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TBM 286: Narrative Fallacies and the 2024 Narrative Soup
- According to this Farnam Street article, most companies are inefficient and disheartening so, but the reasons people create to explain this could be ‘narrative fallacies’ – expert-sounding explanations that, often, really aren't. These types of stories strike a deep chord and give readers deep, affecting reasons on which to hang their understanding of reality, frequently causing them to believe that they can predict the future. On any given day, every company has its ‘narrative soup.’ These internal narratives often spread within the camp and make their way into popular discourse but they beget narrative fallacies.
- Narrative fallacies cluster based on common experiences and context, making their way into popular discourse. They tap into our collective need for easy answers and give us reasons to hang understanding of reality.
- Our relationship with inefficiencies in companies leads to our own explanations for what we see, which frequently cause us to believe that we can predict the future. The problem is most of these stories are ‘a sham’ and are a fragile foundation for building our identity.
- A narrative soup is currently present in most sizable companies, and there are winners and losers, not just losers and losers, which is driving people apart with the highly asymmetric and divisive forces at play. The stakes are high, extending to livelihoods, generational wealth, worldviews, professional identity, reputations and relationships.
- In any corporate environment, the lack of unity of purpose and coalescence leads to a lot of disagreement on cause. Personal reflection allows for a personal philosophy to emerge, while diverse perspectives can be helpful to allow people to connect with like-minded individuals in safe spaces.
- Incompetence, unstable organizations, bad management practices, middle-heavy departments and even fake work are narratives people use to explain the inefficiencies within organizations.
- Narrative fallacies simplify the situation, but they are fragile and can lead to a short-term boost, leaving the author stranded on shaky ground.
- Among narrative fallacies are stories of ‘incompetent people being promoted,’ ‘dropping hiring bar,’ ‘capitalism,’ ‘strategy,’ ‘PMs,’ ‘AI,’ ‘product operating model,’ ‘product theater,’ ‘rest-and-vesters,’ ‘fake work,’ ‘MBA product managers,’ ‘bullshit management,’ and ‘execution being underrated.’
- In today’s rapidly changing world where even well-established companies can become irrelevant over-night, and the power constituents inside companies change, these narrative fallacies beget narrative fallacies.
- The silver lining is that recognizing these narrative fallacies will permit better reflection and lead to better decision making.
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