The Mechanics of Trust: Engineering Honest Feedback In Your Team

This article is inspired by a story on the podcast Cautionary Tales

If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics, potentially attributed to Joseph Stalin in a Washington Post column by Leonard Lyons in 1947.

So what can this harrowing quote teach us about being better leaders, it all starts with information.

Engineering The Truth

In the Don Basin are some of Russia’s greatest deposits of coal. In 1901, 26 year old, Mining Engineer Peter Palchinksy was sent by the Szar to study the coal mines in the area.

Palchinsky was from a poor family, but worked hard and married well and moved up the ranks.

He was concerned by what he saw in the Don Basin. The working conditions and living quarters were terrible. He didn’t think this was how you should treat hardworking men. Having grown up poor, he understood what it felt like to live in poverty.

After filing his report on the terrible conditions and sending it to his superiors. They were so thankful, he was next sent to somewhere a little further afield, Siberia.

He eventually got to Western Europe and learnt all of the latest knowledge on mining and engineering. Palchinsky even went as far as sending his former superiors ideas on how to update the Russian economy using the techniques and ideas from the West.

On top of that, he sent his wife a letter, telling her how he had had an affair. He loved telling the truth.

After coming back to Russia and surviving the revolution of 1917, he got a job giving engineering advice to the Communist government of the new Soviet Union.

He was still a fan of telling the truth. When everyone was joining political groups, he refused, he didn’t think science should be distorted by politics. Going as far as drafting a letter to the Prime Minister, telling him that science and technology are more important than communism.

His helpful friends convinced him not to send it.

What he did send to the higher-ups was a critical look at their prestige industrial projects. Stalin wanted to make the hydroelectric Lenin Dam on the Dnieper River. Palchinsky eviscerated this idea.

It would generate little electricity and would flood huge areas of farmland and many people’s homes. He suggested a series of smaller dams and some coal power stations which would be cheaper and more reliable.

The challenge is that Stalin wanted to make the world’s largest hydroelectric dam. Which he did. The trouble was that Palchinsky was right and it was a huge economic and engineering failure.

It destroyed the local ecosystem and 10,000 farmers to be forcibly relocated.

Palchinsky didn’t stop there. He next set his sights on Magnitogorsk, the city of Magnet Mountain. It was full of iron ore. The Soviet authorities wanted to use that iron to make steel mills to make more steel than all of the United Kingdom.

Palchinsky suggested that without a detailed study, there was no way to confirm that there was as much iron as they were hoping. Also, where would the energy come from to power the steel mills?

He also worried about the living conditions of the workers that would be required to undertake such a huge project.

His warnings were ignored. And were again, correct.

Workers and their families were shipped in literal cattle wagons to the mountain to work on the project. There are stories of mothers having their children die in their arms on the voyage.

Over 3000 people died in the first winter when the steel mills and town were under construction.

To add insult to injury, just as Palchinsky said, the iron ore ran out. Magnitogorsk became a failed town where one historian called it a health catastrophe impossible to exaggerate.

The Truth of Stats

In 1937, the Soviet Union conducted its first census in over 11 years. One historian has mentioned how complete it was. However, the census was 8 million people less than what the Union thought it should be.

This was because of terrible policies by Stalin that had caused famines which had affected regions all over Russia.

If you think the authorities were pleased with the accuracy of the census, you would be wrong. The statisticians who conducted the census were arrested and executed.

The census was not made public. The other Statisticians heard the message loud and clear. A new census was done and the population count had those 8 million people in there.

The next census was not conducted for another 20 years after Stalin had died.

Economy of the Truth

The Russian system of communism was brutal and oppressive. The silly and near-sighted policies caused famines where many many people died and dissenters were thrown into prison. It was not great for a lot of people, however, the economy did reshape itself quickly with the idea of industrialisation and the economy as a result grew quickly.

Many Western Economists thought the soviet economy could overtake the US. The trouble was the feedback loop. As it grew, it was important to get the right information about what was successful and what wasn’t so the people at the top could make informed decisions.

When the truth didn’t matter, they were only told what they wanted to hear, rather than what they needed to hear. They couldn’t deploy resources to the productive programs and close down failing ones.

Truth In Your Team

The tale is not a complex one, but it can be difficult to hear.

Things will go wrong and you will get bad news. Or more importantly, you should receive bad news.

This is great, it means you are getting information to make an informed decision. Without the bad news you will not fully understand the situation.

You, as the leader, have to cultivate a culture where your team will give you the full picture.

If you punish those who tell the truth you will be uninformed, if you only reward people who tell you good news, you will be misinformed.

Good news or bad news is never good or bad, it is just points of data, what you do with it determines its value. Learning something is failing is great news so you can adjust it or shut it down and no longer devote resources to it.

Don’t be a leader like the Soviet Authorities.

In 1928, a knock rocked the door of Peter Palchinsky’s door. In walked some secret police. Palchinsky was arrested and was never seen by his wife again.

Truthful to the end, he refused to confess to the crimes he did not commit. He was executed for it.

Palchinskys friends had begged him to not tell the truth, they knew what would happen if you did.