Did you ever go to a meeting with a set of facts, based on data points, grounded in metrics and discovered that others in the room had a different version of the outcome? Happens all the time.
I will bet you that it even happens in your personal life. You had a discussion, argument or whatever and what seemed like a clear slam dunk outcome to you was nowhere near the clear slam dunk outcome of the other person.
Why is that – and what can we learn?
I guess it begins with taxonomy – what constitutes a fact? How is it based on data? And if it is and there has really been only one outcome – how can there possibly be different versions?
Read this quote:
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. ~Napoleon Bonaparte
Whatever happens – even a second ago – is history – subject to interpretation – no matter how detailed you think your documentation is – no matter how ironclad you believe your “facts” are – no matter how bulletproof you think your metrics are.
So what is a person to do?
Create history…design a legacy…make sure the “facts” are seen through the lens of insight…don’t let history create you….
And by the way – all history is open to later revisionism – now what does that say?!
or become e-mortal, and don’t let anybody else create your legacy.Have a look at a site I’ve been developing in my spare time… http://www.farawayfish.com although not sure I’d record my meeting notes there !
Just this morning, I heard the following statement on the radio: “There are only two points of view: mine and the wrong one.”
I once heard — I might not be right — but I will be wrong at the top of my voice — and there is your history…
This is an interesting post. The idea of “facts” and the theory of them being subjective is interesting. And where people get their “facts” or what they believe to be “the facts” is interesting as well. Take a look at this recent study by Forrester relating to how much people trust various sources of information: http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2008/12/people-dont-tru.html
In knowledge representation, there’s an interesting concept called reification.
This is an approach to provide additional information about fragments of knowledge, such as scope, author/source, context, etc.
The main use for reification is to provide a degree of confidence or usefulness for some particular fragment of knowledge, and the reliability of some reasoning that depends on the fragment.
References for this are Knowledge Representation and Resource Definition Framework. Interesting reading if you have time on your hands.
Regarding the article “The Past” and David’s question “So what is a person to do?”
My comment is simple – always do your best…
Everything we do will have unseen / unintended outcomes. If we do our best, then the consequences of our actions should have a positive impact on the collective history of our company.
If it doesn’t turn out so positive, then glean what you can and move forward. The rest is history.