persian messengers and deaf leaders

I was thinking about someone who is the only deliverer of bad news in a team and a leader who doesn’t want to hear bad news. Chanced upon below quote from the speech – “Psychology of Human Misjudgment” by Charlie Munger (audio).

  

Now you've got Persian messenger syndrome. The Persians really did kill the messenger who brought the bad news. You think that is dead? I mean you should've seen Bill Paley in his last 20 years. He didn't hear one damn thing he didn't want to hear. People knew that it was bad for the messenger to bring Bill Paley things he didn't want to hear. Well that means that the leader gets in a cocoon of unreality, and this is a great big enterprise, and boy, did he make some dumb decisions in the last 20 years.

And now the Persian messenger syndrome is alive and well.

I am hearing the drumbeat about Charlie Munger in every Farnam Street podcast – one after other, everyone interviewed in that podcast seems to be a Charlie Munger fan. I need to read up more about him – I did not realize someone like is partner of Warren Buffet. Everyone has heard of the Oracle of Omaha, but may not about Munger. Other repeated reference that cannot be avoided is the book “Influence” by Robert Cialdini which is in my list for long. But Munger cites the book as one that filled the holes in his understanding of human psychology and behavior. The book went up in my toread list. Both could add to my understanding of working with irrational people.

Back to Persian messenger and deaf leader. I think this could be one of the crippling problems of leadership and cause of the misery in the world caused by such leaders.

I met an Architect with Kerala’s public works department (PWD) today. He was talking about ministers and secretaries in government going through similar deaf ear problem. We were talking about the recent flood disaster, environmental protection and government’s understanding of the issues. He said some of these officials are quite intelligent, practical, disciplined leaders. But they surround themselves with technical advisors who are yes men and can’t take criticism or difficult messages which will further curtail people from speaking up. In meetings even if you bring up an opposing view in most diplomatic form, he will get kicked under the table by his seniors to shut up or the minister will explicitly cut off and ask someone else to comment. This behavior will reinforce itself and people will stop talking. It seems the minister took an year to understand the difference between role of architecture and structural engineering in PWD since he wasn’t ready to listen or learn.

Now with these kind of leaders and administration, how do we get lasting change for the better? With such leaders in our corporations and government, what hope do we have for a better world? It is said that the leaders of large organizations have psychopathic tendencies, empathy which allowed them to create successful networks and coalitions dies as they climb up the ladder and nature of their jobs (working insane hours, pushing people to deliver against impossible timelines, pressure to show results) necessitate them to be ruthless. How do we keep them in check – whether they are learning, someone is able to give them dose of reality and criticize and give them the bad news.