Templates and systems serve our default thinking. They're the instructions and guideposts we turn to when we're uncertain about what to do. And, because we are so primed to recognise patterns and minimise cognitive strain (that is, the burden of thought required to process what to do), defaulting to the assumptions, systems, templates and structures we have already established is an incredibly alluring proposition.
Reverting to the default saves you time, thereby enhancing your productivity and efficiency. But it costs you accuracy, empathy, relevance and meaningful progress.
NORMS
‘Erm, that's just not the done thing around here.'
Norms are cultural products (including values, customs and rituals) that represent our understanding of what others do, and what others think that we should do. Norms occur in many contexts, not only at the team level, the organisation level and the industry level, but also across countries, age demographics, cities, suburbs, and so on. For example, I'm writing this book at a cafe in Fitzroy, an inner-city suburb in Melbourne that, according to a 2015 article published in London's Telegraph, ranks in the top three of the most hipster neighbourhoods in the world. As such, good coffee, ironic tattoos, beards, skateboards, pop-up stores, ripped skinny jeans, thick-rimmed glasses, craft beer (and so on) all contribute to the norms of this area. I get no comments on my flaming red beard or coffee snobbery in Fitzroy – but very much do when I travel abroad.
Norms influence our defaults. When at a loss as to what to do, our brain will scan for a default. If we identify a pattern we haven't experienced yet, one of the reference points that will influence our decision on how to behave is the established norms. ‘What would others do? What would they think I should do?' The answer to these types of questions is usually something that's predictable and safe.11
As a leader, understanding the values that influence your behaviour, the values that drive your colleagues' behaviours, and the company values12 that influence the collective behaviour of your organisation is really important.
Norms are powerful. They are frequently repeated and reinforced by the people who surround you. Deviance from the established norms is often frowned upon, and viewed with mistrust. If one strays too far from the established norms, one may be cast as a pariah or deviant.13 This is unfortunate, because most norms are established in precedence (the past), and are self-validating and reinforcing.
PRECEDENTS
Because our default thinking relies so heavily on pattern-matching, it can be hard for folks to explore or accept new ideas that lack an established precedent. Leading folks through unprecedented territory, towards a future not yet realised, can be even harder.
Part of leading such a quest is the process of creating precedents. This is where we gather evidence to serve as a reference point for decisions (covered in more detail in chapter 4).
Naturally, the psychology of what informs our thinking is much more complex than the brief tour I've provided. We haven't even ventured into the territory of the identity you form within given social constructs, and how you manage cognitive dissonance in reference to that.
Suffice to say, our default thinking is a comforting, complex thing that favours efficiency and the status quo. Whenever we believe the world makes sense, it's due to our profound ability to ignore our own ignorance.
And so ends our lukewarm homage to Default Thinking.14
It's good, fast and often useful. It forms the basis of our ‘system 1' (fast) thinking. And a heap of leadership, strategy and motivation books out there support a collection of comfortingly familiar thinking around this.
Keep in mind default thinking is primarily formed through pattern matching – the more experience we get, the more patterns we recognise. This, in turn, gives us more codified patterns to call upon, and access to more cognitive shortcuts.15 For formulaic work with predictable outcomes, this is quite a boon – it's what allows us to enhance our mastery of musical instruments, or to accurately predict the outcome of things.
Clever systems exist for more complex phenomena, and handy templates exist for more repeatable phenomena. Both of these constructs serve to guide us through complexity and reduce cognitive burden – instead of having to think too hard, we have a system or template to guide us.
With all of this clever, time-saving stuff, one would think that we would have more time to work on the important stuff – like strategy, progress, and the threats and opportunities that lie on the horizon.
In fact, in an ideal world, we'd invest roughly 80 per cent of our time doing the core work that needs to be done – the default, productive, operational ‘business as usual' work that Ought To Be Got Done, and that only requires fast thinking.
But then everyone would also ensure that a good 20 per cent of their time was engaged in more thoughtful work, and deeper, more thorough thinking. We'd reflect upon our assumptions and the decisions we make. We'd feed our hunches (see chapter 4) and nurture the exploration of new possibilities and options.
This might happen, if we weren't cursed with efficiency.
2
The Curse of Efficiency
Righto: chapter 2. First, though, let me tell you something about one of the biggest challenges of writing a book – getting the sequence right. I want to unpack so much goodness with you, but before we get there, we need to appreciate the context that goodness serves. The concepts of this book are best shared in a certain order, so that the value of ideas may be fully appreciated.
You might have already noticed, but what we are doing here in part I is essentially ‘framing the problem'. This is an incredibly useful thing to do if you're looking to prime people to be more receptive to an idea. And the idea of this book is a big one – leaders need to systematically go against the grain of default thinking, efficiency and busyness (heresy!), and pioneer uphill, through doubt, angst and uncertainty (madness!) in order to future-proof relevance and obtain strategic advantage. This is too important a notion to not have the problem framed correctly first.
Now you're probably somewhat savvy with The Curse of Efficiency already. And you probably recognise that relentless busyness crowds out our time for good strategic development and meaningful progress. But we can't jump to the answer just yet. After all, leading quests means pursuing better questions – not easy answers. And as you'll discover in part III, staying within the angst of the challenge, resisting the urge to jump to quick fixes and conclusive solutions, is a discipline we need to foster – individually and collectively as leaders. Otherwise, we are only perpetuating the existing paradigm of convenient but shallow default thinking.
This is something I see happen in organisations all too often – someone has a brilliant idea, and begins to promote said idea to their colleagues, only to be met with stiff resistance or general indifference. Bah! What ignorant dinosaurs! Why can't they just appreciate how brilliant this idea could be?
Well, a few things are getting in the way – including the fact that ideas are cheap and often poorly framed16 – but the main thing is that new ideas pose a real threat to people's time. Especially when everyone is so busy being efficient.
THE PROGRESS DELUSION
If I had a dollar for every time someone said they were busy, I'd probably have … a few hundred dollars.17 Being busy has become the new badge of honour. Part of this perception is because we have allowed such a work culture to percolate, but a big part of this is because busyness is just so darn rewarding.
In my previous book, The