Critical Thinking at Work:
Does Your Company POUND or FLEX?
Connie Missimer
Dedicated to all underused workplace thinkers
Does Your Company POUND or FLEX?
Connie Missimer
Dedicated to all underused workplace thinkers
Table of Contents
Page 3: Introduction
Page 7: Chapter 1 Theories in the Woodwork
Page 10: Chapter 2 Cave Thinking and the Intuitive Fallacy
Page 16: Chapter 3 Two Major Philosophies of Work: POUND and FLEX
Page 22: Chapter 4 More on Your Light-Saber Mind, Googles, and Stuck Accelerator
Page 25: Chapter 5 Killer Process and Doing vs. Critical Thinking
Page 35: Chapter 6 Two Giant Oversights—People and Product Opportunities
Page 42: Chapter 7 Foggy Goggles
Page 46: Chapter 8 Negativity, Dogmatism, and POUND Roundup
Page 61: Chapter 9 FLEX at Work
Page 71: Chapter 10 Bend It Like Ockham!
Page 82: Chapter 11 The Ordinary Innovator Next to Me
Page 96: Chapter 12 What’ll It Be: FLEX or POUND?
Page 103: References
Page 3: Introduction
Page 7: Chapter 1 Theories in the Woodwork
Page 10: Chapter 2 Cave Thinking and the Intuitive Fallacy
Page 16: Chapter 3 Two Major Philosophies of Work: POUND and FLEX
Page 22: Chapter 4 More on Your Light-Saber Mind, Googles, and Stuck Accelerator
Page 25: Chapter 5 Killer Process and Doing vs. Critical Thinking
Page 35: Chapter 6 Two Giant Oversights—People and Product Opportunities
Page 42: Chapter 7 Foggy Goggles
Page 46: Chapter 8 Negativity, Dogmatism, and POUND Roundup
Page 61: Chapter 9 FLEX at Work
Page 71: Chapter 10 Bend It Like Ockham!
Page 82: Chapter 11 The Ordinary Innovator Next to Me
Page 96: Chapter 12 What’ll It Be: FLEX or POUND?
Page 103: References
Introduction
What if you had to get to work in total darkness except for a small, laser-thin flashlight attached to your forehead? Not only that, you are forced to wear foggy goggles as well. If that’s not enough of an impediment, your car’s accelerator pedal is malfunctioning—at times, you are going way over the speed limit; at other times, you are crawling along the freeway, an equally endangering condition. Finally, you have no idea that any of this is going on: In your mind your view is clear, even panoramic, and you are moving at a reasonable pace.
While this scenario sounds unlikely to the point of absurdity, a plot lifted from a sci-fi or dystopian movie, its metaphors are intended to illustrate some well-established scientific findings about how the mind operates, findings that you’ll see referenced throughout this book.
You might be thinking ”This sounds pretty grim. I don’t believe it. And even if I did—if my mind and the mind of everyone else at work from the CEO on down are so dysfunctional—where does that leave us?”
The answer is to follow this evidence, learn how to work around our limitations, and to constantly conduct workplace operations with as much evidence as possible. I will argue that the way out of these disabilities is for people in corporations to adopt a more scientific mentality. This does not require a new academic degree; most college graduates are familiar with how science works and have conducted basic experiments. But beyond this, a scientific approach requires a different mindset. Science is a method for showing, then overcoming, the limitations in thinking of which people were not previously aware. It has taken all fields of investigation, including biology, physics, immunology, as well as the social sciences, continually lifting them away from strongly-held flawed convictions and offering new, sturdier ones. Empirical, thoroughly data-driven companies operate in just the same way. They take account of what we know about human nature and then are smart about using this information to make more profits and increase worker happiness. In contrast, running a company without this approach is for the most part to operate with hand-me-down habits. Or companies will take on a random fad because another successful company does it: “Friday pancake breakfasts are the solution to worker disengagement!” This new perk may well improve productivity for a short time but the effect wears off. A famous set of studies demonstrated this phenomenon, called the Hawthorne Effect. Any extra attention lifts morale and productivity. I would theorize that perks in the end don’t work because they are unrelated to the core of people’s motivations.
Anyway, let’s get back to that driving metaphor, and why we need to adopt ways at the workplace to avoid these pitfalls.
