Fighting FUD

FUD stands for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. FUD is the strategy of influencing perception by spreading false and dubious information. Fighting FUD takes energy leaving no steam for real work.

Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, recently wrote a post saying: It’s Time to Build. The gist of the writing is—in the US, people are no longer innovating and building core infrastructure—health, banking, transportation, finance, education, etc. anymore. The article is a call to arms to get back to building ambitious foundational projects.

While Marc Andreessen’s writing is in the context of the US, it is true, albeit to a smaller extent, in India too.

What has led us to this?

We were in a homestay in a green estate that had a stream running through the plantation. The owner of the property told us how the government allows him to build and operate a compact hydroelectric plant on the stream, but he does not want to. He said that as soon as he would construct the plant, environmentalists would raise a hue and cry, create a ruckus, and he would end up wasting all his energy on that front, leaving him little energy to do other things.

The above is anecdotal, but you see a parallel whenever our government announces big-ticket, ambitious projects. There is always a cacophony of protests. We live in an age where everyone has a strong opinion on everything, and if that person is creative with words, she can multiply her reach, thanks to technology. Nowadays, spreading FUD is just a click away. Plus-oneing the protest satisfies the modern age’s thirst for wokeness and fuels the FUD. In such a situation, a government that lives by the Damocles sword of public opinion gets into perception management mode leaving little energy to solving problems.

Organizations are not immune to FUD. US intelligence, as back as in 1944, published a manual with tactics to sabotage workplace productivity. The manual was a field guide to be used against Axis powers in the world war.

Some gems from this manual:

• Never permit shortcuts to expedite decisions.
• Talk frequently at great lengths.
• Refer all matters to committees.
• Bring up irrelevant issues.
• Haggle over precise wordings.
• Advocate caution.

The above is how one creates an environment of FUD. One can see such behaviors to varying degrees at workplaces. In a culture where this is extreme, fighting FUD and preception management replaces work. Once this culture takes hold, it is impossible to weed it out—productivity nosedives to zero.

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