Mike Lehr's Blog

Arbitrariness & First, Second, Third

Arbitrariness is vital to intuitive problem solving because it’s related to subjectivity which is related to personality and its emotional drivers. Looking at the relationship between arbitrariness and conditionality will help us see this.

For instance, the concept of “first” does not need the existence of another number; however, the concept of “second” is dependent upon the condition that “first” exists, and the concept of “third” is dependent upon the condition that “first” and “second” exists.

House of Arbitrariness & Conditionality

Consider a house. Whereas someone can arbitrarily place the first stone of his house anywhere, the rest is built conditionally around that stone which is called the cornerstone. Ideas and knowledge are also built around cornerstones which we often experience as assumptions. Since knowledge influences how we identify, define and examine problems, our problems will have cornerstones too.

For instance, many of us consider the idea of democracy good. However, if such decision making is absolutely superb, why don’t companies and armies use it where more authoritarian styles dominate? This is because democracy’s cornerstone is placed in a governmental location. If we move that cornerstone to a corporate or military location, we will end up building a more authoritarian-style house.

In problem solving, moving the cornerstone to a new location will help us view our old location from a different perspective. But first, we must challenge ourselves to find the cornerstone of any set of conditions in which we find ourselves and the cornerstone of any set of ideas we are using to evaluate those conditions. That means avoiding an unquestioning, absolutist perspective and employing an inquisitive, arbitrary one.

How many times have we heard, “Nothing breeds success like success?” In a study of the orbital launch vehicle industry by Peter M. Madsen and Vinit Desai the finding was that “organizations learn more effectively from failures than successes.” Their paper was published in the June 2010 edition of the Academy of Management Journal and reported by The Economist online in August.

While it seems logical that we can learn from our mistakes, what’s less clear is whether we learn more from our failures than our successes. However, from an intuitive perspective which accounts for the intense effect our emotions can have on our decision making, the fear of pain is much greater than the joy of gain. This is not only an anticipatory phenomenon but a historical one. In other words, we also learn more from feeling pain than from feeling gain. Moreover, Madsen and Desai found that the lesson learned through failure stayed with the organization longer than the one learned through success.

How do you maximize learning without having to experience a critical or fatal failure? Of the conclusions, one, which applies to intuitive approaches, is “greater flexibility towards meeting set goals.” This would allow employees to learn from smaller failures. They found that organizations which were “too tightly” focused on deadlines and profit margins gave their employees legitimate, implicit approval to discount, ignore or rationalize smaller failures containing valuable lessons.

Therefore, the next time everything goes according to plan, realize that something went wrong. Most likely it will be the failure to learn.

Word choice and phrasing (phraseology) are simple ways we can assess personalities. As I’ve said in previous postings, everything we think, do and say reflects on our personalities in some way. The challenge is determining what.

Understanding the two aspects of any word – definition and connotation – is a first step. Definitions trigger thoughts about words’ meanings while connotations trigger emotions about the impressions they create. Words can have similar definitions but vastly different connotations. A funny riddle expresses this:

Q: What is the difference between escargot and snails?

A: People don’t eat snails.

Phraseology works as an assessment approach because word choice is largely subjective. Yes, we need to consider the context of the conversation, but there is usually plenty of room for subjective inputs. This occurs because many times several words could suffice, but the final choice is intuitive and based upon the connotation the person prefers. For example, consider these pair of words:

• Determined – Stubborn
• Irrational – Passionate
• Focus – Restrict
• Organize – Standardize
• Fun – Undisciplined
• Rigid – Strong
• Stable – Stale
• House – Home
• Flexible – Soft
• Interesting – Fascinating

Many times we can simply discern from people’s phrasing whether they like something. We can also discern much deeper qualities of their personalities. For instance, they can tell us how they might approach a planning endeavor or collaborative effort. They can also tell us the degree to which they are influenced by qualitative or quantitative arguments or by logical or humanistic ones.

