations or lack of association, race, gender, ethnic background, workgroup within the organization, employer (outside consultants), and/or college?
  • Did the assertion suggest the quantitative data provided by an individual was intended to be subversive?
  • Were individuals excluded from decision-making by not being invited to meetings?
  • Were meetings held at times when the person is unavailable?
  • Were meetings scheduled at the last minute or impromptu decision-making meetings when the person was unlikely not to receive notification of the meeting until after it already started or concluded?
  • Has the individual been blocked from offering an opinion during a meeting as a result of poor facilitation or more blatant cutting-off debate/conversation before the individual had the opportunity to communicate often in the name of saving time or rapping things up?
  • In more extreme cases, were character attacks, name calling, and/or the application of derogatory personal labels levied against the individual?
  • Does the decision-making process demand multidiscipline participation or input to decision making?
  • Does the decision-making process demand, at a minimum, the seeking of direct input from all team members?

Final Thoughts…

Ad hominem behaviors are often not limited to an individual but are cultural in nature. The behavior is more prevalent in less diverse organizations because the pervasive ‘like me’ identity. Ad hominem arguments within these organizations are levied against those few whose personal characteristics differ from that of the core group. These organizations suffer from biased-based decision-making that shuns input based on characteristics such as gender, age, race, religious and political affiliation, sexual orientation, workgroup, or some combination. Hence the term ‘Old Boys Club.’

Besides eroding decision-making for the decision at hand, ad hominem arguments erode the long-term decision-making ability of the organization because targeted individuals will be less apt to share their insights and perspectives in order to avoid personal attacks. These individuals are likely to become increasingly disenfranchised with the organization; often resulting in lower productivity and possibly attrition.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”49461, 25542, 25653″]

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Additional Information

Additional insight to the warning signs, causes, and results of logic errors can be found in the StrategyDriven website feature: Decision-Making Warning Flag 1 – Logic Fallacies Introduction.

Insights on organizational diversity and inclusion can be found in the StrategyDriven topical area: Diversity and Inclusion.

Hitting Curveballs: Today’s most important business skill

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You may be an inspiring leader able to rally and unite dispirited and divided individuals. You could be a brilliant visionary able to invent innovative products and services. Or you might be a compelling communicator able to charm investors and captivate customers. Possessing any one of these talents would make you a business all-star in the past. But today, it will only mark you as a phenom: someone with potential. To become a business hall of famer – a proven long term winner – you need to show that you know how to hit a curveball: how to confront and regularly overcome the unexpected.

Hitting curveballs has become the indispensable skill for long term business survival, not just success, in the current economic environment. If you want to make the majors and have a future either in a corporate structure, as an entrepreneur, or as an independent professional, you need to be able to deal with unanticipated events and scenarios. The unexpected has always occurred, and business leaders have always had to deal with it. However, things really are different today because of four distinct but interconnected trends.

[wcm_restrict]First, we’re in the middle of a transitional period, politically, economically, culturally, and technologically. Politically, we could be in a unipolar world with the United States as the sole superpower, or we could be entering a multi-polar time with the European Union, China, India, and Russia all vying with the United States for dominance. Economically, we’re in an information age in which business is becoming increasingly global in both structure and operations. Culturally, the United States Census suggests that America is on its way to becoming a “minority majority” nation in which whites are outnumbered by the combination of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans, creating a more diverse and potentially less predictable culture. And technologically…well, that’s an area where everything is happening too fast for us to even be able to make generalizations.

Second, the pace of change is constantly accelerating. The phenomenon known as Moore’s Law (that the number of transistors that could be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling every two years) has been applied to processor speeds, memory capacity, and every other element of technology. It is now an accepted belief that information technology in general grows exponentially. There’s no argument that these advances in technology have led to greater efficiencies in business. But, this pace of change has placed a greater strain on all of us. We have to think and do everything faster. Opportunities appear and disappear with such blinding speed that the word fad has lost all meaning. The line between work and life has blurred into nonexistence. The only certainty today is that everything changes. Quickly.

