This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Making Complex Decisions: Embracing Truth, with Lawrence Summers, Former Director, White House United States National Economic Council
One has to make a core decision in how to approach the world. Is there a reality which we struggle to apprehend better and better? That would be my view. Or do we each have our own reality which is equally valid and to which we are equally entitled? And philosophers debate that kind of question and at some level it’s a profound philosophical issue that is certainly beyond my competence and probably isn’t relevant for practical purposes.
But for practical purposes, for decision makers, if you’re deciding whether to introduce a new product, you’re deciding whether to create a new division of your company, you’re deciding what the right person to hire – who the right person to hire for a given role is, for those kinds of decisions it’s important to understand what is true and to understand how the world works so that you can judge the consequences of alternative courses of action as accurately as possible.
And what’s essential is not to confuse what one would like to be true with what, in fact, is true. And so when I talk about struggling to find truth, when I condemn the idea of negotiated truth, it’s to speak in favor of being as clear eyed as possible. Not because I have any desire to take out hope but because decisions will be made most wisely if they’re made with as accurate a theory of how the world works and as accurate a knowledge base as possible.
Living well, achieving one’s objectives, whether those are objectives in a business or a broader life objective, depends on the choices, depends on the decisions we make. And so there’s not much that’s more important than deciding wisely and well.