Matthew Syed has quickly become one of my favourite authors. Earlier this year I read ‘Rebel Ideas’, which dived into why building teams with diversity of backgrounds and thinking styles can help to grow organisations and teams.
In a similar vein, Black Box Thinking promised to present case studies and research into how success can be achieved through embracing failure and learning through our mistakes.
There were so many great takeaways from the book, but here’s three of my favourites:
1: Deluded, or cognitive dissonance?
I’m sure many of us have been in this situation:
- You have a debate with someone, each expressing your own point of view.
- You go away, and gather the evidence that PROVES what you have been saying is right.
- You present it to the other person, only for them to say that there must be a flaw in the evidence.
This is the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance – and it can be a dangerous thing. Think Trump and his non-acceptance of the 2020 election result which led to riots at the Capitol, or Putin and his stance on attacking Ukraine.
Perhaps even your boss that won’t listen to reason 🤐.
Many people in power are so adamant that they are right about everything that, even when presented with tangible evidence that challenges their beliefs, they would rather make up a reason why the evidence is incorrect than admit they are wrong.
The most worrying thing is, it’s usually people in positions of authority or power that are most affected by cognitive dissonance. Their ego, having a lot to lose, and not wanting to look weak all make this something which happens with alarming regularity.
Many people in power are so adamant that they are right about everything that, even when presented with tangible evidence that challenges their beliefs, they would rather make up a reason why the evidence is incorrect than admit they are wrong.
Failure to admit mistakes has long-term repercussions. In fact, progress in most human activities depends, in large part, on our willingness to learn from failure.
In an organisational leadership context, as we become more senior and take on more responsibility where others look up to us, we actually need to become more willing to admit our failures and weaknesses. Even if the urge is to ‘always be right’, or we’re worried about looking stupid for it, personal ego needs to be put aside in order to benefit the greater good.
2: Embrace a “bottom up” approach
I’m happy to admit that I’m a bit of a perfectionist. This can sometimes make it difficult to get started with tasks, particularly big ones with lots of facets. I’m sure many of us feel like there’s a mountain to climb before we get started on something!
It’s sometimes more effective to just get out there and do SOMETHING, even if there’s a high chance that it’s going to fail.
I was recently guilty of this with Reflect. When I took the plunge to start the consultancy, I was tinkering with my website for a couple of weeks, convinced that it needed to say everything I wanted it to say before I could launch it to the world.
This is known as a ‘top-down’ approach; where you busy yourself with the things that you can do or are in your control. However, this often means that you often don’t actually just get the important stuff done.
Syed argues that for real progress to be made, you instead need to embrace a ‘bottom up’ approach. This is where you test and fail, repeatedly, until you find a formula that works.
Examples of this included:
- Unilever, who tested 449 nozzles to create a washing powder nozzle before finally finding one which didn’t clog up and break.
- James Dyson, who tested numerous suction methods to achieve the famous cyclone technology for his bagless vacuums and hand dryers.
In other words, it’s sometimes more effective to just get out there and do SOMETHING, even if there’s a high chance that it’s going to fail – an MVP, if you will.
It’s through failure and testing that you can learn, iterate and try again and again until you find the winning formula. Creating a company culture in this vein can help your organisation to increase innovation, reduce fear and instil a learning and growth mindset within your people.
3: Make progress through marginal gains
I’ve been interested in the concept of marginal gains ever since reading the brilliant Atomic Habits by James Clear. The idea is that you should try to tackle small, manageable chunks which, over time, combine into vast progress.
In other words, each ‘small step’ forward won’t seem like much by itself, but over the long-term will equate to a ‘giant leap’ that can eventually lead to success.
One example Syed writes about in the book is Team Sky, who achieved the first British winner of the Tour de France in 2012 with Bradley Wiggins, plus four out of the following subsequent tours with Chris Froome. They did this through team manager Dave Brailsford’s philosophy of applying marginal gains, such as sleeping on the same mattresses every night to aid with their sleep quality.
Each ‘small step’ forward won’t seem like much by itself, but over the long-term will equate to a ‘giant leap’ that can eventually lead to success.
The idea of marginal gains can be applied to many things, including in business. For example, the goal framework OKRs (objectives and key results) are set in a way which ask you to think of the big goal (Objective) you would like to achieve, and then break this down into multiple elements to help you get there (the Key Results).
If you manage someone who struggles to make progress (or if this is something you struggle with yourself), try taking the marginal gains approach by asking “what’s the next smallest step you can take?”. Tackling something small and manageable is often far easier to get your head around than thinking about the overall task, and you might just make huge strides in the long-term.