Just like software can have bugs, humans have bugs in the way we think and make decisions. As a result, many problems of businesses today are not the result of some outside factor, rather they are self-inflicted as a result of “mind bugs” — bugs in the critical internal processes that occur in the 5 inches between our ears.
The pervasiveness of mind bugs in business decisions is due to the fact that they are a product of human nature — hardwired and highly resistant to feedback. They can affect fact-gathering, analysis, insights, judgments, and decisions — and increase risk accordingly. The challenge is that the very mind bugs that are the source of the problem cause us to resist discovering them. Change the way we think? Our mind bugs tell us there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way we think. Here is a perfect example provided by Arthur Blank, co-founder of the highly successful Atlanta start-up The Home Depot, owner of the National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons, respected businessman and philanthropist.
“A lot of leaders, they listen, but they don’t really want to hear the results to the answers and when the answers come, they find a way to reinterpret them based on their original perspective of what they think the answers should be,” Blank says. “They might give you their honest opinion of what they think you’ve got to do to improve your business, but then you put it through your own filter and look at it through your own rose-colored glasses, and you choose not to see it that way. You say, ‘That’s not really what they meant. They meant some other things,’ and you just believe what you want to believe.”
Here are two mind bugs that are at the source of this problem.
Informed leader fallacy: A belief by a leader that he is better informed and has better instincts than others simply because he is the leader.
We deeply want to be led by people who know what they’re doing and who don’t have to think about it too much. So by the time we achieve a leadership position ourselves, we are good at making others feel positive in our judgment, even if there’s no strong basis. But the amount of success it takes for leaders to become overconfident isn’t terribly large. Some achieve a reputation for great successes when in fact all they have done is take chances that happened to work out. The fierce personal confidence and sense of infallibility that characterizes many leaders serves as a breeding ground for this mind bug. Most decision makers will trust their own intuitions because they think they see the situation clearly. Accordingly, it causes leaders to fall into a trap of believing they are better informed than they really are.
Closed mind: The inability to hold and examine two opposing views at the same time or to consider perspectives other than one’s own.
When we are afflicted with this mind bug we subconsciously shut down the very thing that can help us examine our own beliefs: mindful evaluation of diversity of thought. In essence, things are the way I see them because that is the way I see them. As perpetrators, we are sometimes not aware of doing this. Other times we may even be proud of it. We make the self-serving assumption that we have figured out the way things are and anything that challenges our point of view becomes “unthinkable.” It is not that we shoot the critics or fail to listen. To the contrary, we may spend time demonstrating our listening skills to others to prove we are good listeners, but afflicted as we are, we just don’t hear them. We simply are not aware that we don’t allow ourselves to hold and mindfully examine two opposing views at the same time. We give lots of lip service to others, but true diversity of thought is shut down. Once infected, we feel pretty good until the day of reckoning when we ask ourselves: “What was I thinking when I made that decision?”
Recovery requires courage
The solution to this problem requires courage — the courage to challenge our own thoughts. The real issue is that most of us do not notice our thoughts. We are out of touch with ourselves, and it can be debilitating. It’s like breathing carbon monoxide. You can’t see it or smell it, but it can harm you just the same.
Larry J. Bloom spent more than 30 years helping grow a small family business to more than $700 million in annual revenue. He is the author of “The Cure for Corporate Stupidity: Avoid the Mind Bugs that Cause Smart People to Make Bad Decisions” and the owner of a start-up media and software company that promotes better thinking. For more information, visit www.curecorporatestupidity.com.
