Diagnosing Undiscussable Undiscussables

A month ago, I wrote Listening to the Scientists: A Deadly Trap for Strategists, and since its publication, we have witnessed the release of the Anthony Fauci diaries, watched Fauci pleading the fifth repeatedly, and seen the initial Fauci texts. It is now clear that there was a deadly cover-up of important aspects of the COVID crisis, a cover-up that has contributed and continues to contribute to the deaths of many. In this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece, I will discuss how to have a better chance of diagnosing and stopping this kind of thing the next time. It is called Diagnosing Undiscussable Undiscussables: How to Battle Institutional Deceit & Cover-up. You can find the whole PTW/PI series here.

Institutional Deceit & Cover-up

Many things are now clear to anyone but the rigidly delusional. First, COVID was grown in labs – not a lab but rather a group of labs that collaborated on the task – funded aggressively by Fauci using US taxpayer money (good summary here; New York Times confessional here). Second, the experimental gene therapy that was described as a vaccine, despite not having the features of a vaccine, turned out to be dangerous to human life, especially to unborn babies. Third, the gene therapy provided at best modest protection from acquiring COVID and no diminution in its transmission. Fourth, masks weren’t helpful in any meaningful respect. Fifth, virtually all children that were given the gene therapy received zero benefit from taking it and, without having any say in the matter, incurred disproportionate health risks.

To add insult to injury, we now know that those in positions of power knew all the above and still imposed it on their fellow Americans (and many of their global counterparts did similarly). Perhaps the most painful revelation is that with the gene therapy mandates, they knowingly stood by as unborn babies were sacrificed to their cause.

One might reasonably ask: how could monsters like this both exist and persist?

I am not surprised because I see this pattern in institutions not infrequently – from people who didn’t start out as monsters. While the institutions I mainly study are large companies, I have also worked with large government organizations and universities. While this one is more damaging then I have ever seen, the way the deceitful cover-up takes shape and maintains itself is eerily similar across these varied institutions.

So, rather than focus on what punishment should be visited upon Fauci and his colleagues, I want to concentrate on how we can practically battle future institutional deceit and cover-up.

I will start out by saying that such battles are difficult. Hindsight is 20-20 and is sadly too late in many circumstances, including with COVID. That having been said, I called it in advance in my six-year-old piece Should We ‘Follow the Science/Scientists? Check it out if you haven’t already.

What Generates an Environment Conducive to Institutional Deceit and Cover-up?

The initiating source tends to be theorists – in particular, enthusiastic theorists who have theories that they are dying to try out. Driven by their enthusiasm, they don’t feel they need to do much testing, trial, or practice to roll their theories out fully. They ignore practical concerns because each loves their pet theory.

I have witnessed this many times. For example, in 1998, P&G announced a sweeping reorganization, which was launched in early 1999 by newly promoted CEO Durk Jager, that transformed a business that had long been organized around four largely independent regions into one featuring global product organizations (Global Business Units) and country sales-oriented organizations (Market Development Organizations). He loved the concept and wanted to do it immediately, globally, at 100%. He didn’t want to try it in part of the organization or roll it out in stages or delay at all. The rollout created chaos which tanked performance, resulting in him becoming the first CEO to be fired in P&G’s then-163-year history.

But theorists want to be right. They want their theory to work – often desperately so.

I believe the desperation has two primary drivers – first, emotional and second, a combination of power and financial. They tend to be in love with their theory, and it is emotionally devastating for them to see it fail or be aborted before given a chance to succeed. Plus, success maintains and/or increases their power and, with it, all the financial trappings. For Jager, successfully putting the theory to work would have helped him keep his job as the powerful CEO of an iconic company – and the wealth that would have come with it.

In another situation, I was chair of the audit committee of the board of Celestica, a $20 billion NYSE-listed company. It was created by a private equity firm that bought the Canadian chip and motherboard manufacturing operations of IBM and installed its division manager as CEO of the new company. Celestica then went on to buy up the manufacturing operations of other computer companies to create a giant electronic manufacturing services (EMS) firm. As CEO of a large public company, the former plant manager got paid vastly more than ever before.

His theory was that Celestica could buy up the plants of other large computer firms (like HP) and, with his superlative operating expertise, run them so much better that Celestica could justify the high prices of the acquisitions. When a series of investor meetings didn’t go so well, he tried to cover up negative investor meetings from the board – focusing only on the positive ones – the beginning of deceit and cover-up (to be continued below).

Undiscussability

The late Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management Professor Chris Argyris, the father of organizational learning and a mentor of mine, identified that when a topic becomes undiscussable, learning stops and improvement grinds to a halt. Learning comes from testing theories and seeing if they work or not, which is what real scientists do – not the fraudulent pseudo scientists of the COVID era. If a theory is deemed undiscussable, the theory won’t be subjected to rigorous testing. And if testing does happen, nobody is allowed to discuss the undiscussable results.

Before the GBU/MDO launch, I went to Jager and shared with him that I didn’t believe his theory was ready for prime time and that he needed to work through its practical implications and get far more granular before moving forward. His response was to fire me – after 14 years of service to his company (I discuss it in this PTW/PI piece if you want more detail). I have kept the termination letter, which was reversed three months later by AG Lafley, for posterity. In essence, by making his theory undiscussable, he ended his career.

