Don’t Fool Yourself

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool”—Richard Feynman.

Like many people, I spend part of my morning perusing select articles from a variety of online sources: the Financial Times, the New York Times, The Economist, a variety of blogs. One of the things I appreciate the most about our technologically advanced world is this ability to easily access information about what people around the world are thinking and saying on the various topics that interest me.

I commonly participate with others around the world in an exchange of what we have each gleaned from our reading and personal observations. This is something I really enjoy, but there is one aspect of it that gives me pause, a dark underbelly, so to speak, to the way we gather our news and information.

Many people are living in an echo chamber. They only read and only hear those things that support what they already think and believe while paying no attention to any article, any insight, any facts that offer opposing ideas.

We’ve managed to build a global information system that combines being able to rapidly find information about everything, with an incredible filter that enables us to never hear anything at variance with our beliefs. We get to view the world through our own distinct prisms.

At the same time, we’ve learned to flit here and there just skimming information. As a result, we’re losing our ability to go deep into a particular topic. We’re becoming shallower in our thinking about so many things. Our capacity for concentration and contemplation are weakening.

We’ve become surer and surer about our own beliefs while basing our surety on less and less knowledge and thought. We cut off all of those who have different ideas, rather than share and work with them in order to come up with solutions that benefit us all.

From a leadership perspective this is a disaster. And yet we see it all the time. Decisions made based on a limited worldview, leading to poor results. An inability to hear opposing opinions and incorporate them into decisions, leading to poor results. An inability to think deeply and contemplate the implications of actions, leading to poor results.

Worst of all, this inability to hear diverse ideas, opinions, and facts divides people rather than brings them together. And bringing people together is a key accountability for leaders. Think about it. A leader so sure of their ideas that they refuse to hear information at odds with their thinking, no matter the source or factual basis.

Think about the taxicab and hotel owners who think this way and now have Uber and Airbnb, nipping at their heels and even overtaking them. Think about the leaders of FEDEX and UPS secure in their belief that the new Amazon delivery fleet is no threat to their business. How long will it be before they discover their world has changed?

To again quote Feynman, “I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything.”

Richard Feynman, a man open to new ideas, willing to consider everything, who was able to solve the most intractable problems.