The Whistle Blower

Can we know the truth if we do are jobs competently? Sometimes...but also one big question remains...can we handle the truth? And the truth shall set us free...right? If that were true we wouldn't have to deal with the term, "Whistle Blower". The truth might hurt, it might even cost us our jobs. But we would be free. John Boyd didn't ask for a salary in his post retirement years so he could remain completely independent of bias. Most of us don't have that luxury. But by seeking the truth, we could be labeled a profession of whistle blowers. I've done very little analysis where during the process someone didn't have a little secret or fact they would rather not have surfaced. And that's the dirtiest little secret of all.

Whether we like it our not, we are the ones who have to tell our bosses the bad news. Now, we are not saying that our work cannot produce answers that are not bad news. Indeed our work can produce good news – but that news of marginal value. Those decisions are easy to make. Everyone is on board; this idea is self evident, everyone will make money and every body wins. The analyst is hardly noticed at all. We have referred to this person as the marketer. If you know the truth and sell out, you are a charlatan or worse. If you say nothing, you are a coward. It is the bad news to which everyone takes notice. And there is only one person in the room speaking of the bad news – the analyst.

We can chose to do so quietly or we can chose to tell the media. I would suggest telling your boss first. If your boss shoots the messenger then perhaps you were in the wrong place and you should go tell the media. If you boss hugs you and tells you he will implement all of your recommendations immediately, please call me, I would like to send you my resume. If, what’s more likely to happen occurs, your boss tells you he appreciates your work, thanks you, and sends you back to your office feeling elated and some real job satisfaction that is the best the analyst can hope for.

Unfortunately, in a few days, when you realize that your recommendations have not been implemented, you might not feel as elated and might again feel the gates of AP closing in. What went wrong? You must have been the smartest person in the room and you were bold, man you were bold in there, and at times gusting to arrogant, what happened. Have you been labeled a pariah, a whistle blower? Should you start looking for a new job? Was your analysis debunked? Are their critics out there you don’t know about? Did you do something wrong in your analysis? Are you becoming paranoid and perhaps losing your mind? Do you see the PM walking behind you down the street? What happened? Chances are, you did your job right, exactly right. If you are not upsetting someone you are probably not doing your job. Unfortunately, what happened is leadership. Good or bad, we as analysts don’t make the decisions, they do – and it’s time to fully consider that truth as well.

The Charlatan and Other Weasels

The professional analyst better known as the cost analyst, the systems analyst, the operations research analyst, grew it’s own profession during World War II and directly thereafter. Some would credit the work done to locate German U-Boats as the first attributable activities of our formal profession. Whereas there is plenty of documentation to suggest the mathematical formulations that were developed during this timeframe constitute what we now refer to as operations research, analysts have been around much longer than 1940.

Frederick Taylor published his work; "The Principles of Scientific" Management in 1911 giving him an auspicious start in the field but one, which is typically credited with the Modern MBA, vise operations research. There is no doubt that his time and motion studies constitute, for the analyst, a very well documented way to collect the first data.

But way before Taylor arrived on the seen anyone in business strived for efficiency although they might not have been certain how to achieve it. They learned by making trades and by making mistakes. Almost 100 years previous, however, Eli Whitney labored to produce machinery and interchangeability to improve efficiency in his factories. Whitney, however, has both supporters and critics. The individual typically credited with the invention of interchangeable parts is Samuel Colt who took before Congress 15 guns. After disassembling them, he mixed up the parts and reassembled them. The approving Congress immediately placed orders for 10,000 of the weapon never realizing that the demonstration was a shame and Colt had marked all the parts so he could reassemble them correctly.

Regardless of what took place on that day, Colt, enlisted the help of Eli Whitney and together they eventually got it right and the first assembly line took root – this well before Henry Ford apparently invented one. This paints a darker side of analysis, a side that allows the initiated to obscure the truth with promises of greater efficiency and cheaper products. Perhaps they will, perhaps they will not, but many well-documented cases of fraud occurred throughout the 1800s culminating in Congress passing a False Claims act in 1863.

The Charlatan is the guy who convinces his boss that by adding sawdust to the gunpowder they were selling the Government that the company could save money. Perhaps it wasn’t the analyst who told his boss to do this, but if the analyst was telling his boss not to do this he never blew the whistle. This creates a problem for our profession, and therefore becomes the heart and soul of our ethical dilemma. This is a typical problem, which is called the whistle blower scenario. Blowing the whistle is a no win scenario and cheating inside the no-win scenario makes matters worst. Even with protections in place blowing the whistle must be considered carefully with both facts and figures.

As with profit, the primary motivator of malfeasance in the commercial sector, crooks may actually desire the "wrong" answer. Let's hope you are not the one with the time managment study showing how to manipulate the machine to make an extra buck. Let's also hope you an not employed by a crook.