Thinking. About Business.
Skeptic or Cynic?
The polar opposites of management
Tara Bachman
Ida does not exist, neither does Charlie. Got that? I’ve made them up. It doesn’t matter, you’ll recognize them both.
Ida has the ear of COO, Charlie’s board. Charlie was brought in by The Family when Dad died, but Junior’s only just
started college. Charlie senses he’s an interim monarch. Perhaps while the family awaits its restoration when the kid’s
ready Charlie’s been asked to perform. Ida is a friend of the family. She’s l’éminence grise—the gray force behind the
throne. Ida is a cynic. And Charlie?
Charlie is a comer. He was the financial manager for a larger firm in the same industry, but from far away. It will be at least
6 years before The Kid is ready to rule. Until then, he’s merely noise in The Family’s neurons.
Ida, on the other hand, is noise in The Family’s ear. For 15 years, Ida was Dad’s executive assistant and the company’s
bookkeeper. She knows all in The Family, many of whom call her Aunt Ida.
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Thinking. About Business.
The company has the second largest share of its geographical market in a technology-driven industry. Dad had begun to
grab a bigger piece. His plan died with him.
Charlie is a skeptic.
It will become inevitable that The Family, which dominates the company’s board, will be riven by the cynic/skeptic divide.
What’s that about?
Too frequently, we sloppily use skeptic and cynic as synonyms. They aren’t. In fact, from a managerial viewpoint, they’re
almost antonyms. A skeptic seeks sufficient proof, a cynic can never find enough—which means that a skeptic is driven
positively, the cynic negatively.
Skeptics question in order to understand solutions or opportunities, cynics seek blame. At a casual glance, the two seem
similar. Both look for causes, but while the skeptic wants to learn reasons, the cynic wants to nab perpetrators.
Defensively, the cynic will accuse the skeptic of not being skeptical enough: naïve. In turn, the skeptic wonders to what
degree cynics are paranoid. Naïve or paranoid each, to an extreme, is risky. The former by making unsound bets, the latter
by refusing to bet.
But betting is about odds. Odds are at the heart of risk. And profits are the return on risk. Since the risk-free bet has yet
to be invented, the cynic will protect profits by maximizing defense and looking for earning through efficiencies and cost
containment. The skeptic will look toward the market for earnings. The difference then comes down to defense versus
offense.
A skeptic wants sufficient information to assess the odds of decisions, the cynic assumes that there is never enough
information. So the cynic is about protection and security, the skeptic about openings and strategies.
Tactically, the two will counter with one-upmanship.
“You’re risking the entire company!”
“You’re missing entire opportunities!”
At some point, they communicate in exclamation marks.
In fact, no degree of cynicism is worthwhile to management, only levels of skepticism. Cynics like Ida will communicate
through back channels, stoking fear versus possibility. Cynics lack visions of possibilities. And it’s easy to seem more
skeptical than others just by seeming to be more skeptical.
There are two decisions to be made at this company. Charlie has to decide if this is truly an interregnum, and if so, then he
has to maximize this opportunity as a stepping stone. His growth is beyond the company. Market share is his best résumé
sweetener. The Family has to decide if a defensive posture can last the 6 or 8 years until Junior’s able to grab the throne
back. It’s these twin decisions that will pick between Ida and Charlie.
The bigger point is that every management team has its share of cynics and skeptics. The cynics are about protecting; the
skeptics are driven by openings. Both are dreamers, but remember, cynics only dream darkly. Simply and perhaps crudely
put … when evaluating managers, remember: Skeptics seek a crap detector, cynics detect only crap.
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