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The Illusion of Explanatory Depth

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I read a lot of non-fiction books. Some I throw away and some stay on my bookshelf. Some stay on my bookshelf because they are good “in general.” Others stay there because of one or two “thought-nuggets.”

The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone (Sloman and Fernbach, 2017) presented a nugget that keeps popping back into my head – the Illusion of Explanatory Depth.

Simply put, the Illusion of Explanatory Depth (IoED) is the phenomenon we experience when we think we know a lot about something because we are familiar with it. We form an opinion based on surface knowledge and don’t dig into our ignorance. We fool ourselves.  

Here’s an example from the experiment described in the book. Assume you didn’t see Q2 until you answered Q1.

  1. On a scale from 1 to 7, how well do you understand how zippers work?
  2. Describe in as much detail as you can all the steps involved in a zipper’s operation.

Silly example, right? Is your ignorance of the detailed working of a zipper really important? What difference does it make?

Now, step into the world of technology and politics and apply the same two-step process. I did, and I scared myself. Here are three examples of current-day issues to test yourself.

  • Cryptocurrency (e.g., Bitcoin) will become a de facto global currency in the next five years. Yes, or no? If yes, you should invest in it now.
    • Explain the assumptions behind cryptocurrency and how it works.  
  • Critical Race Theory (CRT) should be taught in high school. Yes, or no?
    • What, specifically, is CRT? What are the facts underpinning CRT?
  • We have the best healthcare system in the world. Yes, or no?
    • Can you explain the major components of the system, how they work together, and the “weak link” in the system?

We live in a country (world?) where opinion is more powerful than knowledge, politics rules over science, and the fear of “micro-aggressions” blocks learning.

According to Sloman, “The knowledge illusion occurs because we live in a community of knowledge and fail to distinguish the knowledge that is in our heads from the knowledge outside of it.” To put this in the vernacular, as Bill Welter says, “Don’t confuse me with the facts – I’ve already made up my mind.”

Digging deeply into your Illusion of Explanatory Depth is an opportunity to study your ignorance and then plan to learn about those things that are important to you and your organization. Either that, or General Artificial Intelligence will run your life in ten years.

Hmmm ………, what’s general AI?

Open the pod doors, HAL.  

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QUESTION ZERO

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Last year Oliver Cummings and I created a free mini class for managers who are called upon to implement big-picture, organizational strategy. We approached this challenge by asking ten questions that had to be successfully answered if they were to succeed.

Then we realized that there is almost always the “unasked” question, which we refer to as Question Zero. It’s in the back (or front) of every manager’s mind but it often goes unasked and unanswered.

Ready? Here it is.

How will I make the time to implement the strategy?

You have to make time – you will never “find” it.

Now, I already know what you’re thinking. “He just doesn’t understand. I have to do my day job AND take on this new task.”

Sorry, but, as they say, “I’ve been there and done that.” So, let me be blunt – you will make time or you will have more problems than you want. You can’t keep adding items to your “to-do” list. Something has to drop off and it’s up to you.

Want to see the other ten questions we asked? Go visit the mini-course. You can fine it HERE. Sign up, watch a couple of videos, take the quiz and get going. Time’s a-wasting.

Good Thinking – 8 – Build Your T-Shaped Skills

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T-shaped Skills

Years ago, I read The Wellspring of Knowledge (Dorothy Leonard-Barton, 1995), and was influenced by her description of T-shaped skills.

The vertical part of the T denotes the deep knowledge we have about our job. The horizontal part of the T denotes the other skills we need in order to connect with others in the workforce and society.

Look at your skill set. Are you a generalist who needs a specialty to build upon? Are you a specialist who needs broader skills in order to interact with more of the organization?

Society needs people with good T-shaped skills. Experts who can’t talk with others in their organization are useless. Generalists with no area of expertise will soon be replaced by early artificial intelligence apps.