In the coming pages, we will look at POUND and FLEX organizations through an empirical lens. I will offer ways we can overcome some of our natural mental constraints if we acknowledge them and are willing to change the status quo, both in our individual thinking and as companies.
This book stems from my corporate experience and critical thinking expertise. The experience has come from over a dozen years at two of our nation’s greatest corporations, Microsoft and AT&T, full of extremely bright, capable people. My expertise as a critical thinker comes from more than 20 years of research in the field, forming my theory through evidence from the history of science. I hope this book will be a modest start at rethinking organizations. We have not yet seen most businesses unleash their potential to skyrocket innovation and profits while getting the best out of every worker while making people happier. A FLEX approach can make that happen and transform the workplace.
Chapter 1: Theories in the Woodwork
Everything made by a human is a theory about what is useful, beautiful, or fun. You’re probably sitting in a room right now. If you look around, you’ll see dozens of theories (if you’re out in the woods, your clothes and cell phone will suffice as examples). A rug, a cell phone, a supermarket layout, the way a business or government is run—all are theories.
This word “theory” is central to clear critical thinking. At its core, a theory is an idea supported by evidence of some sort. This might sound “too theoretical,” but it is in fact immensely practical. We are creatures who see through theoretical eyes, whether we realize it or not.
If you’re of a practical bent, you may think, “That’s sort of cool but why does it matter?” Theories give us a handle on how to think. They give us an awareness of how we are thinking. Looking for theories means we that start asking interesting questions, the biggest of which is, “What’s the evidence for that?” And over time, it is evidence—new evidence, evidence that just keeps building—driving the growth of knowledge in all fields, driving improvement in all things. A spectacularly successful product is evidence that its theory of what is useful, fun, and/or beautiful is true—at least for the time being and compared to other products. The once-ludicrous idea that people would willingly open their homes to strangers found a multi-billion-dollar success in Airbnb. Finding the highly elusive Higgs Boson particle was cause for huge celebration because it confirmed that the Standard Model of particle physics was a successful theory—at least for the time being and compared to other possibilities. Same thought structure, different field if you will.
You probably noticed the “for the time being” language in these two examples. Theories are lively critters, constantly jostling one another and, in the process, morphing. Newer, perhaps better products are hatching. Around the world, neither physics nor product development sleeps.
Even mundane debates are theoretical. Heated arguments can break out over whether the coach should have called that play when the score was so close at the end of the game. The judgment (theory) about whether the coach was right is a tough call and might require some research into similar past plays, such as reviewing statistics of successful outcomes in that situation. Most of us wouldn’t bother to go that far, resting content with our opinions.
This leads to the question (yes, another theory) about when it’s OK to just rest on our opinions and when it’s better or necessary to consider alternative ideas and their evidence. I would argue that if the stakes are high, it’s wise to consider alternatives in light of their evidence:
Critical thinking is the consideration of alternative theories in light of their evidence.
If you’re interested in creating or joining the most innovative workplace, if you want to create the next spectacular product—you’ll need to think critically.
Camille’s life in two theories
There are innumerable kind, smart people in corporations and Camille is one of them. She is well educated and highly trained. She was over the moon when she arrived at her first full-time job. She quickly noticed some things that could be better. She wondered whether some meetings could be shorter or even skipped. She saw some issues with a template everyone had to use. And she even got an idea of a new product, so exciting! When she told her manager about these things, he would nod, thanking her for the suggestions, then say he would have to ask his own manager about them. Camille waited. She waited some more, asked some more, and it gradually dawned on her that, other than fulfilling her immediate job duties as instructed, any other contribution or suggestion was out of the question. Her colleagues were nice, she was happy to be getting a good salary, and the company had a stellar reputation. Still she felt unhappy, unable to put her finger on the reason for the dread she felt going to work every morning. What Camille did not realize was that she was working within a theory, a philosophy about how things should be done and how she should be treated.
The day came when Camille got word of another workplace. She applied, got accepted, and moved into another world. She could sense it from the first day on the job. She was shocked to be invited to disagree. This had never happened to her before and at first, she felt afraid. But when she saw others doing this and being rewarded for it, she gradually got used to it. And with others, she began to experiment with others, tinkering to make the workplace better and to come up with new product ideas. Every day she came to work and wondered what would happen, what new evidence would come to light. Again, without knowing it, Camille had changed working philosophies, and lived in a new theory about how things should get done and how people should be treated.
