Suppose that as leader you were about to face a challenge: a chess game. If you win, you gain ownership of an entire corporation in addition to your own. If you lose, your own corporation becomes owned by someone else. Believe it or not, games similar to this were played by our ancient ancestors, in ancient China in particular. Do you know how to play chess? So, who do you consult for lessons? Your next door neighbor? The local high school chess club? The state champion? National champion? Or a grand master? Of course, the answer to that question depends on the level of importance that you place on winning or losing. It also depends on your own particular perception of the challenge. If you perceive winning as easy, you are likely not to exert much effort in preparation. Or if you perceive winning as extraordinarily difficult, you may spend all your earnings on preparation. How you perceive the challenge determines your subsequent emotional mood which may in turn influence the intensity of your subsequent efforts.

   How you focus on the situation determines your response. But that focus is not absolute. You can choose to focus differently and allow your imagination to spur you into action, to force yourself into a spellbinding anticipation, to drive your own motivated efforts into even greater intensity at preparation. Your discipline may be driven by your imagination.

   As discussed in Part I, page 2, how effectively you solve a problem depends on how you choose to focus on it. Look at it the wrong way, and you may exert all your efforts and time on the wrong aspect of the problem, resulting in a less than optimal solution in the time allotted for solving it. Certainly if you have an abundance of resources at hand, you may exert all your efforts on sundry aspects of the problem simultaneously, thereby increasing the likelihood of "getting it right the first time." Likewise, the more time you have the more aspects of the problem you may systematically focus your attention on one after another before time runs out.

  I. Defined

   Simplemindedness invades everything we humans endeavor to accomplish — every analysis, every perception, every imagined possibility and goal. We simplify. We prefer to reduce matters to as few complexities as we possibly can. It’s just easier to remember that way! And easier for us to ponder or mentally manipulate: If it’s too verbose or has too many variables, we eliminate some of the words or “fix” some of the variables (or eliminate them “because they are of negligible influence” or “too rare to warrant worrying over”). Reality is far too complex for us to grasp in totality all the variables entering into every situation every time.

   Trial-and-error learning is another aspect of human simplemindedness, beyond the tendency to simplify. At times we stubbornly cling to particular beliefs or modes of thinking or doing, even when sufficient evidence suggests that we ought to do the contrary. When we intuitively “feel” our rule-of-thumb analysis — however amateur or incompetent that may be — to be sufficient at providing us with what we want, we go with it, try it and hope that matters turn out as we perceive or expect. We scoff at some alternate possibilities as “too imaginary” to be “realistically” possible. “That’s just too rare or unusual to happen to me!” Less complexity means less stress, fewer worries, less time … that quick solution we may immediately apply to the situation at hand, rather than having to toil over matters ourselves or wait for someone else to “figure out.”

   And it’s usually the cheapest solution to opt for too! The above problems compound when a faulty belief helps to provide us with what we want or avoid what we don’t. This includes those incidences where such a belief may boost our self-confidence, self-image or somehow makes us feel more worthy or comfortable, or where we fool ourselves into maintaining a perception so that we may avoid some sort of loss — even a loss as simple as embarrassment! In such incidences, we may harbor the misperception tenaciously. We ignore contradictory evidence. We want it to be true! “It must be true! It just has got to be true!” Self-deception describes this third facet of simplemindedness.

People place a premium on being rational and cognitively consistent. So, they are reluctant[. They] simply disregard pertinent evidence in order to see what they expect to see and believe what they expect to believe. People subtly and carefully 'massage’ the evidence to make it consistent with their expectations.
— Thomas Gilovich, How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, 1991

Rather than STOP and say, 'Woops! I'm headed in the wrong direction,’ we tend to place a premium on projecting a consistent image of ourselves and try to rationalize our initial decision despite increasing evidence suggesting we ought to do the contrary. — B M Staw, "The Escalation of Commitment to a Course of Action," in Academy of Management Review, October 1981; and D R Bobocel and J P Meyer, "Escalating Commitment to a Failing Course of Action: Separating the Roles of Choice and Justification," in Journal of Applied Psychology, June 1994

There is nothing worse than self-deception — when the deceiver is at home and always with you. — Plato, Cratylus.

