Fatal Illusions

Why do our best efforts at change always seem to stall? What stops us from moving forward? As individuals and as organizations, we lay the blame on a lack of time, information, money, or motivation. However, our own illusions are usually the true culprit. As this insightful book will quickly convince you, getting real is the only way to get ahead. “We labor under fatal illusions,” says author Jim Lucas, “when we base our behavior on what we wish to be true about our business, or about the marketplace, rather than on what is actually true. We treat our symptoms while core problems fester unchecked. The syndrome is all too common, but there is a remedy. Fatal Illusions shows us how to dig out the truth and free yourself for positive action.” The book analyzes 12 major illusions with significant power to harm you and your organization. The illusions involve too-comfortable beliefs about mission statements, teamwork, incentives, and other big issues that soak up time and resources - and they may startle you by hitting so close to home.

Although information, education, and experience can all contribute to wise and healthy decisionmaking, they alone won't move us to change. We can know what the right way is, and may have observed it working for others, and still not be moved to do it ourselves. The problem isn't one of knowledge and won't be solved by more information or more education.

The problem is illusions, false beliefs about the reality of who we are, how other people are thinking, and what our organizations are like and where they are going. We can hang on to those illusions and fiercely resist giving them up, even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, for many reasons. Perhaps our view of business took years to build; we're comfortable with it and don't want to give it up. Or perhaps the illusions fit our own personal view of life and people; change would require modifying our entire worldview. To abandon these ideas would usually require pain, so we avoid doing so.

But the pain of shredding our illusions is nothing compared to the real misery that lies at the end of a fatal illusion. Months and years of pain avoidance can lead to organizational suffering and strife, massive downsizing, financial chaos, and ultimately, organizational death.

But we don't have to go there. We can face the problems honestly and realistically and can "schedule" the smaller pain now rather than be swamped by the illusion-cloaked, gargantuan pain later. We can clear out the illusions that prevent us from doing what we know to be right or effective.

My hopes in writing this book join yours as you read it. I want to be illusion-free, living in reality. I believe that you do, too. We can do it.