This book is about these powerful but invisible theories that help or hamper companies and their employees.
Chapter 2: Cave Thinking and the Intuitive Fallacy
As an undergraduate, I recall reading the account of Plato’s cave with incredulity. Plato described people as being chained in a cave, sitting and watching shadows cast by a fire behind them, shadows that they mistakenly assumed were real objects. They needed to acquire the wisdom (it wasn’t clear to me how) to walk out of the cave into the sunlight to see things as they really were.
How weird is that? Who would do such a thing as to chain people in a cave only to watch shadows? I finally dismissed it by thinking that the modern world knows so much more, and over time we would just come out in the sun. But that was naïve.
After twenty-four centuries, Plato’s account has been repeatedly vindicated by the growth of knowledge, yet we’re far from the total understanding many of us assume. The social sciences are showing us strange things about our minds, counterintuitive findings supporting odd theories—and we are ignoring them. In essence, we are sitting in the cave and staring at shadows, thinking them reality. Theories with strong evidence are in essence exit signs from the cave of settled beliefs. But settled beliefs are more comfortable to those who don’t think theoretically—the cave is cozy and secure, or so we think.
A funny thing about new evidence is that it often seems weird, fights what feels reasonable, feels distasteful or even frightening. One of my favorite quotes: “Nothing hath an uglier look to us than reasons, when they are not on our side.”
Of course, I’m not recommending acceptance of every new weird idea that comes along just because people balked at some past winners. Philosopher of science Larry Laudan noted that centuries ago people seriously entertained the idea that hot goats’ blood split diamonds. I hope it didn’t require many goat blood donors to dispel this idea. We’ve forgotten most of the bad ideas because their poor to non-existent evidence consigned them to obscurity. Another now-amazing idea was that breast milk, if fed to royal babies, could confer “peasantness” on them. Or that inhaling latrine smells could cure the plague.
People who believed these things were not stupid. They just didn’t know of any contradictory evidence and had no alternative theory for their beliefs. Today our understanding of environmental influence along with genetics, royal or not, overwhelms any theory of breast milk conferring character or attitudes. Similarly, in the late 19th century, the discovery of a bacterium as the cause of the Black Death, a pandemic that swept through Europe for centuries killing over 100 million, solved a terrifying riddle. The bacterium lived on fleas who lived on rats that had gone largely unnoticed.
Sixty years ago there was serious debate whether it would be safer to be thrown from your car rather than be trapped in it by a seat belt.
So “weird” and “reasonable” are on a historical march and change with growing evidence. I’m recommending that seemingly weird ideas about subjects important to our interests and needs that are supported by extensive evidence get a hearing. That’s all.
If you are in the swing of thinking theoretically, regarding yourself as someone who considers other theories, this won’t be much of an issue. If, however, you think of yourself as a person who believes x, y, and z and anyone who believes q, r, and p must be wrong—you’ll have some trouble with this. It may have to sound intuitive, “make sense,” “be reasonable,” at the get-go or you won’t accept it.
Gentle reader, please forgive me for giving this stance a pejorative title: intuitive fallacy. A fallacy is a pitfall of reasoning, and there are several, including circular reasoning. If I argue that I like spaghetti because it tastes good to me, I haven’t added a reason. I’ve just reiterated that I like spaghetti. Any argument of the form “X” is true because of “X” is circular and doesn’t add to knowledge, although it can often appear to for the unwary. The intuitive fallacy is a kind of circularity in which I say that I don’t like an idea because it isn’t intuitively appealing to me, i.e., I don’t like it. If this reminds you of certain political speeches, you may be onto something.
The greatest leaps in knowledge have virtually always been a result of counterintuitive-sounding ideas. Newton called his odd theory of motion “absurd,” meaning absurd-sounding to those hearing it for the first time. Darwin was so nervous about his theory that it took him 20 years to publish it! In biology, the template theory regarding fighting germs seemed only reasonable. It must have been that the body waited for a bacterium or virus and then created a template antibody to deal with that particular threat. But no— the evidence is in that the body comes equipped with thousands of antibodies from which to select and fight off the invader. That seemed extraordinarily strange at the time it was proposed. Yet is won out, due to evidence and is core to our current understanding of the immune system. John Stuart Mill was ridiculed and lost his seat in Parliament for making the absurd-sounding case that women were the intellectual equals of men. Until the 1950s, the idea of child abuse did not exist. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” meant that if you didn’t take the cane to your offspring regularly, you were consigning them to a ruinous adulthood. Our intuitions on these and a great many other reasonable ideas of their time have gone by the wayside in the face of exploring new theories.
