The only way up...speak truth to power!

Stephen Hawking, the world’s best-known scientist said:

“the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

While this may be true for a physicist it could mean different things to different scientists - let alone the gamut of professions and (best) practices at large. In my opinion, it warrants further reflection by all and indeed an investigation of all if we are to successfully ring fence the contributing factors that led to the heinous disaster on 14th June 2017. Or forever live with the fact that ‘best practice’in the built environment may have started a line of ‘unpardonable sin’ for lack of a better category in which to place the Grenfell Tower disaster...

It is a given that the free world countries are awash with knowledge from both higher education research in academia and their relation to the disciplinary procedures and standards in institutional settings. Furthermore, the portfolio of disciplines is said to be constantly reviewed and amended to align with new technology and methods in industry. Certainly, the British built environment industry has deep roots and wide networks that control & share best practice and prides itself on this industry-wide confidence, which undoubtedly makes everyone all the more suspicious about this disaster. The government’s initial response was slow but has gathered momentum since appointing a panel of experts - hopefully drawn from experts with no association so as not to add insult to injury and fuel the anger that a tragedy on this scale was ever allowed to happen in 21st century Britain, and fear that it could happen again.

Moreover, in this information age, one could argue that there may even be too much knowledge generated of the same kind vis-a-vis new and/or meaningful knowledge, and which lacks a system to definitively replace or overwrite the old or the former including dated PhD theses - regardless if they once contributed. Needless to say, the flow and control of knowledge albeit the creation, archiving, retrieval, replacement process, is a thesis in itself for every industry and discipline that exists or that have yet to come into existence. Therefore this aspect, however critical, cannot be addressed in this way but it is helpful to know that inroads are being made to marry the traditional with the new.

Thus it follows from Hawking’s definition that the key to better understand the tragedy or culpability underlying Grenfell Tower lies not so much in the knowledge as in the ‘illusion’ of knowledge and is indeed the thread which I am pursuing to reflect on in this article. My hope is that the courts will too, in service of a deeper truth for the sake of all humanity, not least of all the survivors of Grenfell Tower.

The illusion of knowledge

An online search reveals the definition of illusion in the Cambridge dictionary to mean:

• “an idea or belief that is not true”
• “something that is not really what it seems to be”

While the Oxford dictionary defines illusion as:

• “An instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience.”

Insofar as an ‘illusion’ is concerned, there can now no longer be any confusion about what the British-born world-famous scientist meant by his quote when he said: ” The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” However, for the illusion to take place, information first needs to be exchanged or communicated...

Effective communication

Once again, a quick online search suggests effective communication means:

“A two-way information sharing process which involves one party sending a message that is easily understood by the receiving party. Effective communication by business managers facilitates information sharing between company employees and can substantially contribute to its commercial success.”

But what does it look like in practice?

As a seasoned property professional in the art and science of marketing, underpinned by the need to communicate, I often marvelled at how mechanistic the professions in the built environment can be. Particularly as it relates to development projects as well as capital expenditure with regards to maintenance programmes such as escalators which are big-ticket replacement items. Any commercial property marketer worth their salt will have had to learn to distinguish between many 'insignificant but important' concepts such as ‘precision’ and ‘accuracy’ in order to be in sync with the professions and how best to convey this information while bearing in mind the big picture. This is especially true when it comes to interpreting and communicating technicalities and specifications, often in layman’s terms to various stakeholder groups - which is part and parcel of any asset project - such as to the other professions, occupiers, local councilors, politicians or government officials, charities, including the public at large, to name a few. However, nobody in the built environment supply chain will confuse 'PR messaging' with building specifications or get (unskilled) outsiders to substantiate understanding to do their work!

It is also true to say that most traditional entities and professions are organised via a more mechanistic/ materials-based philosophy and the obsession with form (ticking their boxes or counting up or down as it relates to the costing) leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to architects or even visionary owners and marketers who consider that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. In this sense, this exclusive nest of silo’s or ‘professional clubs’ for the protection of standards may be too tight-knit and could deliver more 'integrated value' in my view. Certainly, nothing in the spirit (vision) and process (letter) of co-production should be assigned a lesser or secondary value - irrespective of the life-cycle-stage of an asset - and is worth building trust with Grenfell residents and in 455 tall buildings over 20 storeys in London’s pipeline also.

