CIO as fact finder, fixer, and framer in a post-truth IT world

In a perfect world, every digital investment would be based on a set of universally agreed upon facts. My summer survey of digital leaders indicates unambiguously that CIOs can’t just let facts “happen.”

When thinking about the facts that drive information investment decisions, I recall the story of the three baseball umpires discussing the facts of strikes. One umpire, supporting Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s assertion that “the world is a collection of facts,” explains, “I call them as they are.”

The second umpire, embracing the subjectivity of post-modernism, says, “I call them as I see them.”

The final umpire? “They ain’t nothin’ until I call ’em.”

Beware the fact free-for-all that is the world today

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, four-term Senator of New York, United Nations ambassador, and adviser to three Presidents is remembered for popularizing the aphorism, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” This makes sense to me. However…

Renée DiResta, the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, has coined the wonderful phrase “bespoke realities,” referring to the effects of a “Cambrian explosion of bubble realities,” communities “that operate with their own norms, media, trusted authorities, and frameworks of facts.”

Social and political scientists are alarmed at the shocking state of facts in the world today. See: Alex Edmans, May Contain Lies; Steven Brill, The Death of Truth; Renee DiResta, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality; and Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War.

Back in the day, CIOs had to occasionally combat bad, overly simplified, and under-nuanced facts encountered by executives in airline flight magazines. Today, IT reality itself is under attack by utopian and dystopian propagandists and estranged-from-how-technology-really-works, never-installed-an-enterprise-system wackadoos. Now, more than ever, digital leaders must take an active role in how facts are collected, vetted, and framed. The facts that drive information investments require an umpire.

Where do facts come from?

I admit it. I was naïve. I used to take facts for granted — believing there was some cosmic Platonic vault from whence quality information flowed.

In May Contain Lies, Alex Edmans gives the example of the sic “fact” that if you put in 10,000 hours on just about any discipline you achieve mastery. It turns out that the research this widely held sic “fact” is based on was limited to violinists, didn’t measure their skill, and didn’t even mention 10,000 hours. Just because someone calls something a fact does not mean it’s true.

Barbara Cooper, the beloved former CIO at Toyota Motor Sales, recalls the 2009 incident of “unintended” acceleration — i.e., stuck gas pedal — and the tragic death of a family in a Lexus.

As part of the company-wide crisis management plan, Cooper and her team installed one of the first Big Data systems, analyzed all the data of every relevant database — including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration system — and discovered that the accident was in fact caused by incompatible all-weather floor mats being improperly installed.

CIOs have to be proactive in making sure the data used to drive decisions surrounding information investments are legitimate.

The digital community frequently looks to consultants, vendors, and venture capitalists (CVVCs) for facts. Some of the smartest and most ethical people on the planet work in the digital services space. But my summer leadership survey revealed that the facts supplied by CVVCs appeared, in many cases, to be closely tied to the strategies and solutions being recommended. In certain instances, recommendations drove findings versus the more in tune with the scientific method of findings driving conclusions.

Facts exist in an agenda-rich context. When fact checking, CIOs need to be aware of the agenda of those supplying the facts.

Framing the facts

Garry Winogrand, a street photographer who received three Guggenheim Fellowships and deemed by John Szarkowski, director of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, “the central photographer of his generation,” famously remarked, “When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.”

I don’t agree with Winogrand that framing actually changes facts so much as framing focuses attention on facts that matter. CIOs need to bring a pig-hunting-truffles intensity to making sure the organization is paying attention to facts that matter.

CIOs need to replicate the fact-framing clarity of political consultant James Carville’s three-point 1992 electoral haiku: “It’s the economy stupid / Change vs. more of the same / And don’t forget about healthcare.”

Fact-checking and fact-framing are critical ingredients of your future success.