That is what famously happened in 1940 when French intelligence, arguably the best service of its kind in the world at that time, made a catastrophic error. Having undertaken sophisticated analysis of German blitzkrieg tactics earlier that year, the intelligence service came to the conclusion that the brunt of the German attack would come through the plains of Belgium. Growing evidence that the Nazis were planning to invade through the Ardennes Forest instead was ignored, despite information gleaned on the pattern of German reconnaissance flights (which closely mirrored the later invasion route) and aerial photography of German pontoon-bridge construction in the area. Even ‘hard information’, it seems, will be sidelined unless it is received by open eyes and open minds.37
What should we take from all of this, from these stories and insights?
Well, if we are to make smarter decisions, we need to make sure that we are not overly swayed by what we’ve seen most recently, or by the information that’s most easily available, or by our initial assessment, or by what it is we most want to hear.
We should consciously practise being more observant. Take a raisin. Rub it between your hands. How does it feel? Look at it, examine its contours. Smell it. Lick it – how does it feel against your tongue?38 Practising mindfulness techniques like this helps us to get better at opening our eyes to what we might otherwise overlook.
We must also force ourselves to actively search for information that challenges our preconceived ideas.
We have to treat each new situation as independent, and each new piece of information as potentially game-changing.
And when making assessments, we must question not only whether things are as we think, but also what else they could possibly be.
We can do this on our own, but it’s often easier if we have someone who can help. Who could you deploy to help you interrogate your own ways of thinking, help force you to see everything in the jungle, not just what you’re most drawn to? So you don’t make the same kind of cognitive mistakes as Dr Alter, or Tali Sharot’s volunteers, or the French intelligence services. So you don’t get consumed by your confirmation dopamine buzz.
The head of one of Europe’s leading hedge funds – a fund that succeeds or fails on the basis of its analysts’ assessments of the industries and companies they decide to invest in – tells me that he sees one of his primary roles as that of ‘Challenger in Chief’, as the person who niggles his staff to focus not only on the evidence that confirms their initial assessment or that they want to hear, but also to actively look for data that will contradict or refute it. He believes he must challenge his staff to consider how they could be wrong, and then assess how this might impact on their decision-making.39
Who, at work or at home, can serve as Challenger in Chief for you?
Detach from the Past – Lessons from Hollywood and Helsinki
As well as challenging what it is we see before us right now, we also need to consider how the past might be affecting our present-day choices.
For although our past experiences, good or bad, provide us with split-second cues which can often be very useful – I don’t put my hand on the gas hob if it’s switched on, because I know, having burnt my finger in the past, that it would be the wrong decision – experience, as we will see, can be a double-edged sword.
Richard Zanuck was one of the most successful film producers of recent times. His hits included such classics and box-office juggernauts as Jaws, Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy and, more recently, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which grossed more than $1 billion.40 Hollywood royalty who spoke at his funeral and memorial services included Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg, who called him a ‘cornerstone of the film industry’.41
But when I had lunch with Dick Zanuck at his usual table at George in Mayfair’s Mount Street, just days before he died in July 2012, we discussed one of the rare moments when his decision-making had gone very wrong.
In 1965 a movie produced by Zanuck broke all box-office records. A musical about an errant trainee nun in the Austrian Alps, starring Julie Andrews, The Sound of Music was a gargantuan commercial success, rescuing Twentieth Century-Fox from the $40 million wounds inflicted two years earlier by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra. It remains, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the third-biggest-grossing film of all time.42
Zanuck was thirty years old, and this was his first big hit. So what did he do next?
Understandably, he tried to repeat what he’d just done.
‘I was convinced that the musical was back, and a lot of people, a lot of other studio heads, were convinced that this was the way to go,’ he told me. He commissioned three more musicals, all in a similar sugary vein.
All three were box-office flops.43
Doctor Dolittle, an adaptation of the children’s books by Hugh Lofting, contributed to Twentieth Century-Fox posting a staggering $37 million loss in 1967.44 The next, Star!, released in 1968, which starred Julie Andrews and had the same director, producer and choreographer as The Sound of Music, also bombed: box-office receipts in the US were just $4 million, and losses were pegged at $15 million.45 The third, Hello, Dolly!, released in 1969 and starring Barbra Streisand, did equally badly, losing $16 million, bringing to a close a disastrous few years for Twentieth Century-Fox, and leading to Zanuck unceremoniously losing his job as production chief.46
It’s not that the past is never a good predictor of what lies ahead. There are of course many examples we could cite of times when looking backwards, consciously or not, has helped people reach the right decisions. The key, though, is not to be overly wedded to our past successes and failures, or our experience-based instincts, so that shifting tides or new information are ignored.
Nor should we assume a linear trajectory – more so now than ever, as we attempt to navigate today’s uncertain and unpredictable digital world, in which things are changing with an ever greater rapidity.
Dick Zanuck explained to me that his movie strategy immediately after The Sound of Music fell victim to a fast-changing world, and a shift in cultural mores. When The Sound of Music hit movie screens, the appeal of singing nuns and the lush Technicolor greenery of the Austrian hills made sense against the backdrop of the early 1960s. But by the time the back-to-back movie flops were released, things had moved on. The Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement had politicised the American public, Martin Luther King had been assassinated, pop and rock music were dominant, and saccharine-sweet family productions had lost their appeal.47
Success does not necessarily breed success. Just because we haven’t seen a snake today or yesterday, it doesn’t mean that we won’t see one tomorrow. And just because a certain set of ingredients once worked, it doesn’t mean they always will.
This was a tough lesson learnt by Finnish communications giant Nokia in 2007. From the 1990s onwards, Nokia dominated the mobile-phone industry. At its peak the company had a market value of $303 billion, and by 2007 around four in ten handsets bought worldwide were manufactured by Nokia.48