Fatal Illusions

by James R. Lucas

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.

Genres: Business

228 pages, Paperback

First published June 4, 1997

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the kind of management book which may or may not be of use to a specific reader, depending on his experience and the context he is living through, which is why I hesitated between giving it two or three stars.

The book is divided into three sections. Section one is a cursory, shallow, disappointing and very skippable introduction to the concept of illusions in three chapters: (1) what are illusions, (2) why we "buy in" to illusions and (3) harmless, hurtful and fatal illusions. If you decide to skip this section be warned that in this section Lucas coins the rather clumsy verb "to illude" as a synonym for "to spin illusions".

The third section: "Shedding illusions before they shed us" is the book´s wrap up; in my opinion the only chapter worth reading carefully is chapter 18 "Dealing with the illusions of others".

The meat of the book is in section II "Twelve fatal illusions". Each chapter follows the same structure:

We begin each [chapter] with an anecdote to illustrate the illusion in action.

Next we provide an overview of the illusion to give you the big picture.

Then we dig in, taking a hard look at some of the causes of the illusion.

Next we provide a twenty-point self-test to help you evaluate whether or not each illusion is lurking in your organization[...]

In the last part of each [we discuss] "Organizational Viewpoints" in which we explore necessary changes in the overall orientation and structure of the organization; "Leadership Attitudes", where we analyze our individual roles in the [illusion] shredding processes; "People Responses," in which we dissect the areas where our people´s collaboration is essential; and "Learning and Asking," [...]

Each anecdote is well crafted and very readable. The "overviews" are more variable, some are good, others not so good, most contain very relevant and pithy quotes and there are some in which the author sidetracks to include a memorable but not very pertinent quote and botches the overview. I found the weakest part of each chapter to be the "digging in, taking a hard look at some of the causes of the illusion". In general, I found these parts bland and predictable. The test is valuable, but not, as the author seems to suggest, as a Cosmopolitan add-the-numbers-to-find-out how delusional your company is, but rather as a source of ideas to sift through carefully and decide they are worth adopting or at least trying out. If by this time you have found nothing interesting, you can safely skip the rest of the chapter. If you have found some interesting ideas, then the best of the remaining headings usually is "Leadership Attitudes".

This is not a book to read through as fast as possible. I would suggest taking it one chapter at a time, reading the chapters that you feel call out to you first. The twelve illusions are well described by the chapter headings. I have added some very personal Goodreads-style star ratings to each chapter (one star means I disliked it and no star means I strongly disagreed with it -I would expect each reader´s rating will differ from mine -as I mentioned before I think the rating depends on the reader´s experience and what he or she is living through:

- ****Vision: "Having a mission statements means we know who we are";

- ****Priorities: "Of course our people understand what´s important";

- *Quality: "Everybody knows what quality is";

- **Expectations: "We don´t know what to expect of those people";

- Change: "We´ll get to that later";

- *Consequences: "I think we can get away with that";

- **Comparisons: "We´re doing better than ____";

- ****People: "Good people can be successful in jobs they don´t like";

- ***Openness: "We can run this thing without sharing that information";

- **Incentive: "In this economy, they should be happy to have a job";

- ***Cooperation: "Just give people a chance and they´ll work together";

- **Passion: "We don´t need passion if we have a good plan" [in this chapter the problem is that Lucas swings too far towards passion -in my opinion, in business, passion needs to be tempered by intelligence];

I agree with James Lucas that managers need to take some time off to step back, take a deep breath, blink twice and take a long hard look at what they are doing and ask themselves whether they are not only correctly treating symptoms but more importantly, whether they are attacking the root causes of problems. Some of his chapters may well help you question whether you are being blinded by some, unfortunately, frequent illusions. Lucas may provide some useful tips and hints, but remember that in order to transcend illusions, you have to do your bit, think keenly and put in a lot of hard work so that you are not left out on a limb by your fellow workers and/or whoever you report to.