Managerial Sophistry: When the Answer Is Always “It Depends”

Managerial Sophistry: When the Answer Is Always “It Depends”

The annual budget meeting is underway, and the objective is clear: reduce expenses by 20%.

The CFO starts with the operational departments. The answers are quick and specific. Sales knows how many contracts will be lost. Operations knows how many orders will be delayed. Manufacturing knows how many units will not be produced.

Then attention turns to the other side of the table, where the Impact Measurement, Organizational Excellence, Risk Management, and Business Continuity departments are seated.

The CFO asks them the same question:

“If we eliminated your departments tomorrow, what would the organization lose?”

A brief silence follows.

Then comes the confident answer:

“It depends.”

It depends on the perspective, the time horizon, external factors, and how we define loss in the first place.

And somewhere in the room, someone whispers a single word to the person beside them:

“Sophistry.”

Before we begin, let us clarify an important point.

This article is not intended to put functions operating in the gray area on trial, nor is it meant to defend them blindly. Rather, it explores a question often whispered through the corridors of many organizations:

Do these functions create genuine value that is difficult to measure, or do they simply produce polished arguments that are difficult to challenge?

The answer, as you will discover, is not far from the title of this article.

Let’s begin.

Sophistry: From Athens to the Office

In simple terms, the concept of sophistry dates back to the Sophists of ancient Greece, traveling teachers known for teaching rhetoric and debate, and for their ability to defend an argument and its opposite with equal conviction.

Over time, the term came to describe arguments that sound logical and coherent but ultimately lead nowhere.

Centuries passed, and the schools of rhetoric in Athens closed. But sophistry did not disappear.

It simply changed its clothes, picked up a laptop bag, and walked into meetings carrying a forty-slide presentation.

In an organizational context, managerial and organizational sophistry refers to work that is difficult to judge as right or wrong. It operates in a space of possibilities, producing outcomes that can always be defended but never truly held accountable.

The Gray Area

In operational departments, the picture is relatively clear.

A product was manufactured or it was not.

A contract was closed or it was not.

An order was completed on time or delayed.

The numbers speak for themselves, and success or failure can be identified with relative ease.

On the other hand, entire organizational functions operate in areas where right and wrong are not clearly defined.

Instead, there are multiple possibilities, each supported by its own logic and justification.

These functions focus on impact, benefits, direction, readiness, and what might happen rather than what has actually happened.

This is where skeptical looks begin to emerge from other departments.

They see functions that are not directly connected to production but introduce additional administrative burdens, new forms, more reports, and workshops that end with recommendations requiring yet more workshops to implement.

Departments are asked to demonstrate their value in numbers, but their answers come in probabilities.

Different Organizational Functions, One Answer

Imagine taking a quick tour through a fictional organization.

Impact Measurement and Benefits Realization

Suppose a government entity launches a road safety awareness campaign.

Six months later, road accidents decrease by 10%.

Good news.

But did accidents decrease because of the campaign?

Or because surveillance cameras were installed during the same period?

Or because schools were on holiday?

The impact assessment report concludes:

“The campaign may have contributed positively to the reduction in accidents.”

The executive asks:

“So, should we repeat the campaign next year or not?”

The answer:

“It depends.”

Organizational Excellence

A 300-page submission for an excellence award, complete with evidence, performance indicators, and documented practices for every criterion.

Months of preparation go into getting everything ready for the assessors’ visit.

Everyone agrees that the work is impressive.

But once the results are announced, will these practices continue?

Or will departments return to operating exactly as they did before the award?

The answer:

“It depends.”

Change Management and Customer Experience

Workshops to map the customer journey.

An entire wall covered in colorful sticky notes.

Empathy maps.

Communication plans designed to engage employees before, during, and after the change.

And then, the following week, the same complaint arrives.

From the same customer.

About the same step.

Does that mean the work on the customer journey was ineffective?

The answer:

“It depends.”

Governance and Risk Management

A risk register containing eighty risks, most classified as “Medium” because the middle ground feels safest for everyone.

And an authority matrix so tightly controlled that purchasing a printer requires five signatures.

But does this actually improve governance and control?

The answer:

“It depends.”

Crisis Management and Business Continuity

Here, the paradox becomes even more obvious.

Business continuity plans.

Emergency scenarios.

Simulation exercises.

If the year passes without a crisis, people ask:

“What do we even need them for?”

If a crisis occurs, they ask:

“Where were they?”

So, is this function essential or a luxury?

The answer:

“It depends.”

The bottom line?

Different departments. Different tools.

But from the perspective of others, the picture looks the same:

Considerable effort, countless deliverables, and an impact that is difficult to grasp.

When Perspectives Multiply

The issue does not stop at how operational departments perceive these functions.

The functions operating in the gray area also approach the same work from different perspectives, each legitimate and important in its own context.

Impact Measurement asks: What actually changed?

Organizational Excellence asks: Is the practice documented and assessable?

Risk Management looks for the controls that protect the service.

Customer Experience seeks a simpler, faster journey.

Change Management prepares employees for what is coming.

Business Continuity prepares the organization for what might happen.

In principle, these perspectives complement one another.

But when they reach employees in operational departments without coordination, they appear as a series of requests from different teams.

This makes it difficult for employees to see the bigger picture connecting them all.

And to make matters more complicated, where does Strategy fit into all of this?

Strategy does not operate alongside these functions. It intersects with every one of them.

It establishes the targets whose impact is measured by Impact Measurement.

It defines the direction against which Organizational Excellence is assessed.

It outlines the transformations led by Change Management.

