{"id":1629,"date":"2012-07-14T11:21:54","date_gmt":"2012-07-14T11:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=1629"},"modified":"2012-07-14T11:21:54","modified_gmt":"2012-07-14T11:21:54","slug":"pragmatists-and-heuristics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=1629","title":{"rendered":"The Pragmatist and the Three Fears"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The term Pragmatist<\/strong> is a modern one – it was coined by Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914)\u00a0– a 19th century American polymath and iconoclast. In plain speak he was a tree-shaker and a dogma-breaker; someone who regarded rules created by people as an opportunity for innovation rather than a source of frustration.<\/p>\n

A tree-shaker reframes the Three Fears that block change and improvement; the Fear of Ambiguity<\/strong>; the Fear of Ridicule<\/strong> and the Fear of Failure<\/strong>. A\u00a0tree-shaker re-channels their emotional energy from fear into innovation and exploration. They feel the fear but they do it anyway. But how do they do it?<\/p>\n

To understand this we first need to explore how we learn to collectively suppress change by submitting to peer-fear<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In the 1960’s there was an experiment done with Rhesus monkeys that sheds light on a possible mechanism: the monkeys appeared to learn from each other by observing the emotional responses of other monkeys to threats.\u00a0The story of\u00a0the Five Monkeys and the Banana Experiment<\/em> first appeared in a management textbook\u00a0in 1996\u00a0\u00a0but there is no evidence that this particular experiment was ever\u00a0performed. With this in mind here is a version of the story:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Five naive monkeys were offered a banana but it required climbing a ladder to get it.\u00a0 Monkeys like bananas and are good at climbing. The ladder was novel. And every time any of the monkeys started to climb the ladder all the monkeys were sprayed with cold water. Monkeys do not like cold water. It was a classic conditioning experiment and after just a few iterations the monkeys stopped trying to climb the ladder to get the banana. They had learned to fear the\u00a0ladder and their natural desire for the banana was suppressed by their new fear: a learned association between climbing the ladder and the unpleasant icy shower. Next the psychologists replaced one of the monkeys with a new naive monkey – who immediately started to climb the ladder to get the banana. \"\"<\/a>What happened next is interesting. The other four monkeys pulled the new monkey back. They did not want to get another cold shower. After a while the new monkey learned because his fear of social rejection was greater than his desire for the banana. He stopped trying to get the banana. This cycle was repeated four more times until all the original monkeys had been replaced. None of the five remaining monkeys had any personal experience of the cold shower – but the\u00a0ladder-avoiding behaviour remained and was enforced by the group, even though the original reason for\u00a0shunning the ladder was unknown.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is the quoted reference to the experiment on which the story is based.<\/p>\n

Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys<\/em>. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288.<\/p>\n

So it would appear that a very special type of monkey would be needed to break\u00a0a culturally enforced behavioural norm. One\u00a0that is curious, creative and courageous, and one that does not fear ridicule\u00a0or\u00a0failure. One that is immune to peer-fear<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0could\u00a0extrapolate\u00a0from this story\u00a0and\u00a0reflect on\u00a0how peer pressure might impede change\u00a0and improvement in the workplace.\u00a0\u00a0When\u00a0well-intended,\u00a0innocent, creativity and innovation are met with the emotional ice-bath of dire warnings, criticism, ridicule and cynicism then the unconfident innovator\u00a0may eventually give up trying and start to\u00a0believe that improvement is impossible.\u00a0 The Hans Christian Anderson’s short tale of the Emporer’s New Clothes<\/em> is a well known example – the one innocent child says what all the experienced adults have learned to\u00a0deny.\u00a0A culture of\u00a0peer-fear\u00a0can become self-sustaining and\u00a0this change-avoiding-culture appears to be\u00a0a common\u00a0state of affairs in many organisations; in particular ones of an\u00a0academic\u00a0and bureaucratic leaning.<\/p>\n

At the\u00a0other end of the change spectrum from Bureaucracy\u00a0sits Chaos. It is also\u00a0resisted\u00a0but the behaviour\u00a0is fuelled by a different fear – the Fear of Ambiguity. We prefer the known and the predictable. We follow ingrained habits. We prevaricate even when our rationality says we should change.\u00a0 We dislike\u00a0the feeling of ambiguity and uncertainty because\u00a0it leaves us with a\u00a0sense of foreboding and dread. Change is strongly associated with confusion and we appear hard-wired to avoid it. Except that we are not. This is learned behaviour and we learned it when we were very young. As adults we reinforce it; as adults we replicate it; and as adults impose it on others – including our next generation. The generation that will inherit our world and who will look after us when we are old and frail. We will reap what we sow. But\u00a0if we learned it and teach it then are we able to unlearn it and unteach it?<\/p>\n

Enter the Pragmatists. They have learned to harness the Three Fears. Or rather they have unlearned their association of Fear\u00a0with Change. Sometimes this unlearning came from a crisis – they were forced to change by external factors. Doing nothing was not an option. Sometimes their unlearning came from inspiration – they saw someone else demonstrate that other options were possible and beneficial. Sometimes their insight came by surprise – an unexpected change of perspective exposed the hidden opportunity. An eureka moment.<\/p>\n

Whatever the route the Pragmatist discovers a new\u00a0tool: a tool labelled “Heuristics”.\u00a0 A heuristic is a \u201crule of thumb\u201d – an empirically derived good-enough-for-now guideline. Heuristics include some uncertainty, some ambiguity and some risk.\u00a0Just enough uncertainty and ambiguity to build\u00a0a flexible conceptual framework that is strong enough, resilient enough and modifiable enough to facilitate learning and improvement. And with it a pinch of risk to spice the sauce – because we all like a bit of risk.<\/p>\n

The Improvement Scientist is a Pragmatist and a Practitioner of Heuristics – both of which can be learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The term Pragmatist is a modern one – it was coined by Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914)\u00a0– a 19th century American polymath and iconoclast. In plain speak he was a tree-shaker and a dogma-breaker; someone who regarded rules created by people as an opportunity for innovation rather than a source of frustration. A tree-shaker reframes the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Pragmatist and the Three Fears”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,35,36,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-reflections","category-resilient","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}