Some might think that we’re at the pinnacle of knowledge and shouldn’t have to entertain ideas that don’t sound reasonable. This in itself is absurd, what with the weight of human history proving the contrary. The reason, I think, is that our intuitions feel so right, so solid to us, that it takes a kind of mental lens to bend our minds in the direction of the truth. And you guessed it: that lens is empiricism, putting theories to the test.
A final word about avoiding the intuitive fallacy: Recall that you only need to consider an unpalatable alternative; you do not have to accept it. Just weigh the evidence and see how it holds up in comparison to the theory you hold.
Creative people in all fields come up with new theories but it is the rest of us—large numbers of people—who drive the growth of knowledge. We buy or reject the new theory of a particular smartwatch, jacket, or car. The wildly popular Pokemon Go was a hit of a magnitude unexpected even by its creator, Nintendo. Or consider the self-driving car, which Ford has promised will be common in fleets by 2021. The CEO noted that “If someone had told you 10 years ago, or even five years ago, that the CEO of a major automaker American car company is going to be announcing the mass production of fully autonomous vehicles, they would have been called crazy or nuts or both.” Or consider our implicit attitudes about propriety. In 1958, just 4 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. As of 2013, the percentage of approval was 89 percent. Or consider the trajectory towards same-sex marriage. Our theories about decency and fairness have dramatically changed during our lifetime, sometimes going scarcely noticed. History is littered with strange or at-the-time distasteful-sounding ideas turned mainstream.
What if you had to get to work in total darkness except for a small, laser-thin flashlight attached to your forehead? Not only that, you are forced to wear foggy goggles as well. If that’s not enough of an impediment, your car’s accelerator pedal is malfunctioning—at times, you are going way over the speed limit; at other times, you are crawling along the freeway, an equally endangering condition. Finally, you have no idea that any of this is going on: In your mind your view is clear, even panoramic, and you are moving at a reasonable pace.
While this scenario sounds unlikely to the point of absurdity, a plot lifted from a sci-fi or dystopian movie, its metaphors are intended to illustrate some well-established scientific findings about how the mind operates, findings that you’ll see referenced throughout this book.
You might be thinking ”This sounds pretty grim. I don’t believe it. And even if I did—if my mind and the mind of everyone else at work from the CEO on down are so dysfunctional—where does that leave us?”
The answer is to follow this evidence, learn how to work around our limitations, and to constantly conduct workplace operations with as much evidence as possible. I will argue that the way out of these disabilities is for people in corporations to adopt a more scientific mentality. This does not require a new academic degree; most college graduates are familiar with how science works and have conducted basic experiments. But beyond this, a scientific approach requires a different mindset. Science is a method for showing, then overcoming, the limitations in thinking of which people were not previously aware. It has taken all fields of investigation, including biology, physics, immunology, as well as the social sciences, continually lifting them away from strongly-held flawed convictions and offering new, sturdier ones. Empirical, thoroughly data-driven companies operate in just the same way. They take account of what we know about human nature and then are smart about using this information to make more profits and increase worker happiness. In contrast, running a company without this approach is for the most part to operate with hand-me-down habits. Or companies will take on a random fad because another successful company does it: “Friday pancake breakfasts are the solution to worker disengagement!” This new perk may well improve productivity for a short time but the effect wears off. A famous set of studies demonstrated this phenomenon, called the Hawthorne Effect. Any extra attention lifts morale and productivity. I would theorize that perks in the end don’t work because they are unrelated to the core of people’s motivations.
Anyway, let’s get back to that driving metaphor, and why we need to adopt ways at the workplace to avoid these pitfalls.
