The deadlock
Neither side is arguing in bad faith
The most popular explanation for the deadlock, why it is mostly wrong, and what the evidence of the record actually supports.
Claims this part is about, and what each was answered with
Being trusted to choose is part of being treated as an adult
Value≠A studyInnovation happens in unplanned conversations
Empirical≠A principleAnswered with a conviction about how innovation works
Flexibility is what the last five years were for
Value≠A studyCollaboration tools have replaced what the office used to do
Empirical≠A principlefour claims · two empirical and two value · four were answered with the wrong kind of answer
Four crossed answers, two in each direction.
The accusation runs in both directions and it is made constantly.
From one side: management are using collaboration as a cover for the lease, and they know it. From the other: people claiming productivity at home are rationalising a preference, and they know it.
Both accusations are occasionally correct. As a general explanation for the deadlock, both are wrong, and the record shows why.
What bad faith would look like
If people were arguing in bad faith, you would expect certain signatures.
- Claims abandoned quietly when refuted, and replaced with new ones aimed at the same conclusion.
- Evidence cited selectively, with contrary evidence known and omitted.
- Private reasoning different from public reasoning, visible when people speak off the record.
- The cover story dropped once the decision is secured.
On this record, the last one is checkable and it failed. After the decision was taken, the collaboration arguments did not stop; they were repeated, in the same terms, in a context where nothing further was at stake. People who were allegedly using a cover story went on using it when there was nothing left to cover.
The simpler reading is that they meant it.
What the record actually shows
Something less satisfying than bad faith and harder to fix:
People reach for the most persuasive register available. Somebody who holds a value will state it as a finding, because findings carry more weight in a meeting. That is not deception; it is the ordinary behaviour of a person trying to be convincing, and both sides do it at about the same rate.
People do not know which kind their own claims are. The sorting is not something most people have ever done. Asked afterwards, several participants on this record were surprised to be told that their central claim was not empirical, and one disputed it for ten minutes before agreeing.
Unstated interests are mostly unstated out of awkwardness. The lease went unmentioned not because anybody was hiding it but because mentioning it would have made the collaboration case sound like pretext — which, by the evidence above, it was not.
Why the bad-faith reading is so attractive
Because it explains the deadlock, and nothing else obviously does.
If the other side is reasonable and the evidence is clear and they still will not move, something has to give. Bad faith is the available hypothesis, it fits, and it has the additional advantage of making further argument unnecessary.
The three-kinds explanation does the same explanatory work without the accusation, and it has the practical advantage of suggesting something to do.
What it costs to assume bad faith
It is worth being concrete, because the assumption feels costless and is not.
Once you believe the other side is not sincere, their value claims become tactics, so you stop answering them — which is the one thing that could have moved anything. You start looking for the real reason, which means you stop listening to the stated one. And you begin arguing to an audience rather than to the person, which they notice, and which licenses them to do the same.
On this record, the two exchanges that produced anything both began with somebody taking a claim they disagreed with completely at face value.
The caveat
None of this means sincerity settles anything. A sincerely held value claim is still not evidence, an unstated cost still distorts a decision, and a person can be entirely honest and still wrong.
The point is narrower: the deadlock does not require anybody to be lying, and explanations that require it will keep predicting a collapse that does not come.
The cases where it really is bad faith
The argument on this page is about the general case, and the general case is not everything. Three situations where the suspicion is warranted:
The reason changes. If the stated justification shifts each time the previous one is answered, while the conclusion never moves, that is a signature worth taking seriously.
The decision precedes the consultation. Where the outcome is visibly settled before anybody is asked, the exercise is not an argument and treating it as one is a mistake.
The cost is known, material and denied. Not unstated — denied. An organisation that says travel is not a significant burden while holding data showing otherwise is not making an error of kind.
None of the three was present on this record, which is why the sincerity reading holds here. They do occur, and the three-kinds account is not a reason to ignore them when they do.
How to hold both
The practical position is to assume sincerity until one of the three signatures appears, and then to stop assuming it.
That is not naivety; it is the ordering that produces the most information. Assuming sincerity costs you nothing if you are wrong — you will find out, from the signatures — while assuming bad faith costs you the entire possibility of the argument working, immediately and irreversibly.