Third, it isn’t just the pace of change that’s problematic; it’s that the changes are coming in areas and in ways that can’t be predicted as accurately as before; every purposeful action produces unintended consequences that cannot be avoided. The unstable nature of this time in world history, and the unpredictability of unforeseen consequences become even more problematic when you throw the accelerating pace of change into the mix. The world is in a state of flux. Things are changing faster than ever before, resulting in unpredictable things happening more often, with less and less time between each of these surprises. That would be a recipe for a collective nervous breakdown…even if you didn’t consider the fourth trend contributing to our current difficulty.

We’re less resilient than ever. The quality of America’s infrastructure and technology has spoiled us. We know that hospitals will have the drugs and medical care we need in an emergency, that the supermarket will have the ingredients we need to make tonight’s dinner, that the fire department or police department or ambulance will come when we call. The problem, however, is that when things don’t turn out as we planned, when we’re thrown a curveball, we tend to freak out and not know how to deal with it. We’ve lost what psychologists call resilience, defined as the capacity to withstand stressors and not manifest some form of dysfunction, whether it’s clinical depression or just a flash of anger. Resilience is largely a learned trait. The more often we face unexpected or stressful situations and overcome them, the more confidence we gain and the more resilient we become for future crises. Confronting and overcoming little hurdles throughout life prepares us for the big obstacles. It’s wonderful that we now have to face so few minor hurdles in the course of our daily lives. However, that has left us particularly vulnerable to the major curveballs when they are thrown our way.

These four trends – the transitory nature of our current epoch, ever accelerating change, increasingly unforeseen consequences, and the decline in the psychological resilience of the average American – mean that learning how to hit a curveball is today’s single most important skill for success in business, and life.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Scott R. Singer has spent the past 20 years advising companies on how to adapt to change, to embrace technological advances, and to put the best strategy in place to deal with the next big thing – essentially, teaching them how to hit curveballs. A noted media industry expert, investment banker, and strategy consultant, Scott serves as Managing Director and Head of Media & Entertainment at The Bank Street Group, a boutique investment banking firm focused on providing sophisticated advice regarding mergers & acquisitions; fairness opinions; private debt, equity, and venture capital raising; as well as bankruptcies, restructurings, and turnarounds to telecommunications, media, technology, aerospace & defense, and healthcare companies. Scott is regularly called on by Bloomberg, CNBC, FOX Business, Reuters and numerous publications such as, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, CNNMoney.com, Crain’s New York Business, and Forbes.com in addition to many other industry publications as a media expert to address various domestic and global topics. To read Scott’s complete biography, click here.

StrategyDriven Leadership Inspirations Quote

Leadership Inspirations – Face the Opposition

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“This week, stand toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with the opposition to your success and say, ‘You won’t stop me. My destiny is victory and my birthname, winner. Bring it!'”

Howard T. Dickens Jr.

To PR or not to PR: PR is not a verb!

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This is not an article debating the changing landscape of the public relations or advertising industry, or preaching best practice advice, but rather an examination of the two simple letters that encompass all that we (as communications professionals) do: PR.

As a public relations professional, I respect that there are some commonplace misconceptions about what “we” do here at our agency, and likely every other PR agency on the planet for that matter. The perception of what we do is made worse by certain reality television shows that not only make me want to claw my eyes out but insult my intelligence and profession as well. There is a significant difference between a PR firm and a publicist – which allows me illustrate my point: all publicity is PR, but not all PR is publicity.

[wcm_restrict]But, on the point of publicity, there are some novel notions that I’m able to write off in good humor, including some personal favorites related to the mystique and glamour of the industry, and the all too frequent assumption that all story placements occur with the drop of a hat thanks, of course, to that magic PR wand we are all given upon entering into the field. Why yes, whatever story you’d like to have placed, just call me and I’ll get it in – I have a direct line. When clients tell me they need me to get them in the paper tomorrow, I quickly grab my ski mask and advise them to meet me at the nearest bank. I find running naked through the streets is also helpful – and strangely so is shaving off your hair, but I digress. If only it were that simple to secure press, but I know a few tricks and have certainly been successful at securing solid placement, even in the absence of a quality story.

