The Intellectual Dimension at Work

The first universal dimension of human experience is the intellectual dimension, that aspect of our nature which aims at truth.

Every human being has a mind. Each of us has an intellectual dimension to his experience. We need ideas as much as we need food, air, or water. Ideas nourish the mind as the latter provide for the body. In light of this, it's clear that we need good ideas as much as we need good food, good air, and good water. And, finally, what we need is truth.

The soul is unwillingly deprived of truth.

— EPICTETUS

Truth is just that mapping of reality that corresponds to the way things are. Put another way, it is the relationship of accuracy that holds between a good map and the territory it represents. Aristotle wrote about truth, in contrast to falsehood, in this way: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is so, is false; while to say of what is so that it is so, and of what is not so that it is not so, is true." Perhaps this is enough to make you glad that you're reading me rather than Aristotle. Truth is our lifeline. Truth is our guide. The truth about truth is simple.

No one can navigate well through life without an accurate map by which to steer. Knowledge is the possession of such a map, and truth is what that map gives us, linking us to reality. The absolutely vital importance of knowledge in any business is beginning to be widely recognized. For discerning the needs of clients, monitoring the moves of competitors, benefiting from the experience of associates, and serving others well, it's hard to see how there could be anything ultimately more important than truth.

But it may be that the simple importance of truth is still far from widely enough appreciated. It's often been said that people nowadays must view truth as precious, they use it so sparingly. Even this little witticism contains some insight.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.

— WILLIAM HAZLITT

People who tell the truth, however difficult that may be, obviously have a high regard for its importance. But even people who lie to you indicate in a backward sort of way their partial, and deeply flawed, recognition of at least some of the power of truth: They think of it as too powerful to be entrusted to you.

Is truth both important and powerful in our corporate endeavors? And, if so, then how should we treat the truth? How, correspondingly, should we treat each other with regard to the truth? These are some of the questions we'll address both in this chapter and in the next one.

Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

— CONFUCIUS

Truth and Respect

We all have minds that must be respected and used. The first implication of this is that mindless work cannot be satisfying. No human being is a machine, and yet that's exactly what much of the economic theory and management practice of the last hundred years has tended to assume.

Don Petersen, past president of Ford Motor Company, tells an interesting story. Once when he was visiting a stamping plant in Buffalo, New York, a huge bear of a man came up to him and said, "You know, I want to tell you one thing. I used to hate coming to work here. But lately I've been asked what I think, and that makes me feel like I'm somebody. I never thought the company saw me as a human being. Now I like coming to work."

One of the most ennobling gestures any of us can make toward another human being is to ask her, sincerely, what she thinks about what we are doing together. What is her take on the truth? When we ask, wanting to hear, we treat the other person with a fundamental respect, and this behavior is then much more likely to be mirrored back to us.

We should cultivate an environment in which people are not afraid to tell us the truth. We need the truth if we are to steer safely through the difficulties we may face as we move into the future, and we're unlikely to get enough of it unless others are open to sharing it with us. Too many frontline workers and managers are reluctant to pass on a hard truth to the person they report to, because they are working in a corporate culture where it's not clear what the value of truth is.

I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed.

— MARCUS AURELIUS

In a recent book in which he profiled three of the top corporate CEOs recognized as masters at company renovation — Jack Welch (General Electric), the late Mike Walsh (Union Pacific Railroad), and Percy Barnevik (Asea Brown Boveri), Tom Peters points to eleven traits that seem responsible for their success. One of these eleven qualities, he says, is that these individuals appear to have "a visceral affinity for truth." The capacity to handle the truth, the ability to get at it, and the skill to use it well brings with its exercise great power. We aren't likely to be expert at exercising that capacity unless we place a certain value on the people around us. And this is an important issue in renewing corporate spirit.

A few years ago I met Tom Chappell, founder of Tom's of Maine, a highly regarded personal care products company. In the course of a morning together sitting and talking on the front porch of a beautiful house in Vermont, I heard one of the most interesting leadership stories in contemporary American business.

Tom had established his company on strong moral principles, but as the business grew and more people were hired for their technical expertise in managing that growth, Tom began to feel that the company was drifting away from its founding vision. To regain his grip on those values that ought to govern business lives, he decided to take a sabbatical of sorts and go for part of each week to the Harvard Divinity School, where he enrolled as a student. Now, notice clearly, we're talking about the Harvard Divinity School, not the Harvard Business School. The company's board thought Tom had lost his mind. They didn't understand that he was just trying to find his soul.

One of the most important discoveries he made in his studies was the writings of Martin Buber, an influential Jewish theologian who lived from 1878 until 1965. In his book I and Thou, Buber explains that there are basically two fundamental relationships that can exist between you and another...