Laws of Leadership: Brandolini's Law

Have you ever been in a meeting with a "slick" manager who could conveniently explain how every problem originated outside his department? You start to wonder why nobody calls him out for it.

Brandolini's Law: "The amount of energy needed to refute "BS" is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."

In practice, a "bad actor" can make statements quite easily which a "good faith actor" can't work fast enough to refute. By being genuine, the "good faith actors" at the table will essentially be quelled by their inability to generate real information fast enough to overcome the "bad actor's" assertions.

The fix for this issue is meeting standards, leader development, and promotion/recruiting for genuine players.

Brandolini's Law is not necessarily about people directly lying. It's more about "narrative shaping." A skillful "narrative shaper" can obscure your greatest improvement opportunities and waste your resources indefinitely.

Let's acknowledge that getting good information in an operations environment is a struggle because of all the unknowns. Frequently, nobody in the entire organization may truly understand why something happened.

However, if you have "narrative shapers" in your midst, they're going to see "unknowns" as an opportunity to shape the narrative in a manner that serves themselves.

Leaders must structure discussions to avoid untruths and "narrative shaping". Operations teams need to be downright pragmatic in their handling of information.

1. Meetings need to be structured such that unknowns are identified as unknowns, not explained. Unknowns require study, not conjecture.

2. "Hitchens' razor" should be a standard - "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

3. Homework should be done before the meeting. A leader in a meeting who doesn't have real information needs to be quiet. This should be a cultural expectation.

4. Reporting standards are critical to ensure real information is available.

There is no end to the assets you can waste chasing a false narrative, time, money, etc.

The Pareto rule doesn't fail. If you fix your biggest issue, you will get a measurable result.

If you are fixing problems and nothing is getting better, you may be working on the wrong stuff and someone may be telling you to do it.

Leading change is hard. Understanding Brandolini's Law helps us structure our meeting and communications expectations so we can see reality.

Change leadership is a marathon. You can't afford to let BS misdirect your efforts, or you simply won't succeed.