Li Shimin
Listen to all sides
One source is not listening
Essentials of Government of the Zhenguan Era, The Way of the Ruler
The emperor asked what makes a ruler clear-sighted. The answer he got describes an information structure, not a virtue.
What actually happened?
Taizong asked Wei Zheng what separates a clear-sighted ruler from a benighted one. Listening to all sides makes you clear; trusting one source leaves you in the dark. Then the examples: Yao and Shun opened the four gates, so no one could screen them off; the Second Emperor of Qin trusted Zhao Gao alone and did not know the realm had risen until it was over; Yang of Sui trusted Yu Shiji, and provinces were in revolt while the news never reached him. The conclusion is practical: when a ruler hears widely, the great ministers cannot block, and what is below reaches the top.
Screening you off requires no lying
Zhao Gao and Yu Shiji need not have lied in every sentence; they only had to control which reports went up. When all information passes one person, that person decides the world you see without inventing anything. The root is the number of channels, not anyone's loyalty.
If one team assembles and presents all the business data, it need not falsify a figure. Choosing which metrics reach the dashboard has already shaped your judgement.
The channels have to be strangers to each other
The value of hearing all sides comes from independence between the sources. Three accounts drawn from the same meeting and the same document are one thing heard three times. Real breadth requires people with no shared boss and no shared interest.
Ask three directors the same question and get one answer. That may mean the facts are clear, or that they met yesterday. Ask a fourth who was not there.
Measure how fast bad news arrives
Yang of Sui's problem was not an absence of bad news; it was that bad news could not get to him. The most direct gauge of an organisation's information health is one number: from the moment a clear problem occurs to the moment you hear, how long, and through how many people?
A live incident took six hours and four layers to reach you. The thing that actually needs fixing is not that bug.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: everything you know about this arrived through a single reporting line.
Ask first: who else knows about this and has no stake in that line?
Where it goes wrong: taking hearing all sides to mean asking more people from the same circle; counting good news and never timing how long bad news takes.
Lines to keep
Listening to all sides makes you clear; one source, dark.
Hear widely and the great ministers cannot block what comes up.
Three accounts from one meeting are one thing heard three times.
Same situation, other people are asking
By the time the data is in, will it be too late?Everyone I know is in this. I don't actually understand it.I keep listing reasons this will work. Should I do the other list?Everything I know about this came up one reporting line.I don't have enough information · all 12 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.