But.

One, seemingly minor but infinitely irritating thing that I’ve been asked to do has always left me without a witty comeback. The infuriatingly mind numbing question: “Can you PR this?”

Even my own mother, who, upon hearing about one exciting upcoming project or another, has suggested that I do a good job of “PR-ing” for the client. Imagine someone asking a web developer to “website” something. Hmmm…

PR is just not a verb, but it certainly is an ongoing action. The ongoing action of relating. The “ing” does work with advertising – I guess that’s why that discipline and tactic is so much simpler. I suppose for starters, I should thank my mom for reminding me to do my job by….doing what I do for a living, but I’ll never understand why she and so many others make those two letters into a verb.

Write it out. “Public Relations-ing.” Is that what we do every day? Sadly, I think when some people mention PR, they aren’t even referring to public relations, but instead are referring to a Press Release – which also makes no sense – “can you Press Release this.”

This simple mistake is one that frightens me. To me, the PR-as-a-verb phenomenon signifies a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of our industry and mitigates the value of our strategy by implying that we exist solely to ‘get stories in the paper.’ If that were true and that’s how it worked, think about the media landscape for a moment. Every story in every media outlet would be about a PR firm, right?

Of course, this isn’t to say that “PR-ing” doesn’t have its place. Publicity, as we pros call it, is undoubtedly a great vehicle for interesting characters and stories, but in no way does it fully encompass the full extent of public relations. Publicity is also not the same as media relations – in fact, I work with some businesses to keep them OUT of the media or to simply maintain good relationships when confronted with an issue (we call this “closed shop media”). So again, publicity is part of media relations which is part of public relations. Advertising is part of public relations. How you were greeted by your waitress today is public relations.

And while we’ll always recognize that publicity is a key component of any good marketing campaign, for an agency or practitioner’s abilities to be equated solely to publicity is a waste of good counsel. You need a great story, a good hook, proper timing, tenacity, the contacts and yes, a little luck. A good stunt now and again is fun, as is a press release duct taped to a pizza and sent to the newsroom.

Admittedly, this is just a minor rant from a word junkie hooked on technicalities, but it serves as a reminder to us, the PR-ers of the world, of the need to explain the foundations of our practice which we so often take for granted. Just as we tell our newbies that Public Relations is far more than event planning, we must also ensure that our clients recognize that what we are doing is communicating.

So, don’t confuse PR with publicity. You don’t ‘ing’ PR. But, done right, we promise to sING your praises to your publics and get the phones to rING with leads, and if someone dINGs you in cyberspace we’ll be sure to brING out a little PR magic.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Allison Brinkman
PR Manager, Eisen Marketing Group
allison@eisenmarketinggroup.com
 
 
Alli found herself saying the same thing Greeks have been saying for centuries when she provided an opportunity to work with EMG clientele: Opa! (Hooray!) An adventurer at heart, she constantly seeks new challenges and celebrates unconventional solutions. No need to cross the Mediterannean and absolutely no Trojan Horse – she is what she is, and that fresh, candid honesty makes for one serious professional.

A diehard Ohio State Buckeye football fan, she knows the value of a little friendly competition – and even has a trivia-loving alter ego ‘BMoney’ to honor that streak. When it comes to clients, however, she isn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves, put her game face on and ensure nothing less than the best. Scarlet. Grey. All colors. All colours – she integrates impossible to absolutely.

Having lived abroad twice in both France and Luxembourg, Allison takes advantage of her global perspective in everyday life, and applies that knowledge when discussing global and cultural differences. Her ‘let’s go!’ attitude will gladly take her to the ends of the earth in search of answers, inspiration or just out of curiosity. Give her a minute (or 10), and she’ll gladly tell you all about winter in Stockholm or the music scene in Prague. Go Ask Alli…

Is it the or is it THEE.

Allison is a graduate from The Ohio State University, and has worked in marketing, public relations and event planning for Paramount’s Kings Island, The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium and UWeekly Newspaper.

