Strategic misrepresentation, coined by Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, is defined as the tendency to deliberately and systematically distort or misstate information for strategic purposes (source).
Very few people would ever admit to doing this, claiming instead to be above it, after all, it’s lying, it’s manipulative, and it introduces risks that are easily avoidable (therefore, should be avoided).
In context, though, you get a lot of awkward hand-wringing, avoiding eye contact, and defensive responses attempting to explain away why it isn’t that bad.
How does strategic misrepresentation manifest?
You are bidding on a project that you know is going to cost between 1 and 1.5 million dollars. However, you also know that the client won’t accept that (and a competitor will low bid), so you say you can do it for $750,000. It will still cost close to $1.5 million, but you keep that from them and accept that there will be massive cost overruns.
You are submitting a request to the internal project team, which will require a lot of work. Because of the nature of prioritizing requests, you know this huge ask will get backlogged indefinitely. So, you submit a simplified request, that you will slowly expand upon as the project progresses until you get exactly what you wanted to begin with.
You are putting in a request for work, but it doesn’t stir any excitement with stakeholders and looks like it won’t get financed. You decide to really talk up the benefits of your request; how much money it will save, the sales it will generate, increases in productivity, time saved, etc. You deliberately over-promise the benefits of the request, knowing there isn’t a chance you’ll be able to deliver on them.
The two predominant arguments that I hear defending strategic misrepresentation are: “That’s just how business is done, you have to follow the rules of business,” and “No one can see the future, if you expect failure, you’ll be correct 100% of the time.”
The one thing I never heard anyone say though: it’s bad.
The fatalistic “it’s necessary; if it didn’t exist, nothing would get done,” is a belief that things can’t be done better, masquerading as words of wisdom.
Imagine you get a pizza delivered. When it shows up, it’s on fire. Your friend points out that this is weird, delivered pizzas shouldn’t be on fire. You defend it, however, because it’s better than it showing up raw or not showing up at all. Rather than arguing that pizza should be edible and not on fire, you just accept it as part of the process. This is what you sound like, and it’s fucking stupid.
The solution? There isn’t one, unfortunately.
If it’s inevitable, then what’s the point? Well, there are things you can keep in mind that will make things a bit easier.
Channel your inner Meghan Trainor
The first thing to recognize is that some people will lie because they are a liar. As long as you acknowledge that they are lying because their lips are moving, you can begin to assess the requests behind the requests, the notes that aren’t played, and the lines between the lines.
I dealt with a manager who loved to deliberately make small requests that would be prioritized, just to expand the scope exponentially throughout the entire development lifecycle. I knew this, so I would ask leading questions early on to see what hidden requirements she had. She wouldn’t expressly ask for the items I would bring up, but I could determine (based on body language, tone of voice, etc.) what she wanted. These things would get passed on to the developers and would be included from the outset. It saved us significantly on time, and rework.
Document the Holy Hell Out of Everything
Everything… seriously. What was said, when it was said, who else was in the meeting, the context in which the thing was said, and your inner/unspoken feelings. This isn’t a “yeah, got’em!” sort of thing. Quite the contrary. The next thing to realize is that some people will lie because they are idiots.
Being an idiot doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent, some of the smartest people I know are idiots.
You can ask pointed questions, you can lay out doomsday scenarios, you can pull out charts and references to previous projects, and they still would miss the damn moonwalking bear (even if you drew a fucking red circle around it). Being able to recreate the conversation that led you to the current situation of calling the requestor out on a lie can go a long way to providing context into the reasoning behind how we got here.
"The reason we hard-coded these values was that the sales manager had a panic attack when we discussed it. It was when we learned she has a crippling phobia of things that are scalable."
"Oh, that’s right! That’s also when we decided to not discuss adding a weighted sales average to the prediction because you weigh things on a scale, and it might be too close!"
"Exactly!"
BDSM (blatant deception and strategic misrepresentation) is a learned behavior. You can’t begin the process of unlearning it if you don’t have some documentation to back yourself up.
So, if they are excluding things, not because of any sort of malice, then it’s not strategic misrepresentation, right?
Well, yeah, it isn’t. But that leads us to the third point.
Hanlon's Razor
I don’t think Hanlon’s Razor is meant to be used as a way of giving people the benefit of the doubt, but here we are. Hanlon’s Razor states “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
The downside of discussing strategic misrepresentation is that it requires intent and as any prosecuting attorney will tell you, proving intent is near impossible. So, instead of embracing the bitter, misanthropic side, instead, embrace the lie. Assume that each person is acting in good faith, and not being a lying liar who lies, but still acknowledge that they might be lying. I would argue that BDSM should always be included in a risk register, like a master code that is required in order for other codes to work.
How you respond to the BDSM risk, is 100% dependent upon the nature of the project. It could be adding more contingency, having a safe word that allows you out of the contract, or building in more milestones throughout the project.
Become One With the Lie
Strategic misrepresentation is bullshit, shouldn’t be encouraged, shouldn’t be rewarded, and shouldn’t be a part of any organizational culture.
But it is. Fighting it head-on is just going to waste everyone’s time. While you can take measures to limit the damage that it does, the best thing you can do is learn how to incorporate it into your planning. Be open with your team, if you are frustrated by it, so are they.
The key is to remain diligent. Do what you can to stop it before it becomes a fundamental part of the organization while accepting that it’s just something that happens. Also, don’t take the stoic route that so many managers encourage. Get mad. Scream into a pillow, go for a run, punch an inflatable clown punching bag, anything to get the anger and frustration out of your system, and then get to work fixing it. Denying that you are frustrated leads to burnout, resentment, ulcers, premature graying, pyromania… bad things.
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