   So, this is simplemindedness: Failure to see the real picture — simplifying matters to an unrealistic degree, preferring to “wait and see” how things turn out, or even fooling ourselves at times into assuming 100% validity to our own misperceptions. We would be prudent to remember that matters are usually not so simple as they seem or we would prefer to believe. There are nuances and common misperceptions and mistakes associated with every field of study. So usually is there some subtle third variable at work — something working behind the scenes or some hidden undercurrent — that we may be either overlooking or blatantly ignoring and consequently failing to recognize its subtle influence or immediate significance. Though these hidden variables usually don't impact our planning in noticeable ways, they are nevertheless there, waiting for just the right circumstances to fester or become of immediate significance and at last make themselves plain, finally exposing the gaps in our perceptions. Sometimes even to a catastrophic degree.^* We may not quite understand them, but they are there, influencing matters in unknown or perhaps undetectable ways, only to seriously impact all our delicately laid-out plans — either immediately or subsequently — if we choose to act in some non-preparatory or non-precautionary way.

  II. Sloth in Thinking

   Folks, this is how humans commonly think. This is the real comedy-tragedy staged out on planet Earth every day. Memory and direct experience are preferred over imagination, with human desires, preferences, fears and underlying aversions pointing out the direction to take. We have a far easier time convincing ourselves and others of the worthiness of a particular decision if we justify it with practical and documented experience than place doubt on it with some "wild" imaginary idea "... just too arcane to be realistically plausible.” If we “feel” it to be true, we assume it to be true, try it, and watch how things turn out. If we want it to be true, we prefer for experience to teach us the contrary rather than imagine and prepare for all the subtle possibilities beforehand. Human sloth, selfishness and fear undermine every thought and action we make. Prior experience justifies a decision rooted in expectation more so than imagination for a decision rooted in preparation to avoid all dire possibility: “Why worry if all my prior experiences show that I don’t have to?”

   Why? Because though it usually won't happen, we certainly endeavor to make sure that indeed it never ever happens!

Gone is the Gambler who Guessed ... on a few possibilities.

Protected is the Planner who Prepared ... for EVERY possibility.

   Why do we fail to use our imaginations? Even at times when its simple application could have provided the human decision-maker with a superior solution? Why do we at times rigidly limit our behaviors to our memories, confining our thinking to what has happened before, to the customary responses we had always used before or become trained into using before or witnessed others using before, rather than taking the time to search for something new? Something creative? Something better?

   Why? Because we are lazy! And we don’t like wasting time. Imagining possibilities takes effort and consumes lots of time, difficulties we’d rather do without. Thinking means effort, and effort means protracted mental stress. But ...

Thinking is Progress.

We would be wise to remember that we must put our minds to work if we are to avoid any potential problems later on. Effort, stress, mental exertion, imagining, preventing, preparing — these are the words that ought to dominate our thinking, rather than, "It never happened before. Why worry about it now?”

   We are human. We aren’t born with calculating devices in our heads for computing the full range of complexity totally surrounding each decision we face. Sitting and pondering over every single matter before progressing to the next and next and next and … is downright absurd! We focus our mental processing on those few variables apparent to us rather than imagining something new, something unfamiliar to the circumstance or something entirely undetected. We simplify matters so that we can arrive at a “reasonable” solution in a “reasonable” time. And we do this day after day after day, usually with a fair degree of success.

   Why should we avoid worrying over matters when we have learned that we usually don’t have to? Because we don’t want to, and we trick ourselves into believing that we don’t need to. “That’s just a waste of time! It’s unnecessary! Why bother? That’s just too stupid or silly a possibility! I’m not going to waste my efforts on that!” Typical human thinking.

The problem ... is that you usually don’t know what you don’t know. There may be too little information or there may be far too much, with no way to sift out what is important. — Norman R. Augustine, "Managing the Crisis You Tried To Prevent,” in Harvard Business Review, November-December 1995.

   Though humans certainly have the intellectual capacity for recognizing that assuming leads to oversight and subsequent blunder, we still do it! This is especially true when time is short or stress is long, or when the assumptions actually provide us with what we want or a way to avoid what we don’t want. Upon encountering some new, imaginary possibility never hitherto experienced, if it doesn't provide us with what we want, we cast it out and encourage those around us into a similar expression of scorn. We laugh at it. Flog it. Destroy it. Only later may a few analytical or caring souls teach us the truth of the matter. "But, so what?” the simpleminded may think. "What really matters is the here and now.” There is absolutely no place for this mode of thinking in our scientific and professional decision-making fields, where discipline is expected and others are looking to you, relying and depending upon you for careful, deliberative guidance and supervision. Quick conclusions are likely wrong conclusions.

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   ^* And this is no exaggeration. Safety means preparation for all these little subtleties that we lead our lives out on a daily basis entirely oblivious to, because at times the most seemingly frivolous of circumstances can lead to the greatest devastation.

All opinions expressed in this web site, unless otherwise noted, are my own, Michael Gaspard. If you notice any errors or have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know by e-mailing webmaster@mdpme.com. Thank you!

This web page was last updated on Monday, February 2, 2004.
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