Things we 'believe' to be 'true'

[BTW- According to Ty Bennet: 'The word 'belief' comes from the combination of two words: Be & lief.

Be comes from being, which is a state of existence. To be is to live.

The second word 'lief' comes from the Indo-European word leubh which means – love.
So when you put that together 'Belief' means to be in love with.

Belief doesn’t mean you have to know for a fact, all you have to do is love it. It takes concrete knowledge, which is a mental process and changes it to love, which is a function of the heart. A true belief is something that resonates both in heart and mind.']

We recently used the American elections to illustrate a few points about successfully implementing customer-first approaches.

There, we argued that victory was probably heavily underpinned by the fact that the winning group successfully positioned themselves as the 'party of the economy'.

Sweet Little Lies

In that post we also stated that the data, as per many sources such as this wikipedia article, do not seem to support this notion of Republicans being better than Democrats at managing the economy.

So, in that sense the Republicans are (at least to some extent) 'lying' to their customers; i.e. the voters. Yet, all's fair in love, war and politics - and in branding, and marketing too.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Success is not only based on marketing and storytelling, though. Success is also based on being able to to execute (once your marketing dog catches the customer car).

Hence it is crucially important that we don't tell little lies to ourselves.

Yet, in corporate environments we find countless such little lies and these are typically derived from origins such as common sense, strongly held beliefs, culturally gleaned wisdom, etc. These are the types of convictions and presumptions that we have to brutally question. Beliefs can make it difficult (or impossible) to execute and innovate well and/or to do so better than our competitors.

Corporate Beliefs

Change does not only happen through innovation and invention. Change also happens when commonly held beliefs (and, therefore, concomitant actions) are proven to be wrong. And while such sets of proof may come from elsewhere there will be competitive advantages if you find it first.

So, if the leadership group of an organisation is not actively and continuously questioning their organisation's beliefs, that enterprise will be proceeding sub-optimally. I.e., we may still do 'well', but we could have done 'better'.

These assessments must include corporate cultural statements, processes, procedures, and much more.

Find the 'wrong' and the 'stupid' wherever these may be hiding.

The Devil may be in the Detail

A word of warning: When we inspect corporate beliefs, we should not only look at the macro-picture (such as the clear differences between Waterfall and Agile approaches, for example).

Often, the devil is in the detail.
"Little lies."

Proceed at your own Peril

Firstly, you can clock out here now if you have had enough of the American election.

Secondly, yes, even if you do not agree with what is stated below, it still does not absolve you from finding 'wrong' beliefs in your organisation.

If you are still here, let us now, again, return to the American election to highlight devils in the detail of that economy.

We could have chosen other examples too, but let's consider just three Republican economy-related stories pertain to immigration ("it is bad"), inflation ("it is bad") and tariffs ("it is good").

Immigration

Donald Trump, the Republican POTUS-elect, promised mass deportations of immigrants.

Prof. Peo Hansen analysed the economic impact of the recent mass migrations to Sweden. He published the research, and wrote a book 'Modern Migration Theory'.

The conclusions?
In short, the economic impact was not 'bad' as was almost universally predicted; rather it was 'good'.

You can find more detail in this video.

It is interesting to note, too, that the population of Dubai has more than 90% expatriates.

Other objections (to immigration) that people may have, such as notions of crime, race, ethnicity, religion, culture, job-losses to immigrants, etc., typically also don't pass the data muster, e.g. Swedish criminal statistics (use your browser to translate).

Inflation

Large parts of the planet experienced big inflation spikes on the back of the Covid pandemic, which many economists attribute to supply shock and where the previous Republican administration (also under Trump) also played a big role in creating such supply shock.

In fact, it is clear, from the data, that the American inflation (whether the voters believed it or not) is again under control now - as can be seen from graphs such as this one.

That's history though. The question is what the way forward is.

Is inflation inherently bad? Most economists would argue otherwise. In short, moderate inflation (typically somewhere between 2% and 6%) is a 'good thing' (as it, psychologically, gets people to commit to purchases earlier, to lock in the now-still-low price) that then leads to a virtuous cycle.

But, the virtuous cycle only happens if salaries rise in relative tandem. And a large part of the salary question is the question of minimum wages. Yet the Republican view on that is being against increasing it (R-voters 44% vs D-voters 74% and R-politicians against). This has led to minimum (and other American) wages stagnating.

Wage stagnation leads to less virtue in the inflation cycle. So, whatever the inflation rate is, less virtue leads to a worse (or less better) economy. Inflation management is a bit more nuanced and intricate than it may appear.

There are devils in them inflation reality details.

Tariffs

Tariffs somehow keep popping up as a supposed 'smart' move. So, regarding tariffs, it may be sufficient to just post the following clip from the 1986 movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off".

Or, you can have a deeper look at the Great Depression era (1930) Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act and the (1934) Reciprocal Tariff Act.

The real world does not care about my beliefs, your beliefs, or your company's beliefs.

In politics this matters less.
It is about votes.

In business correct beliefs matter a great deal.
There, you have to make things work.