A conversation with H. William Dettmer
Recently, an email discussion between Bill and I evolved to this statement:
"Decisions, especially by the senior decision makers, are not made on a rational basis, but on an emotional one. And as they become comfortable with the emotional decision, they begin to look for (or find) logical justification to support what they're emotionally decided to do---or not do."
As Churchill observed, "Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually he just picks himself up and continues on."
Bill went on to say, "I suspect that you're experiencing one of two possible phenomena. Either":
- What you present [in the course of my consulting at Throughput.us LLC] is at some level of "cognitive dissonance" with their decision-maker's emotional comfort, or
- There is some more powerful, but unspoken, agenda going on behind the scenes that you have no knowledge of---which for whatever reason has more emotional appeal than your logical presentation does.
Business owners want what they want.
What do you think?
-ski