With the media exposing more and more information and malpractice daily about Grenfell Tower and of other social housing schemes, it was sad when a comparative observation started to dawn on me - that private commercial property development and management approaches in Britain are far more sophisticated and in lock-step with ethical practices than that provided in consortia with or by the government in the same public realm. Yet it appears the residents of Grenfell knew this and documented their concerns but it may have, due to a lack of mechanistic reference, fallen on deaf ears. This is notwithstanding the fact that commercial property yields are higher than that of residential and may itself hold clues for shared and integrated ‘best practice’ in future.

However, it would be fair to explore a more mechanistic approach (in situ at the time of the disaster) by sticking with the concepts of precision and accuracy (as a proxy for a mechanistic or traditional way of delivering a service). As opposed to how Grenfell residents might have processed or documented their experiences and whom they might have targeted their messages to, in order to be heard, and should follow from the former.

A Battle for the Sciences or Masters of Professional illusion...

In the sciences, it would be safe to assume that it is important to distinguish between precision and accuracy. It is thus relevant to see how these concepts - as a proxy for a mechanistic approach - play out in a more traditional setting and to reflect on the behaviour and attitudes of ‘old school’ master tradesmen as a reference point of what might be reasonable practice in the UK.

Big Ben is probably the best illustration of precision, accuracy and a system of a duty of care for all by the clockmakers of the Palace of Westminster. The video clearly demonstrates that they seem to understand the enormity of this responsibility - when they re-set the time in order to get it right on time every time. In fact, it would be fair to say that their mechanistic responsibility is in lock-step with their duty of care to tell the right time and that the maintenance functions are but a necessary evil. Not once did one get the impression that any one part of this process was of lesser value than any other.

The implications for ordinary life is real in that a wrist watch may measure time with a precision of one second and a stopwatch may time a race with a precision of one-hundredth of a second. However, if the clocks change and you forget to reset your wrist watch, then you have a very precise time but it is not very accurate – think about it, you might be an hour early or even late for all of your meetings!

Clearly, many scientists or tradesmen may want precision and accuracy on the job, yet it isn’t hard to see that sometimes it would be difficult to tell whether very precise measurements are actually accurate without an independent reference. This is where tests, audits, and inspections come in and for the purposes of this exercise, to check on careful precision and split-second timing. See how quick you can tell the semantic difference between accurate and precise measurements in the bull's eye figure below.

It is unlikely that any other profession (no matter how highly trained or higher the IQ) would be able to take over this function and responsibility to deliver the clock-changing service to the same exacting standards; regardless of their passion for time-keeping or if they won a majority vote in a democratic system to do so! Similarly, it will be hard to pardon any profession that deviated from imputed knowledge without consideration of the consequences of their actions on other professions or in the delivery of the service as a whole, to communities. Whether before, and/or during the life of any asset - simply as any normal property owner would have considered the entire life of the asset up front!

Understanding the difference between precision and accuracy in materials used could quite literally have meant the difference between life and death as shown up by the horrific Grenfell Tower disaster on 14th June 2017 but it is hard to separate it from deeper underlying factors – and as yet to be determined by the national investigation called for by the Prime Minister. Already the investigation has been narrowed down to the use of potentially flammable cladding on high-rise towers across the country over a period of decades. Notwithstanding the immediate shock-horror and varied responses, the sheer outrage shared by all and a common denominator of how it had been allowed to happen in the first place in Britain, is what seems to be driving the investigation. And quite rightly so for an industry that prides itself on being a pace setter and disruptor in the world since the industrial revolution but which seems to have forgotten about the communities who have to fill the very spaces created by their professional mastery.

The Grenfell Tower disaster is an opportunity for professions to consider the total cost of bad design on occupiers, neighbours, and society and to let those responsible for this negative externality pay by speaking truth to power or forever be masters of illusion...

Do not hesitate to contact me for strategy advice or for help with on-site implementation to customise break-through concepts via service design and implementation to realise a return on business. My work experience geo-arc includes South Africa, UK, and Europe while pro bono consulting includes South & South East Asia with MA aviation research on customer satisfaction with ancillary services in Transatlantic & Transpacific Airlines.

About Danielle Charles Marketing and strategic project support on behalf of a corporation is part of what I do, mainly across 3 key focal areas – market research, strategy, and operations principally across two industries – Commercial Property, Tourism and Leisure (incl. aviation retail). I regularly contribute and comment on these and related topics. To demonstrate my commitment to Business and Research & Development, coupled with a fine-tuned practitioner’s mindset of more than 20 years industry success in big business, I am offering fresh insights for consideration to companies operating in my specialist areas. I am free to operate without any trade or other restraints whatsoever, so please feel free to contact me in this regard or for a discussion on more break-through ideas in keeping with emerging trends applied to your existing business model, to make a sustainable difference to business and society.