Empiricism makes everything better
I am fully aware that making broad and far-reaching proclamations like the one in the title of this post in dangerous. Yet, having thought about this topic long and hard, my credence in the value of empiricism is rather high and my hope is that if you manage to read the whole post you will come to a similar conclusion. Let’s get started.
What is empiricism
Empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience.
As a philosophical theory, it has a long and rich tradition dating back to the the sixth century BCE with many famous thinkers making major contributions to the core concepts and ideas over the last two and a half millennia. The modern version of empiricism that people typically think of originates chiefly from 17th and 18th century empiricists like John Locke, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and David Hume.
A wise man proportions his belief to his evidence — David Hume
On Hume’s view, our knowledge of the world is based on sense impressions and such “matters of fact” are based on experience. In practice, empirical research would then typically progress along the following path:
David Hume
Observation — Gather empirical data
Induction — Frame a general conclusion from the gathered data
Deduction — Create a conclusion from the experiment
Testing — Analyse and validate collected data with appropriate statistical methods
Evaluation — Present the gathered data and the conclusions of the experiment and assess their validity, value and consequences
It is worth contrasting empiricism with the philosophy of rationalism which posits that knowledge can also be developed by exploring concepts and through deduction, intuition and revelation and that knowledge can be created even without prerequisite sensory experience. In my experience both rationalism (sometimes known as intellectualism) and empiricism are important avenues through which we acquire new knowledge and understanding. As such both need to work hand in hand in most human endeavours to drive progress.
But enough of philosophy — my aim in this post is not to provide a full and holistic overview of empiricism as a philosophical concept (which I am not qualified to do), but instead I would like to show that having empiricism as a mindset is important and valuable both in life and in how we build, run and grow organisations.
Empiricism as a foundation of progress
Scientific method and empirical research are perhaps the most transformational ideas humanity has ever come up with. These ideas and methods have lifted humanity from poverty, powered the development of technology and medicine and enabled a fundamental transformation of our society resulting in a creation of a completely new epoch, Anthropocene.
It was the mindset, ethos, practices, and methods of empiricism that enabled people to think more deeply and more honestly about what is real, what is true, what they should (and could) believe and why. It is empiricism that also dramatically accelerated society’s departure from the supernatural and the spiritual (recent, hopefully temporary, regression in some countries notwithstanding) and enabled a gradual liberation of whole peoples from the millennia of religious dogma. For all these reasons, it is hard of overstate the impact empiricism had on the society as a whole and on the pace and direction of human progress.
When empiricism is absent
Now, so far all we have been talking about empiricism purely at a conceptual level. Let’s now explore how ideas of empiricism translate into a business context. In my mind, a powerful way to illustrate the value of empiricism is to describe a fictitious organisation, let’s call it Legacy Ltd., where empiricism is entirely absent. At Legacy Ltd, the following is very common:
Most decisions are made exclusively by people with the strongest opinion, those who are most assertive at advocating their views and those who are paid the most
Strategy is often based on hopes, assumptions, gut feelings and ‘strong intuitions’
True level of organisational maturity is not understood or is based on unfounded beliefs
Major structural problems and issues continue to ‘bubble’ deep down in the organisation without senior management ever admitting there’s a problem (even if people are fully aware of them). Issues and incidents are explained away as bad luck, unforeseen circumstances, unexpected human errors or are downplayed as unavoidable.
People’s career growth is very positively correlated with their ability to ‘manage the message upwards’ and ‘tell a story’.
Dubious, irrelevant, unreliable, or incomplete data is used as justification for decisions or investments
Vanity metrics used to measure organisational and team performance
The organisation spends a lot of effort on reinforcing existing beliefs and ideas
The list goes on. In various guises, many of us have experienced one or more of such things in our careers. If any of the above looks familiar, your organisation or team would certainly benefit from more empirical thinking and more empiricism-based practices.
Why is practicing empiricism hard?
So if lack of empiricism tends to result in poor outcomes, why don’t all leaders, teams and organisations fully embrace empiricism and thus gain the many benefits it brings? Well, as is usually the case, there are many reasons. In this post, I will outline only three of them.
Firstly, practicing empiricism requires a culture that values seeing things as they are not as people would like them to be. I am talking about a culture which values truth above everything else regardless of how painful, unpopular, or difficult to accept it might be. Way too often people have incentives to distort reality in a specific direction — perhaps they feel threatened in their role and feel that any admission of a problem may weaken their position. If the cultural context they operate in requires careful ‘management upwards’, navigating complex politics, dealing with power struggles, or being reprimanded for bringing up bad news or challenging things, it is only natural that people prefer to employ creative ‘spin-doctoring’ instead of empiricism.
Empiricism implies facing reality, digesting it, and shaping our actions based on what is reasonable to believe to be true.
Empiricism also requires having means to assess things in some empirical manner. This usually requires data, insights, analyses, feedback, and other types of inputs all of which need to be reasonably reliable. Without such inputs it is not possible to establish what is true and real what is fiction or wishful thinking. Organisations often either lack trustworthy data and insights or, and that could be worse, knowingly or unknowingly work with data that’s misleading, irrelevant or incomplete. This is usually a consequence of measuring what you can vs. measuring what you should.
Finally, empiricism requires intellectual humility, curiosity, absence of hubris and appreciation of one’s fallibility. These are all exceptionally valuable qualities to have and any team formed of people with such qualities is destined to grow and succeed. Alas, the world around us often rewards and incentivises different behaviours.
Empiricism in practice
As we said, empiricism implies facing reality, digesting it, and shaping our actions based on what is reasonable to believe to be true. It means grounding our actions and strategies in what is real and continuously validating if our understanding is correct. Here is a list of basic principles, approaches and ideas that, in my experience, support empirical thinking:
Don’t distort facts — good or bad. See things as they are, even if you don’t like what you are seeing. That means not hiding from bad news but also not mislabelling mediocrity as excellence.
Reward and recognise people who are honest and transparent and who help you see what’s true. Publicly recognising people whose work is grounded in empiricism enables others to gain confidence to do the same.
Promote and foster a culture of open enquiry and curiosity. Lead by example.
Use (the right) data, insights, and feedback to help you establish what is real and what is not. Pay attention to what is measured, why and how and be conscious of Goodhart’s law.
Continuously evaluate how valid and representative your measurements, data and insights are and to what extent your conclusions really follow from the data (premises) — see Inductive Fallacies.
Get used to working with credences and degrees of confidence as opposed to absolutes. Your confidence in something should always be proportionate to the evidence you have and the quality/reliability of that evidence.
Be wary of confirmation bias and Dunning-Kruger effect — nobody is immune to it. Be careful about the questions you are asking yourself e.g. Can I believe it? vs. Must I believe it?
Make Bayesian thinking part of your mental toolbox and use it to update your understanding of reality.
Empiricism is, of course, not a panacea, but I strongly believe that it needs to have a much more prominent place in the minds of leaders both in government and in business. The agile community, for instance, has done a great job at promoting empiricism as one of the foundational ideas of what agile is all about and reminding organisations how valuable it is. Another example might be Ray Dalio whose leadership philosophy is strongly driven by empiricism — just read his ‘Principles’. Yet, I still maintain that we don’t have enough senior leaders whose ethos is grounded in empiricism and related ideas.
I hope I succeeded in making a good case for empiricism as an approach and mindset. So now it is over to you: How can you lead by example and bring a bit of David Hume and Ray Dalio into your team or organisation? Where and how can you best introduce empiricism in your work and your life?