Which Comes First: Facts or Opinions?

November 7th, 2011

Filed Under: Featured

Tags: management by fact • measurement • strategic planning • strategy development

The Baldrige model supports fact-based decisions. Management by fact is one of 11 Baldrige core values. One of the seven categories in the Baldrige Criteria focuses on measurement and analysis. Measurement—“how do you know?”—is woven into questions throughout the other five “process” categories, and the results of your key measures are reported in the seventh category.
Here’s what management guru Peter Drucker wrote on the topic: “Executives who make effective decisions know that one does not start with facts. One starts with opinions.”
I disagree.
According to Drucker, which Stephen Wunker addresses in his post on the HBR Blog Network here, if leaders do not make their opinions clear, they will simply find the facts that confirm what they believe. The problem is that the opinions and the confirmatory facts push the organization in one direction without considering other courses of action. Wunker writes, “Decision makers may have a general sense of stakeholders’ opinions, but in their eagerness to act and to avoid controversy they do not probe to understand these perspectives fully. Rather, they quickly make a decision and then marshal facts to support it.”
In the Baldrige model, the process of understanding opinions and perspectives fully would be part of the strategy development process, which encourages collecting and analyzing data and information to create an effective plan.
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