Be All You Can Be and Get Ready for the︰Leadership Lessons From William Cohen

What Everybody Knows Is Usually Wrong*
February 2022

Until Drucker became my professor, I always felt pretty good when others seemed to agree with an opinion I held on a given subject. This majority agreement seemed to confirm that I was right and well-informed about the subject. Yet what Drucker emphasized to his students was “What everyone knows is usually wrong.” Moreover, he seemed to enjoy showing us how frequently a majority belief was proven wrong (which was surprisingly often).
I was surprised not to find this in his published material. When I quoted Drucker in a manuscript for a book about my experiences with him, the publisher changed it to: “What everyone knows is frequently wrong.” My editor said that he had made the change for believability, that this was more logical for him to have said. But that’s not what Drucker said. Drucker said usually wrong. Thereafter, I paid closer attention and insisted that Drucker be quoted exactly the way he had expressed it in the classroom.
I also paid closer attention and discovered that his statement was surprisingly accurate. I looked at many majority opinions once held in the past. They were usually wrong, as evidenced by the following examples in history.

▌ Can What Everyone Knows Really be in Error?
We laugh at some “facts” once thought true. We don’t even stop to consider that once they were accepted as facts by virtually everyone. “The world is flat,” “The earth is the center of the universe,” or until Englishman Roger Bannister ran it for the first time in 1954, “It is impossible for the human body to run a mile in four minutes.” If you voiced your doubts about these “facts”, in some centuries, you could be sent to prison or executed as a witch.
This is what happened to Joan of Arc, the 15th century female warrior-prodigy who lived during the Hundred Years War between England and France. The French city of Orléans had been cut off for eight months and the English had beaten back every French attempt to break the siege. Then along came this young girl who claimed God had told her to take command. Charles VII of France might have ignored her. However, his advisors were so frustrated that they told him that he might as well give her command, since they’d tried everything else. Desperate, he sent Joan on an unusual assignment. He sent her to Orléans to command the relief army.
She broke the siege of Orléans not in months but in eight days! It was bizarre. Thereafter the teenage Joan led French armies to one victory after the other. They designed a large banner which clearly identified her, and everyone knew her position on the battlefield. Almost a year later she was captured. Her captors spread rumors that her victories had been won through witchcraft and demanded that she be tried in a religious court. The court found her guilty by unanimous decision and sentenced her to being burned alive at the stake. Everyone knew she was a witch. She had proven it herself by her victories and her enemies were happy to spread the lie. She was killed as required by religious law without a drop of her blood being spilled.

▌ Other Earlier Group Beliefs were also Wrong
The ancient Greeks believed that all matter was made up of only four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. I don’t think that you got imprisoned or burned at the stake for believing otherwise, but you were at the very least thought to be an ignorant person.
In modern times we learned that much of what the ancients believed was wrong. When I took chemistry in high school, I learned that Mendeleev, a Russian chemist and inventor, had formulated a Periodic Table of Elements and that it had been established that there were exactly 93 elements which were arranged by atomic mass. Following science meant knowing them. You got a passing grade if you could name a few. Had a student proposed that there were more than 93, I am certain that he or she would have been instantly corrected. Guess what? Science was wrong! Our teachers too. When I checked this in 2008, there were 102 elements. And our teachers usually failed to tell us that Mendeleev had documented only 63 elements when he did his research . . . the other thirty hadn’t been discovered until later. When I checked in February of 2021, there were 118 --- or so “everybody knows.” I’m uncertain since the numbers can still increase, as scientists are now creating new elements rather than just discovering elements already in existence.

▌ The Scientific Theory of Creation that was Wrong
It was once believed that living organisms were created from nonliving matter. The process was called spontaneous generation. For example, frogs were thought to be born from swamp water and maggots from rotting meat. Although the belief about spontaneous generation went back more than a thousand years, no one could provide satisfactory proof. Researchers designed experiments which tended to confirm that spontaneous generation was true, but the experiments were poorly designed. Finally, Louis Pasteur used the microscope in 1859 and the spontaneous generation theory disappeared.