- The mind in the act of concentration has very limited bandwidth,1 similar to that laser flashlight attached to the forehead, shining a narrow light in a world blackened by our mind’s inability to attend to more than a small area. Your potential to think about anything is as vast as your knowledge, but you can only shine your laser mind on one thought at a time. This neurobiological reality has immense implications for what we should do at work. Chapter 1 will deal with “the flashlight” and how it collides with the unnecessary processes we often follow, offering advice about what we can do about this conflict.
- A large part of our decision-making is unconscious and contains surprising distortions of judgment and perception of which we’re unaware. These are our goggles. We are often oblivious to these errors, but even when they are called to our attention,
if we don’t think about the evidence presented and instead lean on our personal experience or opinion without considering the need for evidence, we fall into what I have called the intuitive fallacy: “These claims don’t fit with what I think/know is the case; therefore, you must be wrong.” You will hear a lot about this intuitive fallacy and how damaging it is to business. Think of it as wearing fogged-up googles and believing you have 20/20 vision. We all tend to think that our observations and the inferences we make from them are “reality,” but time and again research has shown how distortions infect our thinking, both about a product we’re producing as well as the workers who produce it. Chapter 2 will offer a wide range of examples, offering an empirical approach to reducing the fog, making better business decisions, and in the process leveling the workplace playing field. - Some decisions are made too quickly while others drag on interminably. This is our broken accelerator. Again, ruthless pursuit of evidence wherever possible should dictate the speed limit, understanding the evidence regarding times where slow thinking is more accurate and powerful than the fast thinking so often touted in the workplace.
- Processes that are unnecessary
- Oversight that looks at the wrong things
- Underutilized workers (though ironically overworked)
- Negativity about partners and the competition, accompanied by employee dissent
- Dogmatism based on unexamined practices
- Fluidly making course corrections based on empirical methods
- Loyal opposition to the status quo
- Experimenting within the company, as well as adopting solid findings from the social sciences
In the coming pages, we will look at POUND and FLEX organizations through an empirical lens. I will offer ways we can overcome some of our natural mental constraints if we acknowledge them and are willing to change the status quo, both in our individual thinking and as companies.
This book stems from my corporate experience and critical thinking expertise. The experience has come from over a dozen years at two of our nation’s greatest corporations, Microsoft and AT&T, full of extremely bright, capable people. My expertise as a critical thinker comes from more than 20 years of research in the field, forming my theory through evidence from the history of science. I hope this book will be a modest start at rethinking organizations. We have not yet seen most businesses unleash their potential to skyrocket innovation and profits while getting the best out of every worker while making people happier. A FLEX approach can make that happen and transform the workplace.
Chapter 1: Theories in the Woodwork
Everything made by a human is a theory about what is useful, beautiful, or fun. You’re probably sitting in a room right now. If you look around, you’ll see dozens of theories (if you’re out in the woods, your clothes and cell phone will suffice as examples). A rug, a cell phone, a supermarket layout, the way a business or government is run—all are theories.
This word “theory” is central to clear critical thinking. At its core, a theory is an idea supported by evidence of some sort. This might sound “too theoretical,” but it is in fact immensely practical. We are creatures who see through theoretical eyes, whether we realize it or not.
If you’re of a practical bent, you may think, “That’s sort of cool but why does it matter?” Theories give us a handle on how to think. They give us an awareness of how we are thinking. Looking for theories means we that start asking interesting questions, the biggest of which is, “What’s the evidence for that?” And over time, it is evidence—new evidence, evidence that just keeps building—driving the growth of knowledge in all fields, driving improvement in all things. A spectacularly successful product is evidence that its theory of what is useful, fun, and/or beautiful is true—at least for the time being and compared to other products. The once-ludicrous idea that people would willingly open their homes to strangers found a multi-billion-dollar success in Airbnb. Finding the highly elusive Higgs Boson particle was cause for huge celebration because it confirmed that the Standard Model of particle physics was a successful theory—at least for the time being and compared to other possibilities. Same thought structure, different field if you will.
You probably noticed the “for the time being” language in these two examples. Theories are lively critters, constantly jostling one another and, in the process, morphing. Newer, perhaps better products are hatching. Around the world, neither physics nor product development sleeps.
Even mundane debates are theoretical. Heated arguments can break out over whether the coach should have called that play when the score was so close at the end of the game. The judgment (theory) about whether the coach was right is a tough call and might require some research into similar past plays, such as reviewing statistics of successful outcomes in that situation. Most of us wouldn’t bother to go that far, resting content with our opinions.
