“Perception is Reality”… what is the Reality? In other words, can a mere perception be Reality, since different people perceive Reality differently? If yes, does it meant that there are multiple realities? But then, which one should be called The Reality?
The assumption, or rather the definition, is that The Reality is One, and that the Reality is expected to be matching with the true facts. So, why is defining Reality not as simple as riding a bike? Facts are facts, aren’t they?… Why is simply describing plain facts so complex?… We tend to assume that what we say and see is commonly understood by others. But we know it is not the case. We know that if we call for the sense of smell, or taste, or even touch, we might have different perceptions, and we accept to be unaware of others perceptions. So why relying on the assumption that hearing and seeing should be universally understood? Why has humankind taken that assumption for thousands of years, resulting in so many misunderstandings and even conflicts sometimes? Why are we working and interacting with people every day, assuming that the others understand what we say and show exactly the way we do?… Probably because we do not have a choice. We have to take that assumption since it is the only way to interact with people… And the nasty part of the game is that some people who prefer to play with politics rather than with fair competencies use and abuse of this accepted gap between perception and reality.
Struggling in my day to day life and job with interacting with people who persist in not describing the plain facts the way I do, I came to the conclusion that the complexity of describing Reality comes from a 3-dimensional gap.
- The gap between what I perceive and the Reality
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” ― Søren Kierkegaard
Every one of us considers that what we perceive is Reality. But we know that our perception of the world comes with a filter. We often choose to ignore it as it is too complex to take that filter into consideration. As such, we forget that our own “glasses” force us to see the world on our way, since we are precisely part of that world and part of that Reality. So, being part of it, we cannot have a neutral vision of the world.
Even worst, in spite of knowing that we can only have a biased view of Reality, everybody tends to be convinced that one’s own perception is The Reality. It has to be the Truth since this is what I see…
Our perception of the world comes from our past experiences, from what we know, but also from what we don’t know – our own filters. Let’s take an example: some friends of mine were in a plane three months ago, and the flight was diverted from its initial route crossing the Atlantic Ocean. It was turning back to the US since a reactor was suspected to be burning. The incident could have turned into a terrible accident, but ended up just being an inconvenient re-planning event. Some passengers seemed to be a bit anxious – yet, it happens all the time in a plane, even in the calmest flight ever. But since my friends were not understanding well the message announced in a foreign language for them, they were just angry to see the flight was not taking its planned route. Not a bit anxious as some other passengers could be. Until they saw the firemen boarding the aircraft after it landed back in the US. And my friends only understood after the fact the reason why the plane was diverted… A perfect example of how one can perceive reality very differently from the facts. And what is also interesting, is that perception can – and often does – change over time, as we accumulate experiences and mature through them.
In the end, the facts are the facts, but you and I perceive them through our own set of lenses, each set having its own filtering color. It is because you and I are part of the world, that we are experiencing it, which results in an unavoidable gap between the perception of that world, and the actual world. This gap evolves, closes or enlarges, but there is and always will be a gap between the Reality and the way you and I experience it.
- The gap between what others perceive and the Reality
“One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.” ― Tim Burton
The second dimension of the gap between perception and reality – and probably the greatest – is the fact that different people have different perceptions of the Reality. Back to the diverted flight, my friends were probably rather calm to see they were turning back. But other passengers, who were understanding perfectly the captain’s announcement, were probably already praying hard for a miracle to happen… Different people have different sets of lenses, with different colors being filtered via their culture, language, past experiences. So, in spite of seeing and experiencing the “same” facts, every individual interprets and analyses them in its own way, very differently from anyone else. Indeed, since my perception of the world is not neutral, why should yours be? And if both are not neutral, what is the chance that both biases are exactly in the same direction? Now multiply by how many people live on Earth, and you get the number of biases that you can find for any fact… we are all part of the Reality, so who should be more right than the others?…
On top of the fact that two persons will unconsciously have different perceptions of Reality, add the fact that everybody also has a unique personality. Some people tend to be more sensitive to what they experience empirically, while others tend to trust more easily their intuitions and the rationality of a logical explanation rather than what they sense. Some people will trust their feeling before their judgments. Some are optimistic while some are pessimistic. So, all in all, you obtain in-commensurable combinations of experiences and personalities that make the great diversity of our world. And these combinations also create the difficulties that we all know when it comes to communication with people who obviously do not see the Reality with the same set of lenses as what you do.