▌ The Jewish Sanhedrin Solves a Problem Using Drucker’s Theory
The Sanhedrin was the highest court of justice in ancient Israel. There was one Great Sanhedrin of 71 judges sitting in Jerusalem, which acted as the Supreme Court, taking appeals from cases that were decided by lesser courts. The Sanhedrin too decided“what everyone knew was usually wrong.” So, in the case of capital offenses which called for the death penalty, unless at least one judge thought the defendant innocent, the defendant was set free despite the complete agreement of guilt by all 71 judges. The Sanhedrin thought if all the judges termed the defendant guilty with not a single exception, something was wrong with the court and taking human life in a prejudiced situation was against Jewish religious law.
With many additional opportunities to distribute erroneous information as factual, this can be a complicated problem. Incorrect information gets repeated, which gives the impression that multiple sources have confirmed the original source even though it may have been in error.

▌ Why Couldn’t Women Vote in the U.S. until the 1920s?
Since ancient times “everyone knew” that women had a medical problem that limited their rational decision making. So, in many countries including the U.S., women weren’t permitted to vote. This was based on the “scientific” belief that women were less mentally stable due to a hormonal imbalance. As late as 1960, some still believed that women were controlled by their hormones. Pregnant women were viewed as emotionally charged, hormonal powder kegs.
Hormonal surges supposedly caused female instability and led them to make irrational decisions. Even bad hairdos were deemed possible stimuli. Consequently, pregnant women were advised not to cut their hair radically because they might strongly regret a drastically changed appearance.
As far as I know no one advises women not to cut their hair anymore during pregnancy, and it is established that both men and women are subject to hormonal issues. Also, we don’t burn those we disagree with at the stake anymore either, but during the pandemic we took to describing unpopular political leaders and even medical doctors as incompetent, liars, dishonest, unpatriotic, racist, partisan, or lacking in courage to take a stand against a particular party or political position.
I wondered what I should believe or doubt with all that I see and hear, on TV and the Internet nowadays. I recall the advice to new detectives: “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see”. This seems to support Drucker’s warning to his students. This different advice has also been given to budding attorneys, though it didn’t originate with any judge. Instead, it came from a work of fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and appeared in, “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” in the November 1845 issue of Graham’s Magazine. I consider this my first line of defense. What’s yours? Or do you just believe whatever the majority believes? Remember Drucker’s warning: “Whatever everyone knows is usually wrong.” Be safe and healthy and live long and prosper - but investigate any claim on your own. Respect others who see or hear and may believe and have different opinions than you. Until the present becomes history, many facts that we know, or think we know, may be wrong or somewhat in error, especially if they are what “everyone knows.”

* Syndicated internationally and Adapted from A Class with Drucker by William A. Cohen (AMACOM, 2008)
and
Drucker’s Way to the Top by William A. Cohen (LID, 2019)

What Everybody Knows Is Usually Wrong*
February 2022

Until Drucker became my professor, I always felt pretty good when others seemed to agree with an opinion I held on a given subject. This majority agreement seemed to confirm that I was right and well-informed about the subject. Yet what Drucker emphasized to his students was “What everyone knows is usually wrong.” Moreover, he seemed to enjoy showing us how frequently a majority belief was proven wrong (which was surprisingly often).
I was ...

Introduction

William A. Cohen, Ph.D., Major General USAF, Retired, was the first graduate of Claremont Graduate School’s Ph.D. program in Executive Management in the 1970s. In that program, Bill experienced first-hand the wisdom and insight of Peter Drucker, sitting in the classroom during Drucker’s legendary seminars. Bill went on to publish over 60 books on business management and leadership, drawing not only on his Drucker education but also his extensive military and professional experience.
Dr. Cohen was the co-founder of the California Institute of Advanced Management (CIAM) and its first president. As such, he was dedicated to supporting a school that would advance the ideas of Peter Drucker to create effective leaders for modern organizations. That training would not just be academic, but, in the spirit of Drucker, a training in “management as a liberal art” – involving practice as well as theory.
After he retired, Bill continued to write monthly newsletters. He wrote until the very last month of his life. CIAM would regularly post these newsletters as part of the research output of the Management as a Liberal Art Research Institute. CIAM President Geofrey Mills suggested that we compile these newsletters into a book. This volume is the result of that suggestion.
I hope you enjoy the collection. Bill and I were working on it up to his passing, so I feel it is an accurate reflection of his wishes. I cannot thank his wife, Nurit, enough for her dedication in reviewing my edits. Many thanks to Len Kwiatkowski, Minglo Shao, and Ron Fogleman for providing tributes.
I leave you with Bill’s signature:

