Cognitive Edge

Sonja Blignaut brought my attention to an article from TIME on conspiracy theory. One of the most interesting assertions is that 36% of Americans consider it ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ that government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves. The article offers the explanation that humans have a need

to have the magnitude of any given effect be balanced by the magnitude of the cause behind it. A world in which tiny causes can have huge consequences feels scary and unreliable

This desire for there to be a external reason behind things allows people to absolve themselves of responsibility and is a dangerous aspect of human behaviour. In psychology people talk about fundamental attribution error and from complexity theory we have the phrase retrospective coherence. If we say that there is a reason why things went wrong in the past that we can attribute to someone else, then we can forget about and assume it will not happen again. Worse we seem to like ascribing a fatalistic approach to the future: predestination, Quetzalcoatl's return, any of a myriad of conspiracy theories, end of the world nutters, salvation by mysterious forces or even as yet unknown science. Again its a way of avoiding responsibility and we can say with Euripides: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad

In the mean time while energy is going into this sort of nonsense London and many other areas of the world face being under sea level in 70 years unless someone gets round to doing something within the next decade.

You get the same thing in organisations. After something has gone wrong, everyone can find someone or something to blame. If the future is uncertain then some idealistic approach will be taken involving consultants, layoffs and a new system design on the basis that now everything will be OK in the future when we get the new system. While all this is going on, client facing staff and the back office struggle to keep things going. The other approach is to change the leader. Something which is now happening with such frequency that we may soon return to an ancient tradition where a leader was elected every year, given absolute power until at the end of the year when they are ritually slaughtered to ensure good crops in the future.

Maybe its time we stopped ascribing cause without reason, withdrawing into a fatalistic shell or praying for salvation and just got stuck in to try and make things better?

Comments (5)

Peter Stanbridge

"everything will be OK in the future when we get the new system." doesn't seem to me to be retrospective coherence.

Experience ought to suggest that when the new system comes, nothing will be right. What do we do to stop us being so naive looking into the future without failing to be innovative and forward thinking (I don't know how to explain this last bit very well, but maybe you can get what I mean) and still genuinely learn from our mistakes.

Posted by Peter Stanbridge | September 15, 2006 10:04 AM

Posted on September 15, 2006 10:04

Cheryl:

My organisation is getting a new system AND a new leader. Perhaps what we really need is a ritual slaughter and some magical thinking ?

Posted by Cheryl | September 15, 2006 11:29 AM

Posted on September 15, 2006 11:29

Dave Snowden

I thought you had alrady been thorugh that three years ago Cheryl, or is this a repeat?

Posted by Dave Snowden | September 15, 2006 11:33 AM

Posted on September 15, 2006 11:33

Ivan Webb:

My favourite quote is '...the dominant view in the organizational world (is one in which) the future is split off (from the present) and exclusively focused on in the form of vision, simple rules, values and plans, so distracting attention from the present and reducing the future to simple aspects that can be manipulated to determine the present.’ (Griffin 2002 p207).

Griffin, D. (2002). The Emergence of Leadership - Linking self organisation and ethics. London, Routledge.

Posted by Ivan Webb | September 19, 2006 12:36 AM

Posted on September 19, 2006 00:36

Thanks Ivan - its a great quote. I must admit that out of all of Stacy's Participative Complexity group I like Griffin the most. His writing, especially in the Leadership book, has rigour and avoids polemic

Posted by Dave Snowden | September 19, 2006 1:08 AM

Posted on September 19, 2006 01:08

Reality avoidance

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