Therefore, the challenge is classifying various words according to such groupings as quantitative words versus qualitative ones, logical versus humanistic, individual versus collective, etc. Once we’ve made these classifications, we can correlate people’s personalities along these spectra by examining the dominance of certain words and phrasing.

As is commonly known, viewing the same thing from different perspectives often alters that thing. One time, someone cited 1+1=2 as a “fact” that remained unchanged regardless of perspective. However, it really demonstrates the malleability of facts.

For instance, consider these four true expressions of 1+1:

1. 1+1=2
2. 1+1=10
3. 1+1=11
4. 1+1=1

The first is the normal arithmetic expression we learned in school; however, what we often overlook is that it uses just one type of numeric language called Base 10. The second example expresses the same thing but uses a numeric language called Binary. It’s even more widely used than our recognizable form because it’s the language of computers.

The third expression assumes that “1” is a shape. Imagine adding one spade to another to get two of them. We can express it symbolically as ♣ + ♣ = ♣♣. This is frequently the first “language” used to teach children arithmetic.

The fourth expression is a bit more difficult to see but is frequently used too. Consider the statement that one man plus one woman equals one couple. Another example would be a single drink which we make by adding one part A to one part B. Consider as well that one period of sunlight and one period of darkness equals one day. In these examples each “1” in the equation represents a unique item. In other words, they each represent one of something different rather one of the same thing as in the other three perspectives.

Thus, this exercise helps to train our minds to search for different perspectives and to demonstrate the importance of not just looking at the facts . . . but how they are interpreted.

Glass Half Full? Half Empty?

One of my favorite metaphors to use as a “challenging assumptions exercise” is the “Is your glass half full or half empty” one. The basic assumption is that the choice is one of attitude: if your attitude is positive you will choose “half full,” if negative “half empty.” One of the reasons why I like it is that it can create quite a stir in folks when they see the answer is not quite so clear cut. This is important because viewing problems from an alternate perspective can trigger negative emotional responses that retard problem solving.

For instance, we can disrupt this popular metaphor by asking: Who is more likely to go out and get more water? The answer is the one who views his glass half empty. As we saw with bonus plans, the fear of loss is much more powerful than the joy of gain. Therefore, those who feel that they’ve already lost half their water supply are more likely to secure more water than those who feel they still have half remaining.

I experienced a real life example of this when I was taking a new national sales manager around to the troops. We visited the office of a sales representative who was out. The manager looked around and pointed to a picture of the representative’s four children and wife and said, “I love to see that. It means he’ll be real hungry to sell and support his family.”

This is also why crises are the most effective ways to encourage change. Consequently, if you were a water salesperson, you would be more likely to make a sale if you could get the customer to see his glass as half empty rather than half full.

Frequently, I’m asked about the difference between instinct and intuition. The question is difficult because everyday conversation has a gender bias. Men tend to prefer the word “instinct” over “intuition” to describe their emotional processes while women tend to prefer the reverse. So, listening skills are important.

Analogously, instinct is to intuition what an accented note is to a song. Just as an accent adds a particular emphasis to a specific note in the song, instinct adds a particular emphasis to an emotion in the intuitive process. Very simply, there are three types of instincts: survival, paternal and maternal. Survival protects our well being through fight or flight. It accentuates emotions such as guardedness or avoidance. Paternal extends our dominance and control, accentuating emotions such as aggressiveness and competitiveness. Maternal protects and nurtures others, accentuating emotions such as protectiveness and sacrifice.

While instincts can serve us well in urgent, severe situations, they can lead us astray and allow us to be easily manipulated in modern life’s intricacies. For instance, instinctively lashing out at someone for a threatening act could have consequences in the workplace. Intuition would help us balance the emotions accentuated by that threat with the ones fearing the consequences to arrive at a pragmatic alternative fitting our context.