The stuff of heroes. May we all learn some lessons that help us to step up as leaders and be heroes.
Karen Linkletter
Director, MLARI

Introduction

William A. Cohen, Ph.D., Major General USAF, Retired, was the first graduate of Claremont Graduate School’s Ph.D. program in Executive Management in the 1970s. In that program, Bill experienced first-hand the wisdom and insight of Peter Drucker, sitting in the classroom during Drucker’s legendary seminars. Bill went on to publish over 60 books on business management and leadership, drawing not only on his Drucker education but also his extensive military and professional experien...

Foreword by Minglo Shao
Foreword by Len Kwiatkowski
Tribute to A Friend and Mentor by Ron Fogleman
Introduction

Research
 What Everybody Knows Is Usually Wrong (February 2022)
 How Drucker, Einstein, and Freud Did Analytical Research (June 2022)
 Doing Research Like Drucker and Einstein (September 2023)
 Peter Drucker’s Most Frequent Comment (November 2023)

Decision Making
 Quantitative Data Is Not the Primary Factor in Decision Making
 Make Your Mind Faster Than a Speeding Bullet (September 2021)
 Drucker’s Gold: Management as a Liberal Art for Optimal Decision Making (October 2021)
 Drucker’s Fundamental Business Decision (January 2023)

Practice of Management
 Lessons From Those in Uniform (July 2022)
 How Drucker Can Make You a More Effective Manager (August 2022)
 How to Handle Risk (November 2022)
 Pricing for the Highest Profitability Can Cost You a Bundle (February 2023)
 How to Apply Management as a Liberal Art (July 2023)
 Drucker’s Way of Turning Failure into Success (March 2024)

Teacher and Consultant
 The Drucker Difference (November 2021)
 Drucker in the Classroom (December 2021)
 Peter Drucker’s Strange Discovery (May 2022)

Strategy
 Creating the Future (March 2023)
 Developing Strategies Based on Drucker (April 2023)

Leadership
 Drucker and Personal Integrity (January 2022)
 Drucker on Battlefield Leadership in Civilian Occupations (October 2022)
 You can Become a Recognized Leader in your Organization (Maybe Even Today)! (May 2023)
 How to Lead Change (October 2023) 193
 Drucker on Integrity, Ethics, Honor, and Doing the Right Thing (February 2024)

Achievement/Lifelong Learning
 There Is No Barrier You Cannot Overcome (March 2022)
 How to Negotiate Anything (April 2022)
 Drucker’s Way to Success Revealed (September 2022)
 Action Outweighs Reaction (December 2022)
 If You Don’t Know, Ask Your Brain (August 2023)
 With Heart You Can Lift a 1,000 Pound Cow or Defeat 61 Enemy Planes in Combat Even if Blind in One Eye (October/November 2023)

Foreword by Minglo Shao
Foreword by Len Kwiatkowski
Tribute to A Friend and Mentor by Ron Fogleman
Introduction

Research
 What Everybody Knows Is Usually Wrong (February 2022)
 How Drucker, Einstein, and Freud Did Analytical Research (June 2022)
 Doing Research Like Drucker and Einstein (September 2023)
 Peter Drucker’s Most Frequent Comment (November 2023)

Decision Making
 Quantitative Data Is Not the Primary Factor in Decision Making
 Make Your Mind Faster Than a Speeding Bull...