On a recent trip to Paris I managed to catch up on some reading, one of the few good things about long spells in airplanes. While reading the excellent new book Headtrash by Tish Squillaro and Timothy I. Thomas, I ran across an old saying being quoted by Peter Musser, Chairman and CEO of Musser Group and Chairman Emeritus of Safeguard Scientific. “You never learn when you’re doing all the talking.”
Then while paging through Strategy + Business, Booz & Company’s journal, I ran across commentary on something called perceptual filters. Perceptual filters cause you to see what you expect to see, they blind you to conflicting information. They focus your attention only on that which supports your view.
Think about what the juxtaposition of these two behaviors leads to: blindness to that which is going to kill your business.
Since I was sitting on an airplane with hours to go, I had lots of time to think about this. There are examples all around us of executives…and politicians…who become oblivious to differing ideas and changing conditions, unable to see the world moving past them, in love with the sound of their voice and confident they know what’s best for everyone.
If things go wrong, they find someone to blame. It’s never their fault.
And yet, there’s a simple cure if you suffer from these disabilities: Questions. Ask lots and lots of questions. And then listen to the answers. Really listen. Keep your mouth shut, clear your mind of preconceived notions, and pay full attention to the answers you receive. Then think about them. Roll them around in your mind. Play with them. Give yourself the chance to learn something and broaden your perspective.
Try it for awhile and notice what happens. You just might find that things get better.
Great stuff, Steve. I encountered the perceptual filter phenomenon all the time in my strategy consulting life. All any client ever really wanted was for me to tell them that the reality they were experiencing was wrong, and that their long-held beliefs were right. The Conference Board did a study a few years ago on “growth stalls” (sudden flattening or decline in revenue, usually after the company’s best year or two; most companies experience them, and most of those don’t survive). The underlying root cause, they found, was reliance on obsolete beliefs and assumptions about how the company and market work.
Neuroscience has now documented that our brains are wired to accept information that reinforces what we already know, and to reject as not possibly true information that conflicts with it. Your advice is spot on, but it is difficult for people to do, especially when they’ve been successful. It takes a lot of courage to ask, “What if my most closely held beliefs were wrong?” Allowing someone like Steve to put that challenge in front of you is a great way to start!