A Lack of Trust

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 89 DAYS

Riddick held our morning meeting in the main conference room, and invited the Test team’s lead to join us. Tosner was as surprised as I was by an image of the latest Hope Chart on the front screen with a giant red “X” drawn over it. “This is gone,” Riddick announced, pointing at the screen while standing next to it.

“What, exactly?” Tosner asked innocently. “The hope or the graph?”

“Both,” Riddick said, staring icily at him.

“Was it something Sally said yesterday?” I speculated. The media blitz had gotten mixed reviews overnight, prompting open speculation by some national leaders that the global strategy would have to be scrapped with less than three months until action absolutely had to be taken.

Riddick’s expression softened. “She didn’t say anything wrong.”

“You mean ‘it’, Maura,” Tosner corrected her.

“I said what I meant. By any reasonable and useful standard, we’ve had a sentient machine at the core of our operation, and her credibility defines the credibility of the result. That credibility is not high enough for success, nor is it likely to increase sufficiently in the time we have left.”

“But we’re only half-way through the evaluation!” Tosner protested. “So far, it looks no worse than before the crash.”

“I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Caleb. The majority of the public now perceives Sally as significantly different from the Sanda they trusted, to the point of feeling that they were lied to. What’s worse, WICO didn’t notice the difference, so they don’t trust us either.”

“We noticed a difference,” Tosner said. “We have bug reports. And Will is working for us, and he was treating Sanda like a person before anybody.”

“Again, not good enough.”

I felt like I had been punched in the gut. “But we know Sally’s right,” I said, aware of how lame it sounded.

“We trust her because she’s open about uncertainties we have some insight into. Most people feel very uncomfortable with that kind of knowledge. They want a leader who projects certainty and has underlings deal with the dirty details. To them, Sally went from being an underling that happened to be best-in-class technology, to a leader who is willing to admit weakness in the face of a mortal threat.”

Riddick had a good point, but I couldn’t let it go. “‘Question everything and fully accept nothing, because reality is always subject to interpretation.’ That rule is critical to the strategy’s success for the obvious reason that what we don’t know will likely kill us. By your logic, enough people won’t accept that either, so we were screwed anyway.”

“Probably,” Riddick admitted. “It goes against the very basis of faith, which helps many get out of bed in the morning and get to sleep at night.”

“What are you two talking about?” Tosner blurted. “Just have Decatur come out and say Sally works for him, just like the rest of us. That’s why he’s the Secretary General.”

Riddick and I looked at each other. “Does she?” I asked her.

“He’s going to need more power than she has…” Riddick began.

“At least in principle,” I finished for her.

“It’ll take more than that,” Tosner added.

“But it’s a place to start,” Riddick said hopefully.

Reality Check

I’m reflecting here my own view that hope depends on trust that it’s justified. I’ve been stuck much of my life on a related question: Is the trust itself justified? My current answer is embedded in the rule quoted by “Will” which argues that any answer to such a question must be provisional as a consequence of inherent physical, mental, and ethical limitations of ourselves and everyone else.