Hopefully, this exposition on Tiger’s cognitive processes is giving you a clue as to where our thoughts are leading us when we explore the mind of the fox. But, like the good foxes we are, in order to make the trail even clearer, we want to provide a negative example – something which exhibits all the worst traits of hedgehogs. We can think of nothing better than the events which led up to the sinking of the Titanic at 2:20 am on 15 April 1912. It was the ship’s maiden voyage; and the disaster, which occurred at the zenith of Britain’s imperial authority on the world stage, was never entertained as a scenario by the company that owned the ship, the engineers who constructed it or the captain who sailed it. The ship was deemed unsinkable. After all, it had a double-bottomed hull that was divided into sixteen watertight compartments; and for the ship to sink, more than four of these compartments had to be flooded. It followed from this overambitious reasoning that the Titanic was not equipped with a sufficient number of lifeboats, and the crew did not properly conduct lifeboat drills for the passengers at the beginning of the voyage. Moreover, at the time of the disaster, the ship was steaming too fast in view of the fact that the bridge had been warned of icebergs in the vicinity. The consequence: five of the Titanic’s compartments were ripped open in a glancing blow with an iceberg; 1 513 souls went to a watery grave; and a terrible price was paid for the conceit of the imperial hedgehogs who literally believed that Britannia ruled the waves.
In retrospect, the participants in the Titanic project should have done an analysis of what they could and could not control. No way could they control the state of the ocean; yet they definitely controlled the safety features of the ship. Secondly, while they could be certain about the performance parameters of the liner under normal conditions, they couldn’t be certain about all the possible conditions which the ship might meet on its voyages. Hence, all those eminent minds fell into the trap of ignoring the unthinkable – and that’s how accidents happen. Today, a growing number of companies are hiring risk management experts, with the specific objective of painting “unthinkable” scenarios for the SHE (safety, health and the environment) aspects of their business. Four key questions are normally asked. What are the types of accidents that can happen? What is their probability of occurrence? What will the severity of the impact be if they do? And what are we reasonably going to do to minimise or eliminate the risk of those accidents? In light of tougher SHE legislation being introduced everywhere in the world to hold companies and individuals accountable for their actions, answers to these questions are as important as the examination of the risks of fraud, corruption and theft in the financial area, which is usually done by internal audit departments. The silly thing is that there is no trade-off between good SHE practice and the bottom line. When workers believe management care, they work harder.
Our foxy matrix
This brings us to the essential purpose of this book which is to analyse how a fox thinks and acts. If, after the brief bout of introspection we recommended you undertake earlier on, you decided you were a 24-carat hedgehog, the material that follows attempts to persuade you to become a fox. If, however, all things considered, the mirror responded that you were already a fox, don’t stop reading – chances are that we can improve your mental processes so that you become an even more effective fox.
You may well ask: can you ever turn a hedgehog into a fox? The answer is: retrench him and see! But, seriously, in this day and age of more and more people having to work for themselves, necessity is the mother of invention and even the most stolid hedgehogs have to change. And it’s never too late, as the large preponderance of silver foxes who would otherwise have been retired can testify. The more interesting question is whether any foxes become hedgehogs. The answer is plenty, for – as you will see – it’s much harder staying at the top than getting there in the first place. Entrepreneurs who are foxy whilst they are building up their businesses turn into the most reprehensible hedgehogs once they’ve accumulated the money, the power and the prestige. The trouble comes when a fox starts believing too much in his own judgement and in his own press. Hunger is replaced by laziness. Overconfidence ousts self-questioning and self-criticism. Success breeds complacency and complacency breeds hedgehogs. Thus, the humble fox who took nothing for granted in the beginning becomes an arrogant hedgehog in the end who has delusions of grandeur and knows he’s right. And we all know pride comes before the fall. That’s why so few businesses last fifty years. Those that start out as losers go bankrupt first; and the majority of those that start out as winners are subsequently killed by their success. Besides being sophisticated, God is also a Great Equaliser!
Long-term success in the commercial sphere is therefore a rarity. You can see the truth of this statement also in the field of sport and the arts, where you can count the truly great in any category on one hand. They are individuals who don’t just make it to the summit – they stay there for a long time because they never lose the edge. Examples are Pele in football; Gareth Edwards in rugby; Donald Bradman in cricket; Mohammed Ali in boxing; Carl Lewis in athletics; Pete Sampras and Martina Navratilova in tennis; Jack Nicklaus in golf; Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev in ballet; Charles Dickens in literature; John Gielgud in films and Picasso in art. Then there were The Beatles: they not only dominated the 1960s but are still No. I, which happens to be the title of their latest album of original hits. Being a champion does not exclude going through a bad patch. But you bounce back – like André Agassi and comeback kid Jennifer Capriati who both won the 2001 Australian Open tennis championship. Will Tiger Woods join this star-studded cast of foxes? Only time will tell.
Before introducing our foxy matrix, a word of caution. We do not want this book to be lumped in the same category as all those heavy management treatises incorporating matrices which offer the ultimate solution for the readers’ happiness. Our matrix is neither the be-all and end-all of business, nor is it a shatteringly brilliant new concept to take your breath away. Rather, as we will demonstrate, it sets out in a simple fashion how human beings naturally think in their pristine, foxy state – before they’ve been conned into accepting some artificially rigid thinking device marketed as the new way to plan strategically ahead.
Our matrix has two axes: the horizontal one portrays certainty and uncertainty and the vertical one control and the absence of control. These two axes yield four quadrants: the bottom right-hand one represents things that are certain but outside our control. Then going clockwise, the bottom left-hand one encompasses things that are both uncertain and outside our control; the top left-hand one things which are uncertain but within our control; and the top right-hand one things which are certain and within our control.
Quite a large number of people never stray from a particular quadrant. Those who restrict themselves to the first quadrant tend to be fatalists who know what’s going to happen, but feel they cannot do anything about it. People keeping to the second quadrant are dice-rollers who believe that everything in life happens purely by chance. The third quadrant is inhabited by fence-sitters who feel a certain sense of control, but are eternally ambivalent. They meet themselves coming the other way in arguments. The fourth and last quadrant is occupied by the control freaks who know exactly what is going to happen because they believe that they are totally in control. This is where most of the hedgehogs sit.
Foxes