This is a late post, because I had a severe sinus cold and throat infection this week. So, if you want a few podcast recommendations on leadership or dementia, private message me. But I also finished a series on Netflix called “Painkillers\u201d, exploding with insight for this week\u2019s post [spoiler alerts]. In order to retain the Sackler family\u2019s reputation, who owned Purdue Pharma, they lied about the percentage of addiction rates to sell their opioid OxyContin. They also incentivized higher dose prescriptions by doctors, which made a lot of people a lot of money. But the deadly consequence is that it has substantially contributed to the \u201cover 300,000 overdose deaths over the last two decades from prescription painkillers\u201d [1], including some in my own community, and perhaps many of yours. But by use of words like \u201cis believed\u201d in sharing stats, they were able to mislead many into falsely trusting the drug\u2019s relative safety. In the series, they claim that no one has misrepresented reality as poorly since Big Tobacco [2].<\/p>\n
So, as I finally was able to give Tim Harford\u2019s \u201cHow To Make the World Add Up\u201d the focus it deserved, I had the sense that in our world, how we approach stats demands an ongoing discipline. What stuck me were how transferrable these lessons from Economics, Science and Medicine are to Leadership and Spiritual Formation. There are so many sensible ideas in Tim Harford\u2019s book, most of which are healthy ways to take pause, overcome naivety, and recognize that stories and statistics suffer from the marketing realities of supporting the headline they want us to care about.<\/p>\n
Out of his ten rules, a few points resonated with me. The concept of \u2018naive realism\u2019 in Rule 2 was a useful framing for me to distinguish personal perspective from universal truth [3]. Also, in \u201cAsk who is missing\u201d \u2014 Rule 6, the reference to \u201cdark data\u201d (people who refuse to answer in door to door polls [4] was a helpful point for a curious pause when consider what is perhaps not presented. This model of seeing what is missing is also presented as leadership best practice by Lee Bolman and Terrance Deal in their work \u201cHow Great Leaders Think: The Art of Reframing\u201d. They argue that leaders who can look at the same thing from multiple perspectives think better, and create a lucid portrait of what\u2019s going on around them, so they can execute better [5].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I see the relevance of these principles for everyday thinking as a Christian leader. In my younger years, one of my mentors told me outright that I needed to become more jaded. And so, this call for curiosity that keeps emotions, naivety, limited view, predetermined narratives, and blatant misinformation in check aligns with a path of wisdom.<\/p>\n For me, in my ministerial work and research, it provides a crucial reminder to think wisely about conflict and war stats, immigration numbers, and changing demographics which all impact the work of reconciliation and the polycultural realities of the church in Canada. For each of these, there are many economic, social, spiritual insights and trends. It is vital then, to remain curious, because I have a tendency to over-reach to make others\u2019 stats and concepts connect with my own, when their story behind the statistic might not be quite complete [6]. By asking open-minded, genuine questions, I too may find it\u2019s delightfully difficult to stop [7].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n _________________________<\/p>\n [1] Note that the New York Times published a higher number of 500,000.\u00a0 <\/span>Hoffman, Jan. \u201cPurdue Pharma Is Dissolved and Sacklers Pay $4.5 Billion to Settle Opioid Claims.\u201d The New York Times<\/i>, September 1, 2021, sec. Health. https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/09\/01\/health\/purdue-sacklers-opioids-settlement.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n