I Like The Way This Guy Thinks…

Short-Circuiting the “Ladder of Inference”

A LinkedIn discussion came across my laptop the other day, asking me to look at a video and offer my explanation to a condition described as “change blindness“.  Being a practitioner of Change Management, I felt compelled to opine, which I did.

The set-up is this: two very different-looking students “staff” an experiment to which other students are directed; the respondents know only that they are being asked to participate in “an experiment” with no knowledge of what it entails; Student A greets them at the counter and secures identification data; Student A then ducks down behind the desk to retrieve the participant’s packet; Student B, hiding behind the desk, then raises up and presents the participant with their packet.  Pretty simple.  Think you would notice the “change”?

Seventy-five percent of the participants did not notice that the “study leader” was not the person they had been interacting with only a few seconds prior.  Seventy-five percent!!  Are we that inattentive?  What might explain this phenomenon?

I was doing some work the other day that required me to refresh my familiarity with Chris Argyris’s “Ladder of Inference”.  During that Internet search, I came across an interesting hypothesis that might serve to explain how three-quarters of us would not notice that the person serving us was no longer the person serving us.  This “short-circuit” was posited by Gene Bellinger in a Wiki article.

Argyris’s original concept indicated a ladder that started with real data and experience, leading to the next rung consisting of selected data and experience.  From these selected data, Argyris maintained, we affix meanings which lead us to formulate assumptions.  These assumptions will then inform our conclusions and decisions, which will slowly build into our most closely-held beliefs, which will drive our actions.  What Mr. Bellinger did, as a result of “systems thinking”, was to close the loop, indicating that these actions would then result in new real data and experience, from which we would select data to consider, repeating the cycle.

Bellinger’s short-circuit, however, compared to closing the loop, indicates that once we have entered this cycle, we truly no longer even consider the full inventory of real data and experience, choosing instead to go directly to the filtering step, wherein we select the data we will consider, not even aware of the real data that we are overlooking.  To the point of this video/experiment, we have become so accustomed to the experience that the person originally serving us would not be changed, we often times overlook very obvious “real data” in front of us, as we select which data we will consider.

To the point of this posting, there are two factors to consider:

1. If 75% of the participants failed to notice substantial changes right before their eyes, how can employees be expected to detect [and respond to] incremental changes taking place over extended periods?  Practices that once demonstrated world leadership slowly become less effective and more counterproductive, but due to the pace of change, these deteriorations may not be noticed [or considered].
2. The value of an outside observer/change agent that does not suffer the same experiential bias that the participants have learned over time is incalculable.  The outside observer detects and points out data that, in reality, the involved employee literally does not even “see”.

Understanding this potential shortcoming of the “learning loop” can help to explain why today’s change management experience is that fully 70% of all change initiatives will not accomplish their intended goals.  For some reason, a 30% success rate seems to be acceptable.  If this rankles you, here is a recommendation to improve that performance: use an outside consultant for your change initiatives.  They will literally see things that you will not.

Leaf Hacker or Root Striker??

I was reviewing a DVD the other day that I checked out from our local library.  It was a BBC production titled “Unheard Prophet: W. Edwards Deming”, and it carried me back to my own personal experience with Doctor Deming when he provided his four-day seminar at Boeing.  His curmudgeonly style, especially during the presentation of the “Red Beads-White Beads” experiment, is inimitable with the effect that he created.  His mutterings contained the essence of his theories, and the one that stuck out for me that day was “There is no substitute for knowledge”.

It has always struck me as a bit of non sequitur that Doctor Deming, being a mathematician by training and considered by many to be the [perhaps "a"] father of statistical process control, would exhort so strongly against against “the numbers” that modern executives so worship.  In the video, he comments, almost as an aside, “Beware of figures, be guided by theory.”  Among my myriad notes from the four days of seminar and the three evenings of small-group discussions that I enjoyed with him, I find several repetitions of “The most important numbers are unknown and unknowable.”  And I believe that this is a side to Doctor Deming [and the many programs that have flowed forward from his teachings, some correctly, some incorrectly] that is often overlooked: his insistence on  honoring the human side of the business proposition and on deep understanding, what he characterized in his conversations as “profound knowledge”. 