Returning to our musical analogy, this means that rather than reacting to the one accented note we are waiting to hear the whole song before we think and act. It also means that while there isn’t much to creating a single note, creating a song is more involved. Therefore, just as it takes practice to develop cognitive skills it also takes practice to develop intuitive ones. Instincts are innate and thus our default. As such they require very little, if any, development.

As we already know, one of the best ways to develop our problem-solving skills is to view things from a different perspective. Challenging assumptions is a way to do this, but this assumes we know the assumptions we’re using. Since they frequently go undetected, this can be problematical.

Nevertheless, we can train our minds to spot them. The process is similar to the one used by chess players in preparation for matches. They run through practice scenarios even though they won’t see them in the match. They are training their minds to see something similar. Students taking practice exams for standardized tests are doing the same thing; they won’t run across those questions but the practice establishes the right mind set for taking the test. We can improve our mindset for identifying assumptions by practicing with everyday situations.

For instance, a sales person asking whether you want to by the blue car or the red one is assuming that you wish to buy the car in the first place. A manager who says that you can make a lot of money if you do something is assuming that money is very important to you. When a neighbor told us he was going to get ice for the party, we assumed he would get enough for five ice chests; he only bought one bag. In business we often strive for efficiencies, but the assumption is that quality won’t suffer. The question, “Are we organized yet?” is assuming that organizing is necessary; the task might not require it.

Once a day, try to identify the assumptions people use in their decisions. No matter how obvious they might be, you will be honing your problem-solving skills.

Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway and holder of 440 patents worldwide, says in the June 12th issue of The Economist, “Technology is easy to develop. Developing a new attitude, moving the culture from one mental model to another, that’s the difficult part . . .” From the rifle, to the machine gun, to the tank, to the aircraft carrier, military history supports Kamen;  people might employ new technology but they still fight using old strategies and tactics.

In the workplace, we often see technology just supporting old processes rather than creating new ones. For instance, people continued to keep extensive paper files long after word processing and desktop storage improved. Thus, while people used the technology, they did so with an old mindset that made computers glorified typewriters just as they made the rifle and machine gun just other guns rather than the transformative agents of new tactics.

Compounding the integration of technology is the old mindset that doesn’t demand highly developed soft skills of IT, Process Management and Organizational Development people. Very few receive experience and training in areas such as selling, active listening and relationship building. It’s not uncommon to hear employees say, “So now, IT is telling me what my job is?” Much of this is because the IT person didn’t do the necessary advance work in relationship building.

If we truly have “internal customers,” shouldn’t we apply the same sales and service protocols that we use with external ones? This is why soft skills and intuitive adeptness are critical to capturing the potential of new technologies in the form of new processes.

While helping a non-profit, a board member said, “We can only deal with a problem if we know there is one.” Here the state knowledge assumes alters our perspective. In this case, it causes us to ignore the idea of prevention, dealing with problems before they arise. In reality, problems don’t care whether we know or prove they exist. Thus, if knowledge’s form can alter our perspective and prevent us from seeing potential solutions, it is important to have a grasp on the different states of knowledge.

To that end, I’ve created the map to the right. It has five basic states: Unknown, Aware, Know, Prove and Quantify. Each is a subset of the previous one:

Knowledge Map

• Unknown: Not knowing what we don’t know
• Aware: Knowing what we don’t know, or not being able to express what we do know
• Know: Knowing without proof but being able to express what we know
• Prove: Using approaches that adhere closely to the scientific method or the one used in courts of law.
• Quantify: Being able to count, calculate or formulate.

By looking at knowledge’s states in this manner, we see how much reality we exclude if we only accept what is quantifiable and provable. Imagine in warfare or the game of poker if we took no action unless we could prove it was the right one. Business is not immune to this. Therefore, success is more determined by how we treat what we don’t know or barely know and not by how we treat what we can prove and quantify. Thus, if we lived by the advice of the board member above, we would surely fail without a great amount of fortune.