This leads to the question (yes, another theory) about when it’s OK to just rest on our opinions and when it’s better or necessary to consider alternative ideas and their evidence. I would argue that if the stakes are high, it’s wise to consider alternatives in light of their evidence:
Critical thinking is the consideration of alternative theories in light of their evidence.
If you’re interested in creating or joining the most innovative workplace, if you want to create the next spectacular product—you’ll need to think critically.
Camille’s life in two theories
There are innumerable kind, smart people in corporations and Camille is one of them. She is well educated and highly trained. She was over the moon when she arrived at her first full-time job. She quickly noticed some things that could be better. She wondered whether some meetings could be shorter or even skipped. She saw some issues with a template everyone had to use. And she even got an idea of a new product, so exciting! When she told her manager about these things, he would nod, thanking her for the suggestions, then say he would have to ask his own manager about them. Camille waited. She waited some more, asked some more, and it gradually dawned on her that, other than fulfilling her immediate job duties as instructed, any other contribution or suggestion was out of the question. Her colleagues were nice, she was happy to be getting a good salary, and the company had a stellar reputation. Still she felt unhappy, unable to put her finger on the reason for the dread she felt going to work every morning. What Camille did not realize was that she was working within a theory, a philosophy about how things should be done and how she should be treated.
The day came when Camille got word of another workplace. She applied, got accepted, and moved into another world. She could sense it from the first day on the job. She was shocked to be invited to disagree. This had never happened to her before and at first, she felt afraid. But when she saw others doing this and being rewarded for it, she gradually got used to it. And with others, she began to experiment with others, tinkering to make the workplace better and to come up with new product ideas. Every day she came to work and wondered what would happen, what new evidence would come to light. Again, without knowing it, Camille had changed working philosophies, and lived in a new theory about how things should get done and how people should be treated.
This book is about these powerful but invisible theories that help or hamper companies and their employees.
Chapter 2: Cave Thinking and the Intuitive Fallacy
As an undergraduate, I recall reading the account of Plato’s cave with incredulity. Plato described people as being chained in a cave, sitting and watching shadows cast by a fire behind them, shadows that they mistakenly assumed were real objects. They needed to acquire the wisdom (it wasn’t clear to me how) to walk out of the cave into the sunlight to see things as they really were.
How weird is that? Who would do such a thing as to chain people in a cave only to watch shadows? I finally dismissed it by thinking that the modern world knows so much more, and over time we would just come out in the sun. But that was naïve.
After twenty-four centuries, Plato’s account has been repeatedly vindicated by the growth of knowledge, yet we’re far from the total understanding many of us assume. The social sciences are showing us strange things about our minds, counterintuitive findings supporting odd theories—and we are ignoring them. In essence, we are sitting in the cave and staring at shadows, thinking them reality. Theories with strong evidence are in essence exit signs from the cave of settled beliefs. But settled beliefs are more comfortable to those who don’t think theoretically—the cave is cozy and secure, or so we think.
A funny thing about new evidence is that it often seems weird, fights what feels reasonable, feels distasteful or even frightening. One of my favorite quotes: “Nothing hath an uglier look to us than reasons, when they are not on our side.”
Of course, I’m not recommending acceptance of every new weird idea that comes along just because people balked at some past winners. Philosopher of science Larry Laudan noted that centuries ago people seriously entertained the idea that hot goats’ blood split diamonds. I hope it didn’t require many goat blood donors to dispel this idea. We’ve forgotten most of the bad ideas because their poor to non-existent evidence consigned them to obscurity. Another now-amazing idea was that breast milk, if fed to royal babies, could confer “peasantness” on them. Or that inhaling latrine smells could cure the plague.
People who believed these things were not stupid. They just didn’t know of any contradictory evidence and had no alternative theory for their beliefs. Today our understanding of environmental influence along with genetics, royal or not, overwhelms any theory of breast milk conferring character or attitudes. Similarly, in the late 19th century, the discovery of a bacterium as the cause of the Black Death, a pandemic that swept through Europe for centuries killing over 100 million, solved a terrifying riddle. The bacterium lived on fleas who lived on rats that had gone largely unnoticed.
Sixty years ago there was serious debate whether it would be safer to be thrown from your car rather than be trapped in it by a seat belt.