Early in the video, he was expressing his traditional concern, “They were only doing their best.  They were doing their best, but without knowledge. ‘Doing our best’ without knowledge will be our downfall.   There is no substitute for knowledge.”  You see, among each and every one of his Fourteen Points, knowledge is the basis, the foundation on which to build your actions:

1. Constancy of purpose requires knowledge of the company, the environment, your competitors and your customers.
2. Adopt the new philosophyrequires us to awaken to the challenge and learn new responsibilities, something we can do only with new knowledge.
3. Cease dependence on inspection requires changes [new knowledge] to build quality in the first time.
4. End practice of business on price tag requires more knowledgethan traditional purchasing processes, knowledge to determine total costs instead of immediate price.
5. Improve constantly and foreveris practically a re-framing of consistent new knowledge as an underpinning of your company.
6. Institute training is simply distributing knowledge in new ways or to different audiences.
7. Institute leadership requires new practices which require new knowledge.
8. Drive out fear presupposes a new knowledge basis, since fear is rooted in uncertainty which is rooted in ignorance. [NB: ignorance is not the same as stupidity; ignorance is not knowing, which can be remedied; stupidity is knowing but not responding]
9. Break down barriers requires most companies to adopt completely new philosophies about the “freedom of travel” of knowledge within their company.
10. Eliminate slogans and exhortations presumes replacement of these artificial goals with true knowledge-based targets and systems.
11. Eliminate work standards and MBO by replacing it with leadership requires [as in Point 7] new practices, based on new knowledge.
12. Remove barriers for both hourly and management workers requires new systems based on new knowledge.
13. Institute education and self-improvement is essentially the embodiment of the transfer of new knowledge to new recipients.
14. Put everybody to work will require all companies to rethink its current knowledge dissemination practices to achieve fuller distribution.

Knowledge is at the root of each and every one of these points underlying his theory, and it calls to mind the often cited Thoreau adage that “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.”  Knowledge systems are at the root of every company’s operations.  Practically all of most current operational improvement programs consist in hacking at the leaves.  How many of you are striking at the root?

Without assuring the integrity and solidity of these knowledge roots, maintaining or improving any commercial enterprise becomes riskier in the long term.  Yet so many executives are content to hack at the leaves, achieving a topiary that can be sold to shareholders. Your company’s knowledge must be placed into a system, guided, as Deming would instruct, with a true theory and structured practices and processes that can be controlled.

Your company’s knowledge systems are the roots that feed all of your other operations.  Have your knowledge systems been optimized?  Have they even been objectively assessed lately? 

Don’t settle for topiary.  Become one of the truly transformational leaders, the ones that strike at the root, for lasting change.

Here’s a good way to start: Knowledge System Risk Assessment

Betting Your Ass-Umptions

I had a very interesting conversation the other day with a man I shall call “Number 104” as part of my goal of “a thousand cups of coffee”.  And please consider this article your personal invitation to be one of my thousand cups.

Number 104’s company is undergoing significant changes on a number of fronts: recent purchase by overseas company, shift in procurement strategies, lessening power of traditional project management into centralized functions.  They are struggling with handling the multiple conversions, but these changes are necessary and cannot be avoided.  Oh, and add to the list, the implementation of a new SAP system to match that of the acquiring company.

Although he is not leading this convolution of “chances to make the wrong choice”, he is deeply involved in two of them: the SAP conversion and the reorientation of project leadership.  He expressed his frustrations in this career-defining stage of his work very succinctly when he commented, “The main problem that I run into is that no one is willing to challenge their own assumptions.”

He had asked himself to consider why that might be the case, and his realization had been that people operate every day on a set of assumptions.  We assume, when we drive, that stepping on the brake will stop the car.  We assume that other drivers will follow the rules of the road, staying in their lane and stopping at red lights.  Without these assumptions, our driving lives would slow to a crawl.

