Myopic Zeal: CBS Needed a Prophet

Last March, I started quoting Why Smart Executives Fail by Sidney Finkelstein. On September 15, I suggested that CBS's errors would fit the Finkelstein model. Now we read that Dan Rather’s 60 Minutes show failed when it cited documentary evidence that George W. Bush shirked his National Guard duty. Now the CBS report concludes that the network’s rush to put out this story was due to “myopic zeal”. Finklestein wrote “Blindness and deafness to warnings (the 60 minutes staff had warnings that its evidence was flawed) results from an insulated culture that systematically excludes any information that could contradict its reigning picture of reality”. Smart executives fail because:

• Of a flawed mindset that distort a company’s perception of reality
• Delusional attitudes that keep this inaccurate reality in place
• Breakdown in communications systems developed to handle potentially urgent information.
• Leadership qualities that keep a company’s executives from correcting their course.

Institutions, just like persons, develop a view of reality and of themselves. This view can blind them to coming disaster. Last May I compared phenomenon to the psychology of denial. It happens frequently.
• FBI agent John O’Neil was close to putting together the story on 9/11 but could not get it through to headquarters.
• The American Catholic Church failed to respond to warnings issued in 1985 that priestly pedophilia would create sever problems.
• As I wrote on June 10, NASA has acknowledged that its institutional culture was a major contributor to the Columbia shuttle disaster.
• The “Powers that Be” at the CIA did not want to hear an analyst warning that the case for WMD in Iraq was shaky.

Chicago publisher has suggested that there ten basic disciplines in workplace spirituality. For my review of his book, click here . He calls his ninth discipline “making the system work”. Sometimes institutions (government agencies, newspapers, networks, and churches) lose track of their original purpose. When that happens some one has to, as we say in Virginia, “stand up on his hind legs and tell the truth." Some one has to say: “We have lost our way. If we do not return, disaster will follow.” Some one at CBS news should have insisted that the documents purported to implicate George W. Bush were forgeries.

In modern times people who do this are called troublemakers and are accused of rocking the boat. If they go public they are called whistle blowers. In biblical times, they were troublemakers and they were called prophets. CBS needed a prophet.