Surely, one of the greatest dangers of online conversation is producing a dialog, to be preserved forever, in which — looking back — you'll see that you were talking past people you with whom you were arguing.
How embarrassing. What a waste of your best efforts, your brand, and your reputation. It takes a broad-minded person to examine such situations in hindsight and confess to such errors.
Robert S. McNamara, who died last year at the age of 93,both lived long enough and reflected hard enough to speak out, write about, and take responsibility for many of his actions in World War II, at Ford Motor Co., during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, especially, in Vietnam serving as Defense Secretary under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. His candor was remarkable, even if some people say he did not go far enough.
I just watched his film, "The Fog of War," and found it fascinating. It consists of 11 lessons for life, many of them matters of being conscious to all possibilities in a given situation where communication is pressured by conflict and mistrust — such as in war, and especially across racial and ideological boundaries such as between the United States and the Soviet Union.
R.S. McNamara's eleven lessons of life, many derived from war:
- Empathize with your enemy — This first lesson really stuck with me. In McNamara's case, it involved the ability of the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Llewellyn E. "Tommy" Thompson, to speak candidly to President Kennedy about the motivations and desires of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Thompson's decision to stick his neck out and disagree with JFK — not to mention JFK's willingness to listen — was one factor contributing to the world standing down from the nuclear brink. For organizational communicators, especially online, it means writing content that speaks to the motivations of the reader, not the writer — especially in times of conflict.
- Rationality will not save us — In my opinion, rationality without emotional buy-in to a proposition will rarely win.
- There's something beyond one's self — If it's all about you, it isn't enough.
- Maximize efficiency — This one does sound like a time-is-money industrialist speaking, doesn't it?
- Proportionality should be a guideline in war — Proportionality is a humanitarian guideline at many times of conflict. Piling on is wrong, and, in war, needlessly deadly. McNamara's example was bombing strikes over Japan.
- Get the data — Often speaks for itself, but often ignored.
- Belief and seeing are often both wrong — Not to be flip, but see #6 immediately above.
- Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning — Be the self-examined life.
- In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil — But as rarely as possible.
- Never say never — Circumstances change. Politics taught me this lesson.
- You can't change human nature — And, in the end, the good qualities of human nature will save the day. At least that's where we must place our faith.
Of all of these, I think the first lesson, to place yourself in the mind and heart of "the other" is the best advice. The goal is to get for the other what they want, provided it can be something you want too. How you define those ends may wind up being very different from how you started.
In the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the turning point with respect to Khrushchev was seeing that he would like to take credit for preventing U.S. destruction of Cuba. Ny reaching an accord with Khrushchev, JFK was able to let his adversary package a message that sold to the Soviet military establishment as well as prevented an invasion of Cuba that might have touched off a nuclear exchange.
Was the situation that dangerous?
In the film, McNamara tells the story of visiting Cuba to share recollections with then-Cuban President Fidel Castro. McNamara learned during that visit that there were many Soviet nuclear warheads on Cuba at the time, that in the event the U.S. attacked Cuba Castro would have supported fighting back against the U.S. with a nuclear exchange, and that Castro knew it quite likely meant the end of Cuba. (See #2, by the way.) We were "that" close to nuclear war, McNamara concludes, holding his thumb and forefinger just a smidgen apart.
What lessons of war and conflict illuminate your guidelines for online dialog, especially in conflict?
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