So “weird” and “reasonable” are on a historical march and change with growing evidence. I’m recommending that seemingly weird ideas about subjects important to our interests and needs that are supported by extensive evidence get a hearing. That’s all.
If you are in the swing of thinking theoretically, regarding yourself as someone who considers other theories, this won’t be much of an issue. If, however, you think of yourself as a person who believes x, y, and z and anyone who believes q, r, and p must be wrong—you’ll have some trouble with this. It may have to sound intuitive, “make sense,” “be reasonable,” at the get-go or you won’t accept it.
Gentle reader, please forgive me for giving this stance a pejorative title: intuitive fallacy. A fallacy is a pitfall of reasoning, and there are several, including circular reasoning. If I argue that I like spaghetti because it tastes good to me, I haven’t added a reason. I’ve just reiterated that I like spaghetti. Any argument of the form “X” is true because of “X” is circular and doesn’t add to knowledge, although it can often appear to for the unwary. The intuitive fallacy is a kind of circularity in which I say that I don’t like an idea because it isn’t intuitively appealing to me, i.e., I don’t like it. If this reminds you of certain political speeches, you may be onto something.
The greatest leaps in knowledge have virtually always been a result of counterintuitive-sounding ideas. Newton called his odd theory of motion “absurd,” meaning absurd-sounding to those hearing it for the first time. Darwin was so nervous about his theory that it took him 20 years to publish it! In biology, the template theory regarding fighting germs seemed only reasonable. It must have been that the body waited for a bacterium or virus and then created a template antibody to deal with that particular threat. But no— the evidence is in that the body comes equipped with thousands of antibodies from which to select and fight off the invader. That seemed extraordinarily strange at the time it was proposed. Yet is won out, due to evidence and is core to our current understanding of the immune system. John Stuart Mill was ridiculed and lost his seat in Parliament for making the absurd-sounding case that women were the intellectual equals of men. Until the 1950s, the idea of child abuse did not exist. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” meant that if you didn’t take the cane to your offspring regularly, you were consigning them to a ruinous adulthood. Our intuitions on these and a great many other reasonable ideas of their time have gone by the wayside in the face of exploring new theories.
Some might think that we’re at the pinnacle of knowledge and shouldn’t have to entertain ideas that don’t sound reasonable. This in itself is absurd, what with the weight of human history proving the contrary. The reason, I think, is that our intuitions feel so right, so solid to us, that it takes a kind of mental lens to bend our minds in the direction of the truth. And you guessed it: that lens is empiricism, putting theories to the test.
A final word about avoiding the intuitive fallacy: Recall that you only need to consider an unpalatable alternative; you do not have to accept it. Just weigh the evidence and see how it holds up in comparison to the theory you hold.
Creative people in all fields come up with new theories but it is the rest of us—large numbers of people—who drive the growth of knowledge. We buy or reject the new theory of a particular smartwatch, jacket, or car. The wildly popular Pokemon Go was a hit of a magnitude unexpected even by its creator, Nintendo. Or consider the self-driving car, which Ford has promised will be common in fleets by 2021. The CEO noted that “If someone had told you 10 years ago, or even five years ago, that the CEO of a major automaker American car company is going to be announcing the mass production of fully autonomous vehicles, they would have been called crazy or nuts or both.” Or consider our implicit attitudes about propriety. In 1958, just 4 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. As of 2013, the percentage of approval was 89 percent. Or consider the trajectory towards same-sex marriage. Our theories about decency and fairness have dramatically changed during our lifetime, sometimes going scarcely noticed. History is littered with strange or at-the-time distasteful-sounding ideas turned mainstream.
In the same way as views about these issues changed over time, we can “buy into” a seemingly weird new theory about a better workplace. As customers of all human-made things, including work philosophies, each of us will have reasons for buying into or rejecting the FLEX philosophy and its workplace.
As philosopher Karl Popper envisions it, we’re all members of “the community of thinkers” when we choose to think about a claim or theory. One of my favorite quotes shows the kind of interest in new ideas that proves critical to their consideration: "I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth.”
As philosopher Karl Popper envisions it, we’re all members of “the community of thinkers” when we choose to think about a claim or theory. One of my favorite quotes shows the kind of interest in new ideas that proves critical to their consideration: "I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth.”