At work, we assume that the office will be open in the morning when we get there.  We assume that our co-workers will arrive.  We assume that we will have paper, pencils, computers, work spaces…  well, you get the picture.  And in the main, we can count on most of our assumptions being valid and holding true.  But what happens when our assumptions are not met?

Assumptions are the foundation of our belief system.  Chris Argyris, well-known business thinker, author and professor at Harvard, created a tool he called the “Ladder of Inference”, intended to help parse our thought process into identifiable and manageable segments.  This ladder has six rungs, which operate in this manner:

• We observe real data, but
• We select which of these observed data to consider as we
• Affix meaning to our observations which lead us to
• Make assumptions which then drive us to certain
• Conclusions which form the basis for our
• Beliefs which are the ultimate basis for all of our
• Actions.

Right smack in the middle of everything are those pesky old assumptions.  And whence did they come?  Meaning which we applied to data, but not accurate meaning applied to all observed data.  Instead we had a step in between where we only considered “selected” data in affixing meaning.  Therein lies the rub.

As Number 104 realized, and practiced, he needed to question the source of assumptions that he and others were making, both in the SAP implementation and in the project leadership changeover.  He asked, as should you, “On what grounds am I entitled to this assumption?”  I sent him a copy of the essay, “The Ethics of Belief”, published by William K. Clifford in 1877, which outlines the obligation of the prudent inquirer before establishing “beliefs”.  I have included a link here for those of you inclined to read the entire essay.  And for those not so inclined, here is Clifford’s own summary of the matter [but the emphasis is mine]:

• We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know.
• We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.
• It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.

For Number 104, it was a very helpful link, and it opened his eyes to the wide range of opportunities to be lulled into making assumptions that were not warranted.  I would encourage each and every one of you to begin to challenge the assumptions underlying beliefs that will lead to decisions.  Your success, and possibly your career, could depend on how well you bet your ass-umptions.

Culture, not Competition; Character, not Crisis

A recent study by McKinsey, completed within the last two months with over 1400 respondents, identified strategic capability building  as among the top three priorities of more than 75% of the senior executives.  At the same time, almost the same percentage felt that their companies were not good at building a capability that is strategically relevant.  Now doesn’t that make you stop and wonder?

What are we missing here?  There are the obvious “surface” issues such as being too close to the problem to be objective, having the day-to-day work competing [and winning] over future-focused adjustments, or any of the other top ten challenges mentioned in the report.  But companies, and executives, have been at this “capability building” thing long enough that these factors should be much less important than they seem to be.

Then it hit me – out of this report, a solution appears that is considered more to be cause than effect.  Companies, and executives, are seeking and making these changes, not in response to competitive pressures and to critical circumstances, but in search of a shift in culture and character, in basic values underlying the organization.  Yet, the changes they are applying are in the area of processes and procedures, and not in foundational characteristics.  Business processes, the tools that every company uses to bring value to their customer base, do not operate in a vacuum- they are instead immersed in an environment of culture and character that must be changed as well.  Until the foundational characteristics are consciously and definitively realigned, the processes and procedures built upon these characteristics will have their potential effect diverted by them, returning to status quo ante.

A key factor in such an environment is a company’s knowledge system.  As Deming would often chide: ‘How could they know?  They were only doing their best.”  Many companies are unaware that they have a knowledge system, but it drives everything that they do.  Even those who are aware of their knowledge system are often unsure of how to approach it.  People cannot do more or better than they know. 

Managing one’s “Intellectual Capital” is becoming a more prevalent conversation among today’s business leaders, and it is one that will often decide the long-term viability of your organization.  Intellectual Capital is as important to today’s business as oxygen is to life.  It should be approached with no less diligence that our perpetual human struggle to breathe. And that becomes the real challenge, adjusting our knowledge systems to deliver the culture and character we seek.  Strategically.  Definitively.  Deliberately. And most importantly, productively.