ORACLE

By Doug Samuelson

The OR/MS analyst returned once more to the oracle (actually a retired business executive) who had, some time earlier, revealed to him the secrets of wealth, power and personality and explained the difficulties with the concept of accreditation of computer models.

The analyst explained, “I have taken your earlier lessons to heart and applied them, with great success. Now, however, once again I seem to be getting criticized not for a shortfall, but for a virtue. I saw a problem and solved it, but my manager, instead of being appreciative, was angry. I am reasonably sure I complied with earlier guidance and company policies. The client was happy. But my manager just doesn’t seem to want to understand. What am I missing here?”

The oracle laughed and replied, “In my own experience, I have gotten into more trouble for doing what I thought I was supposed to do than for all other causes combined. The secret is quite simple: do you know the true difference between initiative and insubordination?”

The analyst had several guesses at the answer to this question, but none he felt sure of. He simply shrugged.

“Why are you unsure?” the oracle persisted gently.

“I’d rather not waste your time with my guesses when I don’t know,” the analyst admitted.

“And there you have it,” the oracle said. “When you don’t know, and you care about the reaction, you want to ask rather than guess, and if you can’t get guidance, doing nothing is often the best course. You see, the difference between initiative and insubordination is whether the manager, in retrospect afterward, liked what you did! It’s that simple.”

The analyst looked doubtful.

“Do you remember the story we shared, a few years ago, about how to pick customers? The one in which the clothing salesman compared this task to the high school dance, and the answer turned out in both cases to choose the prospects who had already shown interest? The clothing buyers by coming into the store wearing clothes similar to those the store sells, and the girls at the dance by their actions as the boy approached? Doesn’t the same idea apply here, that success depends less on what you do than on knowing whether what you do will be welcomed?”

“It seems so,” the analyst conceded, “but sometimes it’s hard to figure out what the boss will want.”

“And those are the bosses who wind up with their people showing very little initiative,” the oracle observed. “It’s like the problem of getting really innovative research published in refereed journals, another situation I believe you’ve encountered.”

“And how,” the analyst groaned.

“But it’s the same problem, isn’t it?” the oracle continued. “If you’re offering a modest improvement on well-known work, you send it to a journal that has already published a number of articles on that subject, do you not? Ideally, the journal in which the work you’re building on appeared, right? And then it is not difficult for the editor to find referees who won’t have to work very hard to decide whether you’ve done a good job. But if it’s truly path-breaking, referees have a harder time deciding whether the rest of the scientific community will think it was good and approve of their decision to let it be published. The editor has a harder time choosing referees who will make good assessments. In fact, I think the same thing happens with many grant and contract awards, as well: a high probability of a modest advance of knowledge stands a better chance than the truly revolutionary but risky idea.”

“I think it works that way getting financing for a business plan, too,” the analyst added. The oracle nodded agreement.

“But then,” the analyst frowned, “how is it possible to evaluate the really great work, the breakthroughs? The most important work is so different from what has gone before that no one can assess it properly at the time it appears.”

“Exactly so,” the oracle affirmed. “In fact, there are many stories of great innovators being dismissed at first as madmen, and not just in science. Beethoven’s music and Escher’s art were denounced by critics when they appeared, too. English professors hail James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness novels, in particular “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake,” as outstanding literature, although they were harshly reviewed when they appeared – rightly, in my opinion, because you need a translator to help you read them. But I suppose the translators eventually banded together and declared Joyce’s greatness. Jenner’s smallpox vaccinations got him denounced as a quack by the American Medical Association. Pasteur ran into the same sort of trouble, too, I believe. When Einstein got the Nobel Prize, relativity was still so controversial that it wasn’t mentioned in the citation. The list goes on. Jonathan Swift wrote, ‘When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.’ You know the saying by Arthur C. Clarke, the great science fiction writer, that any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic? Well, any sufficiently innovative, brilliant idea is indistinguishable, in the short term, from insanity!”

“So how do we tell the difference?” the analyst inquired.

“There’s only one good way,” the oracle shrugged. “Wait 20 years or so and see what people think of the idea then.”

Doug Samuelson is president and chief scientist of InfoLogix, Inc., a small R&D and consulting firm in Annandale, Va.

Note

“The Secret of Wealth” appeared in OR/MS Today in February 2003. “The Secret of Power” appeared in August 2005. “The Secret of Accreditation” appeared in December 2008. “The Secret of Personality” appeared in December 2010. “Nancy’s Parable,” the story about the high school dance, appeared in February 2006.