Pull Money Out of Thin Air: Print Money at Work by Doing Your Own Job Better

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If you’re feeling daunted by the idea of creating proposals to increase profits and of seeking others’ approval, then this article is for you. You can contribute financially to your company simply by regulating yourself. By improving your own job performance – that is, the quantity or quality of your work—you add value to your company.

Stay on Task

[wcm_restrict]To improve the amount of work you produce, you need to spend more time doing job-related tasks and less time doing everything else. In a 2005 survey, the average employee admitted to wasting 2.09 hours per eight-hour workday. In a similar 2007 survey, employees admitted to wasting an average of 1.7 hours per eight hour workday. If you really evaluate where your time goes, you will be shocked to discover how much of your paid working time is wasted. Time management is important, and there are countless methods, systems and tools to help you establish priorities and keep you focused on the highest-value tasks first. Choose a system and use it religiously.

When you begin to manage your time more efficiently, the task of minimizing interruptions by others often becomes more important than arranging time to accomplish your tasks. In the course of the day you are interrupted and sidetracked by coworkers, managers, emails, IMS, text messages, meetings, landline calls, and cell phone calls. You have to minimize these productivity robbers and stay focused on your primary work. Stop enabling and getting sucked into the inefficiencies of others – however pressing or engaging those issues may appear to be. Your first response to someone who may inadvertently drain your time should be “I’m on deadline.” Learn to use that phrase early and often. If possible, stick a note on your closed door alerting the world to your deadline and requesting that your door remain closed unless there is a fire in the building. A note at the entrance to a cubicle will accomplish the same thing.

Unless you have an open-door management policy, consider getting rid of the extra chairs near your desk. They invite interlopers to plop down and crash your efficiency. After being rebuffed a few times, those who have no justifiable reason for disrupting your work will get the idea. Be considerate of others’ feelings, of course, and treat them with respect, but get out of those interactions before wasting too much time.

You may achieve disruption management not only by improving your interpersonal skills, but by enhancing your self-discipline as well. When necessary, consider turning off your cell phone and only checking voicemail once or twice a day. I wouldn’t make that recommendation if I had not written this book. In order to corner and preserve enough quiet time to write, it was necessary to turn off my cell phone. Eliminating that persistent distraction has tremendously increased my productivity and convinced me to turn it off as needed in order to accomplish other time-sensitive tasks in the future. I still communicate with the world but on a schedule of my choosing. While a wonderful productivity tool, e-mail is too frequently just another medium for disruption and should be handled similarly. Check and respond to messages at a regular time once or twice a day. I generally deal with e-mails first thing in the morning and again in the early afternoon.

Another insidious self-imposed distraction is the Internet. Studies show that the average worker spends six to eight hours per week in non-job-related surfing. Be disciplined in our cyber behaviors and you’ll free up a whopping 150 hours per year for your real job.

Some of these methods for improving your own productivity will work for you, and some will not – depending on your position, company and workplace policies. Be creative and do all you can to remain focused on the core activities that make up your job. Managing time and disruptions requires self-discipline and a moderate level of interpersonal skill. If you are serious about increasing your personal output and financial contribution to your company, you have no choice but to take charge of your time and attention.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Larry Myler is CEO of By Monday, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in profit enhancement through employee engagement. Previously, Larry was president of VitalSmarts, serving from 1992-2001. Larry is a serial entrepreneur with six startups under his belt. Over the course of his thirty-year career, he has helped others improve their businesses by consulting and training for leadership teams and employees in the areas of interpersonal communication, profit enhancement, organizational efficiency, survey research, and more. Past clients include companies such as AT&T, Shell Oil, Lockheed Martin, and Ford Motor Company.

This column is excerpted from Larry Myler’s best-selling book, Indispensable By Monday: Learn the Profit-Producing Behaviors that will Help Your Company and Yourself, available from Amazon.com and bookstores nationwide. Readers can find Larry Myler’s free online tool, the Profit Proposal Generator, at www.bymonday.com.