It determines the risk appetite within which Governance operates.

And it identifies the critical activities protected by Business Continuity.

This intersection is, in fact, a source of strength.

Strategy is the thread that brings these different perspectives into one coherent picture.

But it becomes fertile ground for sophistry when responsibilities are unclear.

When a target is achieved, several functions claim a contribution.

When it is missed, just as many explanations emerge.

A gray area within a gray area, one that only clear responsibilities can resolve.

The Accusation Is Not Always Unfair

Of course, it would be unfair to blame everything on how others perceive these functions.

Sometimes, sophistry is not merely an accusation.

It is a reality created by three factors.

The Nature of the Work Itself

These functions genuinely operate in a world of possibilities.

Impact is influenced by many factors.

A risk may never materialize.

A transformation may succeed for reasons unrelated to its change management plan.

And when there is no clear right or wrong, almost everything can become a matter of opinion.

Theories and Terminology

Enablement.

Alignment.

Sustainability.

Enablers.

Stakeholders.

Integrated ecosystems.

These are all meaningful terms in the right context.

But when they accumulate in a single sentence, they can create impressive language that says very little.

Employees in operational departments do not necessarily reject the terminology itself.

They reject leaving a meeting without understanding what is actually expected of them.

An Organization That Does Not Know What It Wants, Except What the Standard Requires

Some departments are established because international best practices call for them, because the organizational structure supposedly needs them, or because a standard, accreditation, or national requirement mandates their existence.

Yet the organization may never define what it actually expects these departments to deliver.

The department is then left to define its own role, filling the gap with whatever outputs it can produce.

And the most troubling part comes when the department’s existence becomes its only achievement.

But are these functions inherently sophistry?

Or have poorly designed practices distorted their purpose?

On the other hand, the absence of a definitive answer does not mean the absence of value.

A Risk Management function that appears to slow down operations may be the very function that prevents a decision capable of costing the organization several times its annual budget.

A Business Continuity plan that nobody needed this year may determine, after a single crisis, whether the organization is disrupted for hours or weeks.

The challenge is that the value of these functions is often invisible.

It appears in the wrong decision that was never made.

The loss that never occurred.

The complaint that was never repeated.

And everything that never happened is difficult to include in an achievement report.

So the function itself is not sophistry.

But the way it is designed may make it appear that way.

When a practice is built by copying ready-made templates from other organizations, designed to satisfy an assessor rather than serve the organization, or disconnected from the decisions it was created to support, the tool becomes a burden.

And that burden is then attributed to the function itself.

Conversely, a well-designed function is usually an ally to operational departments.

It makes their work easier rather than more complicated.

It helps them make better decisions instead of asking them for additional reports.

Employees begin seeking its support before it has to approach them.

The opposite is equally true.

The further a practice moves away from the actual needs of operational departments, the more it shifts in their eyes from a valuable partner to a burden they would rather avoid.

There Is No Middle Ground!

Interestingly, these functions rarely remain somewhere in the middle.

They are either central and influential, or they become sophistry.

There is rarely much space between the two.

In leading organizations, these functions have a seat at the decision-making table rather than appearing at the end of the approval chain.

Impact Measurement informs decisions before they are made instead of merely evaluating them afterward.

Risks are discussed when an initiative is being designed, not when it is launched.

Organizational Excellence becomes part of daily operations rather than a document prepared before an assessor’s visit.

And the leadership position of these organizations is often as much a result of this approach as it is a reason for it.

But when these functions are excluded from decision-making, they do not simply remain in the middle.

They gradually shift toward producing forms and reports for their own sake.

Because a function that does not influence a decision has little left to do but document it.

Either you have a seat at the decision-making table, or you end up on the last page of the report.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Since the answer is “It depends,” let us leave every reader with a few questions from their own perspective.

If You Work in One of the Gray-Area Functions

Ask yourself:

What decision changed this year because of my work?

If my department stopped operating for a month, who would notice, and when?

Can I explain my deliverables to a colleague in an operational department without using a single technical term?

How many of the forms I request are actually read?

And how many are simply filled out?

If You Are an Organizational Leader

Ask yourself:

Do I know what I expect from this department, or did I establish it because the organizational structure supposedly needed it?

Am I measuring its value using methods appropriate to the nature of its work, or using the same methods applied to operational departments?

Do my departments share a common definition of success, or does each have its own?

Does this function exist to serve the organization or to pass the next audit?

If You Work in an Operational Department

Ask yourself:

Do I reject this work because it has no value, or because its value does not appear on my dashboard?

When was the last time something I never saw protected me?

A risk that was avoided.

Or a decision that was corrected before it ever reached me.

In Summary

Not every function operating in the gray area is sophistry.

And not every skeptical look directed at these functions is unfair.

Some departments create genuine value that is difficult to see.

Others create considerable activity that is difficult to distinguish from value.

The difference does not lie in having a clear right or wrong answer.

It lies in the courage to make judgments, proximity to decision-making, and the ability to tell the organization what actually changed because of your work.

For some functions, operating in the gray area is unavoidable.

Sophistry, however, is a choice.

Thank you.

Wait a Minute!!

Have we actually answered the question this article set out to explore?

It depends!

Yes, we realized a little too late that we had written an entire article about sophistry.

We defended these functions, then criticized them.

We distributed questions among everyone involved.

And then we closed the discussion without providing a single definitive answer.

It seems sophistry is contagious.

And in writing about it, we may have practiced it to perfection.

A belated confession from a team that also operates in the gray area.

Knowledge Library Team

ODEL

Riyadh