It’s the crossbar of the T that keeps you connected. List those areas in which you need enough knowledge to converses with people outside your department. (Personal confession: ignorance of finance hurt my early career.)

Pay Attention!

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Attend to What Is or May Be Out There in Front of You

By Oliver Cummings

Letting your fingers thrum on a moving tractor tire tread can have a hypnotic effect.

Dad would let me ride on the tractor with him while he was mowing the pasture. Standing on the running board of the tractor and letting my arm hang over the fender, the lugs on the rear tire would bump my fingers over and over in a repetitive rhythm as the wheel turned.

Occasionally, when I was off in a mental someplace else, Dad would “manage” to hit a fresh cow-pie with that wheel and since I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings, I would get a handful of cow manure.

He’d laugh (though I wouldn’t) and stop the tractor so I could get off and clean my hand in the fresh mown grass until we passed the pond again, where he’d stop so I could wash up.

Point of the Story

Don’t get lulled (by that “right now good feeling” of success or things going right) into not watching where you are going.

Sensing your environment, attending to what is or may be out there in front of you is critical to not winding up with an unwanted outcome in your business.

As I wrote this, the thought came to me that it may sound out of step with our current reality.

Who really thinks there are many among us who have a “right now good feeling of things going right?”

We are in the midst of a global pandemic and experiencing the most serious economic downturn in the U.S. since the 1930’s, with thousands of small businesses out of business permanently or limping along on the hope that things will come back soon enough to keep them in business.

Still, I think the message is relevant for at least two key reasons:

  1. There are segments of the economy that are comfortably growing, pandemic be damned – and managers in those organizations could, in addition to thanking their lucky stars, feel that feeling of comfort.
  2. When (not if) the economy comes back critical manager jobs will become more plentiful and the need to fill them quickly more urgent; but here is the “look where you are going” catch:

Much of the manager’s pre-pandemic job qualifications will still be requirements, but significant change is afoot in many, maybe most, businesses. Managers and those who want to be managers must adapt to new realities, from leading virtual working teams, to managing in sometimes significantly different physical spaces and overseeing different procedures, to creating a new culture of trust in a wary workforce.

Are you in an organization going through significant strategy shifts? Get a pragmatic, structured way to help you respond as a middle manager: Click on the link below.

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR UNIT TO MAKE STRATEGY REAL: A Guidebook for Managers Facing Changing Strategies to Position Their Unit to Thrive

on www.Amazon.com.

Act and Intercept Your (Unknown) Future

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This is a continuation of our posts about preparing for the future. It offers three questions about executing the decisions you will make to meet your future.

Today is yesterday’s future. What did you learn?

Let me be blunt — we, collectively, are terrible at executing projects. Lots of reasons, lots of excuses, but not a lot of well executed projects. And one of our big shortcomings is our unwillingness to learn from the results of the programs and projects we launch to get to the future.

We plan, we execute, we make mistakes, and then when the project if “finally finished” we drop it and get on to the next. No organizational learning takes place.

Sound familiar? I think it might. I’ve been involved with organizations for over fifty years and I have yet to hear any leader brag that projects in their unit/company/team are always on time, on budget and deliver full-scope, quality outcomes. Never.

Why is this so important? Because the pattern will persist.

If we want a better future we need to get better at today’s decision, actions, and projects. We need to learn from our successes and failure and then DO something.

Do you have the capabilities you need?

Here’s a question: Will the capabilities that got you and your team to today get you to tomorrow?

Here’s the answer: NO

Sure, some of today’s capabilities will be needed and will be useful. But others will be obsolete. And still others will be needed, but absent.

Develop your vision of the future and work backwards. What must you be able to do to make the future real?

And note that knowledge, although important, is not enough. For example, I know a lot about sinus surgery; but you would not want me operating on your nose. You may know a lot about how other companies have used “big data,” but that does not mean you are capable of important data-based decisions.

If we want a better future we need to build capabilities that will be needed to get us there. Learning should be future-oriented.

