Science, branding, policy-making, and leadership share a common methodology.

Is not such a hypothesis at first taken as not only overambitious but outrageous as well?

But I go even further. I claim that the fundamental questions of the four mentioned practices can be solved only after considering the initial hypothesis valid. These fundamental questions are:

1. Are scientific results based on data (empiricism) or scientists’ speculation?
2. Since brands are holistic, representing and subsuming the totality of relevant traits, should they be developed bottom-up or top-down?
3. Since contemporary society can not be but democratic, should people say what should be common policy, or should those selected decide in the name of their constituencies?
4. Since all good leaders know that they can not but adjust their decisions to reality (including the reality of the workforce they lead), do they have to accept suggestions coming from those close to everyday practice, or should they force them to change that reality?

The cautious reader might notice that I have forced an answer to the initial hypothesis by selecting four questions. It seems like each question is easier than the previous one. At least for the last one, we know (do we?) that the leader is the one who has the ability to change reality and, before that, to change the way his company is operating. But wait: don’t we have quite some examples of leaders who underestimated the resistance of already established reality?

Multiple realities

Halo!  Do I claim that we have two realities? One already established reality and another that a leader is striving to acquire? Yes. At least in management, we do! There would be no change if we did not have actual reality and many potential realities. (I do not claim that change is development in each instance).

And yes, I do claim that we have various realities that science is dealing with! Wow! How unscientific!

It is not so difficult to see “the fundamental question” at work in the cases of contemporary political reality. Are emerging political figures like Donald Trump brought up by populus (bottom-up), or do they show (autocratic) different reality that populus agrees to co-create? What if Donald emerged from the failure of so far dominant intellectuals, commonly led by altruistic dogma? What if contemporary intellectuals went too astray from actual reality and, unsuccessfully though, tried to force another one, the impossible one?

I have to apologize for my last question. Those who follow my writings know that I can not but accept the results of evolutionary science, which proves on many occasions that evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) is individual selfishness able to cooperate on various societal levels. So yes, contemporary intellectuals failed, and the common-sense middle-class majority could not but notice this, even though fairy tales of altruism are so lovely to listen to.

Careful readers should now notice that I have claimed that reality follows vision in the case of the leader and that the vision follows reality in the case of Donald Trump. Yes! I claim that Donald Trump is not intellectual, but as such, he is much more scientific than any intellectual.

Are we any closer to the first question, the question about the scientific method?

Is the scientific method a separate one?

Before answering that question, let me use my beloved topic, branding, to clarify the situation from another perspective. As we shall see, it is, in fact, the same perspective.

In my Standard Branding Model(c) method, I face a practical question each time I develop a brand: “Do I have to suck brand identity out of those that live that brand’s identity I have to define, or should I bring in my idea what would be the best identity for that particular brand?”

Based on my branding theory, a brand rests on a brand identity that is nothing but a complex of identity traits lived through brand moments of truth. Since employees represent prime identity traits vehicles, one should go for the “sucking” alternative. Well! I do not. Why?

There are two reasons:

1. The sucking alternative does not work.
2. I do not believe that science is empiric.

When I perform the branding process, I enter the process equipped with all kinds of empirical data. I study brand categories, competitors, and all available internal data, including all information I get through formal and informal conversations with brand employees. This represents existing reality. Based on such knowledge, I draw a picture of the possible future reality of that brand that would be different (more efficient and effective) from existing but at the same time achievable. In the process that seems bottom-up for participants, I test my drawing (my vision of that brand) on existing reality and on existing participants of the workshop who strive to define their brand’s identity. They develop their brand bottom-up while I test my top-down hypothesis simultaneously. Eventually, we will meet somewhere and have a nice farewell drink.

Science as creation, not as a description

I claim that I act as a scientist using the already explained method. Because scientists, while testing their hypothesis experimentally, do nothing but what I perform using my Standard Branding Model method. They study scientific category questions and what their competitors find out, and they use all the knowledge about internal affairs they have gained during their education and later. With that corpus of present reality acknowledgment, they try to prove their hypothesis about envisioned reality. They know in advance what the future reality should look like, and they test it with the tools available or those they design for specific purposes.

Sounds familiar?

Yes indeed. The same procedure is used by leaders and politicians, at least those who are real and not self-proclaimed.

Two lessons are coming out from this conclusion:

1. Science is as objective (based on empirical data) as any other human activity.
2. Even if you are not a scientist, you can not avoid (present) reality.