When I confronted the Celestica CEO on the theory-challenging investor pushback, he threatened to cut off all future information to me if I “continued to be critical.” That is, he declared to the chair of the audit committee that to him, critical investor feedback was an undiscussable subject. When I informed the board of his threat, I was told that I needed to figure out how to get along better with the CEO. Of course, I resigned on the spot because the board and CEO were in full agreement that I should be punished for discussing the undiscussable. But less than a year later, the board was shocked (yes, they were a clueless bunch) to find that the CEO was hiding financial results from them and fired him. (Note: only one board member ever apologized for ignoring my warning; the rest were, well, assholes!)

Based on Argyris’ teaching and my repeated experience, my intermediate conclusion is that if something – anything – is made undiscussable, there is a strong case that there is cover-up of deceit present. It is not 100% certain – just very likely. But there is a more conclusive layer.

Undiscussable Undiscussables

Argyris went one step further in his diagnosis/observation. Sometimes the existence of an undiscussable itself becomes undiscussable – the extreme case. Take the emperor has no clothes scenario. The undiscussable feature is that his subjects can’t mention that the emperor has no clothes. The undiscussable undiscussable is that no observer of that dynamic is permitted point out that the emperor’s subjects can’t point out that the emperor has no clothes.

This is the extreme tail case – and the true tell. When undiscussability of undiscussables is enforced, you can be 100% confident that you are dealing with institutional deceit and cover-up.

COVID is such a case. You couldn’t criticize any COVID policy – that itself was undiscussable because, for example, you might engender experimental gene therapy hesitancy and we couldn’t have that. For example, those enforcing the regime felt it would be dangerous to their theory to have pregnant women come to believe that the experimental gene therapy might kill their baby – even though it was a true and meaningful risk. Every non-compliant person was brutally censored with no regard for the First Amendment of the US constitution.

But those daring to speak up about the censorship were even more ruthlessly censored because they were pointing out that an undiscussable was undiscussable. That is, they were doubly censored for pointing out that censorship was taking place.

In terms of diagnosing institutional deceit and cover-up, this is a bet-your-life scenario. It is absolutely, positively the case that there is deceit and cover up if you experience the undiscussability of an undiscussable. You don’t have to think about it, fret about it whether it is happening, etc. It is the case.

That is why I had 100% confidence that the Fauci diaries would say what they did – because the COVID undiscussables had been made undiscussable.

What To Do?

It is very tricky. Every time that I have confronted theoreticians on their pet theories, I have had to pay a price. I was fired from my most beloved and longest serving client and I felt compelled to resign from my first NYSE board. It is a hard task but, in my view, it is a better than the alternative of living a life of servile obedience.

I risked personal cancellation by writing Should We ‘Follow the Science/Scientists? six years ago. And I risked it again with month ago with Listening to the Scientists and I am again with this piece.

And with COVID, the deceit and cover-up battle is nowhere close to being over. Fauci and his media lapdogs are fighting as if their lives depend on it. Ironically after all the damage they have caused, they are fighting for their reputations as if those haven’t already been torpedoed. You can’t make this stuff up!

Practitioner Insights

Institutional deceit and cover-up are perpetual threats. There will always be willing, able, and motivated sources – faux scientific theorists like Fauci.

The initial tell is undiscussables. The certain tell is undiscussable undiscussables.

External vigilance is the price of freedom on this front. Be eternally vigilant about undiscussables.

When your vigilance turns up undiscussability, use your diagnosis to help convince others to join you in fighting the deceit. You need fellow travelers. The enforcers love it when you are alone because that makes it easier for them to crush you – and they will make it as painful and expensive for you as they can.

A second piece of practitioner advice involves the media. Because of my religious upbringing (Mennonite), I don’t support the death penalty for individuals. But I enthusiastically support the death penalty for companies (not the people in them!) – what economics giant Joseph Schumpeter coined creative destruction. If a company stops serving its customers, it gets outcompeted and expires – making customers better off and the economy stronger.

Much of the business of providing news and commentary thereon – whether traditional print and broadcast or newer online companies, whether big or small – engaged in enforcing the undiscussability of undiscussables during COVID. That is the precise opposite of the industry’s real job – the job customers expect industry players to perform. And not one of them has apologized for having done so – even when given the opportunity. The closest was Facebook/Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg who whined and complained about how he had no choice but to succumb to pressure from the Biden Administration to violate the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The founder and CEO of one of the richest and most powerful companies on the face of the planet could only promise to try to do better next time. Pathetic.

It would be great for the country if all media companies that enforced the undiscussability of undiscussables during COVID by violating the First Amendment of the US Constitution were to expire. That would represent a burst of creative destruction that would make America a better place. As practitioners of strategy, readers should contribute to their expiration because they offend every tenet of strategy – i.e. they abandoned their customers to protect monsters while feathering their own beds. They don’t deserve your business – or anybody else’s for that matter.

And to be clear, this isn’t a left or right issue. Across the political spectrum, every citizen should want companies to disappear when they thwart their customers rather than serve them – and be replaced by companies that care for their customers.

So, take undiscussability seriously – and the undiscussability thereof deadly seriously. It is the canary in the coal mine. When that canary keels over, people are about to start dying.

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