How to Read

I could fill this entire article with quotes from President Trump saying that the media portrays things falsely. “It’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff. It didn’t happen”; “95 percent of the news is fake”; and so on. Is that true? Of course not. 100 percent of all news is fake, it is just a matter of how fake and how much it matters. And it’s not only the news, it is every single thing written that pertains to being factual. Yup, everything is fake to some degree. Including the things that never purported to be real in the first place, such as fiction books.

I could fill this entire article with examples of fakeness from both research and business. When I worked at a competitor, Wells Fargo was praised for having an average of eight products per customer (credit card, debit card, mortgage, high yield savings account, home equity line of credit, and so on). We were berated for not running our business units as well as Wells did. Why did we only have one or two products per customer? How did they do it? News media was full of how brilliant Wells Fargo was and how well-run.

Years later, it was discovered that this was not correct. Yes, customers did have up to eight different products (fact) but the customers certainly did not know about many of them. Branch representatives were creating fake products in the customers’ names, using fake signatures, and then waiving any initiation fees so the customer was never informed or asked for money. The reps did this so that they could increase their bonuses, which were tied to the number of products per customer. Both the head of retail banking and the CEO of Wells Fargo were forced to resign when this story came out. This does not change the fact we, and other competitors of Wells, were thought inadequate for a decade based on that reporting.

Huge swathes of the supposed research on honesty and truthfulness were shown to be faked. For example, that students who read something positive about being honest were more likely to not cheat in an exam than other students who were not given something like that to read first. But really, if you believed that crap when it was published, you have only yourself to blame. People will lie/steal/cheat/kill to get what they want or to get themselves out of trouble, so why would you think they will not do it in order to get prizes, fame, publicity and financial rewards? It is very important in business not to be naïve.

Yet, as so many famous business executives have said, it is very important to read a lot if you want to be a great leader. Warren Buffet said, “Read 500 pages like this (he was holding a stack of business newspapers) every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up.” Yet even Buffett admitted that his style of value investing happened to be particularly suited to the market of his day and that after nearly 60 years of investing, he still hasn’t found a way to easily beat the market.

Bill Gates said, “Reading is still the main way I both learn new things and test my understanding.” I guess he didn’t read a book on acceptable CEO behavior and what preying means, such as why you should not ask young female employees at the company where you are CEO to go out for dinner alone with you (worse when you are married although awful either way).

So, as a business leader, how do you decide what to read?

First, you have to accept that there is no such thing as unbiased news. Every piece of news, every action, every word, every thought is biased. Consciously or not, it is biased. Human perception is inherently filtered through individual experiences, emotions, beliefs, and cultural contexts. Absolute objectivity is a myth. Our brains constantly evaluate and describe using our own subconscious biases. Algorithms designed by people have these same biases. Algorithms designed by robots who were once programmed by people (and look at data created by people) have these same biases. It is simply inescapable.

Business magazines almost always write positive reviews on the companies of the CEOs they interview. I have stopped reading them precisely for this reason. There was nothing insightful to gain. The author may also be personal friends with the business executive they are interviewing. No way you are getting something in-depth, thoughtful, or meaningful from that. I used to write travel articles for various magazines in the US and the UK. In one, I wrote that a hotel room I stayed in was dirty. Because it was. The editor told me they could not publish that line because “that hotel chain is a major advertiser with this magazine.” My feeble response, “But it was dirty, doesn't the truth matter?” was ignored. Now, I just write about places I visit for my friends and relations to read when they go to the same place. (See: janetmatricciani.org.)

You may be better off reading fiction than today’s newspapers, magazines, and business books. When I was at a prominent consulting company, the head of the UK office gave a speech. He talked about the importance of looking to the long term as a business leader, not the short term, even if you have demands from shareholders related to the share price of your company next week. I put up my hand and asked, “Why would you not look at both?” to which he basically replied, "This is my shtick, I need something to differentiate myself but, of course, you should look at both, it’s just not as exciting a message." In a world in which everyone’s attention span is a Tiktok minute, heading soon towards two seconds, authors need to be writing something that grabs attention.

A balanced view would be considered boring and ignored. It is at least clear with fiction that it is exactly that: fiction, as in: imaginary. Yet reading fiction exposes the reader to situations they themselves may never encounter and ideas they may not think about otherwise. It will deepen your empathy, creativity and critical thinking. Simply from this, readers as business leaders will have a better understanding of their customers, vendors, and colleagues. Of course, reading fiction also encourages the imagination to fly off in all sorts of directions, thus expanding the mind and allowing a more varied set of skills for problem-solving back in the office. Fiction engages emotion and intuition, key business skills that are barely understood in today’s business articles and, in any case, are best learned subliminally. “I must create this emotion of sadness because this employee is telling me a sad story,” is hardly going to come across as genuine, even though I know consulting partners who had to remind themselves to behave in this manner.

So, read widely, read across all news sources, and read randomly.

If you’re a diehard Republican, then read The New York Times and the Washington Post every day, and not just to congratulate yourself on being able to spot fake news, thinking all you read is fake. If you are a staunch Democrat, read The Wall St Journal and Fox News. Open your eyes to other perspectives. You will still have your own biases but at least you will be testing them a little. If you grew up rich, read memoirs from those who grew up with nothing such as "Educated" by Tara Westover, and fiction by authors like Barbara Kingsolver. If you think low-income families are unable to understand and make financial choices from what is available to them, then read "The Financial Diaries" by Morduch and Schneider, which will stop you from making the terrible mistake of equating poverty with stupidity.

Of course, you can still read all the business articles telling you how to be a great leader or operator – like this one for example! – just recognize both that there is no one right answer for anything at all and that it is very hard to change your inherent personality and behaviors. If what you decide to read improves you around the edges, you have done well.

Happy reading!

Janet Lewis Matricciani is a two-time CEO who has worked all over the world and is multilingual, now sharing her business lessons publicly. She is a regular contributing writer to this magazine and can be reached at jlmatricciani@gmail.com.