How much time are we spending in our personal and professional lives, to explain why others are wrong while we are right? The others must be wrong, since I know that I am right… it is time wasted? Should we rather try to convince ourselves why the others are right while we are wrong?
Let’s take a real personal example to illustrate this concept: I was harassed by a colleague a couple of weeks ago, as she wanted me to prepare an “official sign-off memo” for a critical project that had just been completed, after having been delayed for two months consecutively. This project was critical since it was in the radar of the regulators, and the project team had a tremendous pressure to complete it as soon as possible. Considering the stakes of that project, we have built very thorough documentation on what was going to be implemented, and collected the proper sign-offs of each involved stakeholder two weeks before the go-live date. So when my colleague – a PMO controller – came to ask me about the document, I was very proud to send her the thorough document, signed by all the relevant people, documenting precisely the contents and the controls of the project. Two minutes later, I received an angry email back: “I need an official memo, not your project document in PDF format”. I was a bit puzzled by the word “official”: what would make a document more official than this one?… and I was also puzzled by the fact that she wanted a word document instead of a PDF – Word documents can be amended, while PDF precisely shows the versions of the document, and the date when it was issued. Obviously, there was a misunderstanding between the two of us. And she took it as I was very uncooperative and pushing back on producing a document that she would see more “rigorous and official” than the one showing the true contents of the project. Once I sensed the fact that she took me for uncooperative, I was at a loss – not knowing how to produce a document that would suit her administrative needs, while mine was explaining all the true contents that she was actually not understanding. On one hand, she had the administrative lenses of the project controller not understanding the contents of the project, and on the other hand, I had the functional lenses of the project manager. And there is no way we could agree one with each other as the world had different colours behind our own individual lenses.
- The gap between the facts and the way the facts are described
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” ― Albert Einstein
Lastly, the third dimension of the gap between perception and reality – and probably the nastiest – comes from the fact that, once a reality has been experienced, it must be described to be shared with others. That is all what communication is about.
Reality is somehow the facts described by most people in a given way. A few centuries ago, the majority of people would have described the Earth as the center of the universe, and the Sun rotating around it. It was what was taken as The Reality. Then came Galileo and a few more after him who finally established a different Reality about the Solar system. And the interesting fact about changes in perceptions of the reality, is that once a given perception is anchored, it is a lot harder to get people to accept another perception of the reality than what it was in the first place. It took centuries for people to accept what is today obvious to us: the Earth rotating around the Sun and not the other way round.
The business world is full of such examples. What I call the “political people” ruin some others lives by being the first ones to tell the boss what the Reality is, so that they can be in the right spot and turn others – the ones who are often doing a much better job – into the bad guys.
These “political people” will make the reality appear like a problem, when the person responsible for it is actually fighting to get a solution to resolve the problem. These people build fake reputations of others, rather than helping building fair and constructive plans to make the company move forward. When someone they don’t like says something, whatever it is, they will never truly try to understand the intention and the truth behind – they will just play on the gap between reality and the description of the reality, to create a perception that will become what people believe.
I have never truly understood the intentions of these people. Maybe being a bit too naive, I have never understood why some people need to shine by destroying others. But what I understand is the difference between true leaders – the ones who will make their own neutral perception of the company reality – and opportunistic leaders – the ones who will use a few boys or puppies to gage what others do behind their backs, to spy on others while they are away. To me, the difference between these two groups lies in the way someone will approach a fact: by trying to understand what are the real problems, then understanding their root causes, and finally approaching solutions and judging suggestions inspired by problem statements and root causes. Someone who is unable to read through that thought process – problem, root causes, solutions – cannot be a true leader as he or she will always be influenced by people who try to make them adopt their perception of the Reality, instead of helping them to build their own.
To conclude, let’s say that Perception vs Reality has been a gap to humankind for thousands of years – from Plato who illustrated it as shadow on a cave, to nowadays when business men try to influence others to convince their bosses and peers that the Reality is what they see. This gap, that we often call Communication, is the responsibility of the world, of others, and ours. It will always exist. So what to do to live with it in a constructive way, in spite of so many people trying to destroy others by building fake images?
The Process Excellence String of Ariadne 