What took you so long to act?

All of us have four overarching responsibilities as we try to intercept our future.

We need to sense the signals of tomorrow. We need to make sense of these signals. We need to decide on a course of action. And we need to act on these decisions. These four responsibilities depict a cycle, as shown in the graphic above.

This cycle, the Sense-Response Cycle, has to run at least as fast as your industry is evolving. If not, you become irrelevant. And that means that each responsibility has to be performed at the pace of industry evolution. Bottom line? You have to be good at executing each of the responsibilities.

Look at your weaknesses and get better. Either that, or become irrelevant. It’s your choice.

Coming in 2021

The Future is Coming: Don’t be Taken by Surprise — A new course coming in 2021

We will launch a pilot in January. Like our recently competed pilot, The Pragmatic Strategist, this course will be a high-tech / high-touch hybrid of reading, videos, group discussions (via Zoom) and workbook exercises. I’ll announce the topics and details soon.

Reach out if you want to get on our list for the pilot or if you’d like a copy of our recent whitepaper describing the context and focus of the course. The pilot is not free, but the discount is significant.

Decide and Meet Your (Unknown) Future

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This is a continuation of our posts about preparing for the future. It offers three questions about decisions you will make to meet your future.

What does the future of present decisions look like?

The late management sage, Peter Drucker, wrote “Strategic planning does not deal with future decisions, It deals with the futurity of present decisions.” What you do today will play out, for better or worse, in the future.

For example, the decades of past decisions companies have made focused on efficiency left many organizations too fragile to absorb disruptions to supply chain or too weak to prevent damage from a cyber-attack. Effectiveness suffered because of efficiency-focus decisions.

Or consider the problems associated with the student loan “industry.” For good and bad reasons young people made decisions to accept student loans. The “futurity” of those past decisions are haunting many of them today.

Take a look at a personal or organizational impending decision and think about the chain of intended and unintended consequences and the consequences of those consequences. How smart might your decision look in three to five years?

What are you afraid of?

Fear is demonstrated in our personal and organizational attitudes about risk.

Risk is a reality of organizational life and many organizations are risk-adverse to the point of paralysis. C-level execs are afraid of damaging stock price. Managers are afraid of making a mistake and damaging their career prospects. Or, they hear the call for more risk-taking, but realize that their bonus depends on short-term goal achievement, not long-term success.

The future is a scary place. As we look into the future we see many unknown and unknowable scenarios. So we tread lightly and move slowly.

And that’s when entrepreneurs make a move and surprise industry giants. Today we worry that Amazon is going to totally dominate the retail world or upset the pharmacy dominance of Walgreens and CVS. I’m old enough to remember when they were nothing more than an upstart online bookseller.

What are you afraid of? What should you be afraid of?

Who owns your future?

The obvious answer to the question is “You, of course.” But be honest. Nobody or no thing owns you, but they might own your future. Have you unwittingly “mortgaged” your future to the point where someone else really owns it?

Are you in a job that’s taking you into a dead-end future?

Has your organization focused too much on past success and its future is really owned by an upstart competitor?

Is your future owned by your credit card?

What decisions do you need to make today to “buy back” your future or the future of your organization?

Next

Seeing, thinking and deciding are fine, but only action will get you to the future. Unfortunately, in my 50+ years of work I’ve never come across an organization that bragged that their projects were always on-time, on-budget, and produced full-scope, quality outcomes. I’ll post another “episode” of the Sense-Response Cycle in a few days. Stay tuned.

Coming in 2021

We will launch a pilot course in January focused on helping managers and professionals be better prepared for their future. Like our recently competed pilot, The Pragmatic Strategist, this course will be a high-tech / high-touch hybrid of reading, videos, group discussions (via Zoom) and workbook exercises.

Reach out if you want to get on our list for the pilot. It’s not free, but the discount is significant. I’ll announce the topics and format soon.

Learn from the past - deal with today - prepare for the future.

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