Sunday, November 15, 2009

Advocacy and Inference

When a statement is made in a discussion, it may raise a question from the other side. For example, if I say that the decline in my company’s stock price is due to our decline in sales, my sales manager might say “Where do you come off saying THAT!? You can’t blame the nose dive in the stock price on sales! The entire ECONOMY is tanking!”

It may not be clear to you, but the sales manager has just asked you for evidence – what is your evidence to back up the claim you made about the declining stock price being due to sales.

When evidence is presented in a discussion whether by collaborators or advocates, the evidence is expected to connect to the claim it is intended to back. That connection is called the “inference”. In my example, I would need to use some evidence and an inference of Cause to explain why flagging sales CAUSED the drop in stock price. I might use statistics to show that our stock price tracks sales and that when they drop, so does the stock price. The other side might say several things, all of which would hurt my case:

• Just because they track, doesn’t mean one causes the other. Maybe the stock drop causes people not to BUY our product.

• There are other things going on when the stock price drops; it’s not just sales

• There are other things going on that causes sales AND the stock price to drop!

Notice that the sales manager didn’t say my EVIDENCE was wrong; they said I came to the wrong conclusion or misinterpreted it. This is a very effective way to dismiss good evidence, so you must be VERY good in developing good inference




There are six types of inference of which I have listed four in the table above. When an inference is made, you should determine which of these four types it is. You should be able to describe why it works (if you are making it) and why it doesn’t (if your opposing advocate is making it).

Of course, as you know, I don’t support the general form of advocacy in a business setting and prefer collaboration in almost every case.

Next week, I will close on the topic of advocacy by showing how to change (even fiercely) advocative discussion into collaborative ones.


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