The Enemy to Progress
Impediments to embracing problems as opportunities for truth-seeking behaviours.
What prevents identifying and honestly addressing problems that need to be addressed?
- Decision Fatigue
- Honest Vulnerability
- Short Term Thinking
- Lack of Integrity
- Lack of Empathy
- Shoot the Messenger
- Cognitive Biases
- Incorrect Abstraction
- Incorrect Information
- Inability to Focus
Don't confuse raising problems with the intent of improving versus whining due to lack of character
Fatigue
Limited reserves of conscious energy. There are too many decisions that are too complex for most ordinary people to dedicate time to comphresively understand. At the same time applications are stealing people's ability to focus attention.
The world is going through exponential change
- Rate of Change
- Complexity
- Head in the sand strategy
- System one biases
- Cognitive load
- Short Terminism
- Abstraction
- Lack of Empathy
Honest Vulnerability
Problems are poison to politicians and opportunities to engineers.
Leaders show the way by being brutally honest with owning their faults when leading critical reflection.
Most cultures suffer from a shoot the messenger mentality.
Create a post game changing-room ritual to reflect with a brutally honest review but in an open and ultimately supportive environment. Using honesty as tool to become antifragile.
Be your own worst enemy, that way you can't be surprised by the competition.
Integrity
Successful organisations have the discipline to document their decision making process to clarify logic and gain alignment for committing to:
- identify the most important problem to solve.
- commit to plans for solving that problem.
Meetings are a massive waste of time, energy and money.
No agenda, then it is a social gathering.
If it not written down, it can't be that important.
Shoot the Messenger
Set aside time for honesty sessions to raise issues. Outside of that time get on with the plan or ship out.