Validate important facts

Ours is a society that still has a hangover of working by guesswork and treating suggestions and assumptions as facts. A lot of information that we come across is neither empirical nor fact-based. And yet, we often make decisions based on such information. If we are to rise and shine, we need to change our approach to how we treat information.

One major source of this problem is that when we don’t know, we quickly jump at asking friends or those who are very close to us. Way back, this approach was probably necessitated by the poor or lack of communication tools. But today, we live in a global village. You can reach almost anyone in no time. So, why not get it from the source?

This reminds me of the time when I was in my first year of engineering studies at the Polytechnic. There was a problem whereby for a few times in a roll, we missed one of the most popular dishes at the cafeteria (chips and fried/boiled eggs). The students were getting agitated about this and so the Polytechnic Students Union (PSU) had to step in and act. Everyone was impressed with the report that the general secretary of the PSU presented to the students assembly.  The gentleman, who is now a respected executive in town, gave a detailed account of how he kept following the leads into the facts that led to the root cause of the problem.

The gentleman spoke to all responsible people in the college registrar’s office, he even met and spoke to the farmer who supplied potatoes that were input for the production of chips. He spoke to the college purchasing officer and he had discussions with cooks as well as the accounts team. With all the facts he gathered, he was able to demonstrate to the students which role player was responsible for the problem. This was a very unique and best way of finding the root cause of the problem, by getting to the bottom of the problem.

Now, let us examine how we often deal with issues in practice. Many of us do not pay attention to the details or facts as was done by the PSU general secretary. A lot of times, we simply act on informal information that we come across. We are not prepared to go that extra mile to get the genuine facts from the original sources. This is why we make wrong decisions, make wrong choices and end up with suboptimal achievement. Therefore, now we know how to fix this particular problem.

Any important information needs to be validated. We can confirm with the original source. In the case where even the original source may not be relied upon, it is important to conduct a sanity check. Do a rough estimation or benchmark to check if the information you have makes sense.

Even in your employed job, validating facts will take you very far. I know that in the management consulting industry, validating facts is part of their creed. Top management consulting firms like McKinsey want you to be a person who confirms and validates a question or requirement before you even embark on solving the issue. They must be aware of the unique importance of validating information before it can be used.

Typically, in this industry, when they get requirements from a client, they package them and play back to the client so that the customer can confirm that what the management consultant has recorded is correct.

Let us embrace the practice of validating and confirming all the important information. This is the sure way to rising and shinning. All the best as you seek to rise and shine through validating facts!