Hi Wilf,

Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Well if stories and opinions counts as data, that maybe part of the problem! . Does evidence free sound better?
Example: "Foot Drill creates discipline and teamwork" is often stated as fact, in the face of very little actual evidence.
LOL - one of the things that most people forget, if they ever knew , is that the word "fact" comes from the Latin factum - "made" or "created". "Facts" are constructs; abstracted sensory data where "meaning" is latter applied based on interpretation via some type of model (theory, culture, etc.).

Both stories and opinions count as fact. On the latter, that is a large part of what constructs the entire area of market research. As to the former, that's folklore, mythology, organizational symbolism, etc.... aka, my field. The "problem" isn't that they count as facts, the problem is that they are mistaken for "Truth" (in a transcendent sense) because an inappropriate model is used to interpret them.

Let's take your foot drill example....

We know where it comes from (tactical necessities from ~1585 to, roughly 1865 or so. In order to communicate it to new members of the military as a survival trait, it was hammered in as "Truth". Those same people, however, lasted long after foot drill was rendered pretty much useless, and it survived as a meme (saying, cultural "truth") long after.

So, how to interpret it? Well, it gives us some insights into how "rigid" an organizational culture is. Also, exactly how it is talked about gives us some insights into the organizational meaning structures that will be applied elsewhere. For example, if "foot drill" is used to describe "building teamwork" by a lot of people in the organization (it's a frequency distribution sort of thing), then the organization will tend to conceive of "teamwork" in a fairly rigid form that is based on predictability of actions. It will also tend to privilege "the Book" over the actual effect. as such, we could predict, with a lesser degree of accuracy, that the field movements of members of that organization are predictable and, hence, their own manuals can be used for targeting information and setting up ambushes.

Notice how I am using that meme of "Foot Drill creates discipline and teamwork". I am not accepting the actual statement as "True", I am accepting it as indicative of an organizational cultural attitude.