The Curious Pathways of Habitual Thinking Patterns
and an experiment to make them work in your favour.
Imagine a red elephant walking on blue ground in the distance. As you zoom in, you notice the blue ground moving. Getting even closer, the blue ground appears to be the sea. By now, the elephant has transformed into a red ship travelling along the horizon. But has it?
We know what we know and even though our imagination can create new worlds in our minds, they must be congruent with our understanding of the world. If they are not, we are confused. To prevent confusion, we rationalise what we see for it to make sense to us. In the example above, imagining a red elephant isn’t hard. But it doesn’t make sense to see it walking on the surface of a moving sea. So, the elephant must be a ship because this is the only way we can make sense of the picture in our minds. In social science, researchers talk about biases and mental shortcuts.
As demonstrated by researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, we now know that the human brain relies on ‘…cognitive shortcuts or judgemental heuristics that simplify the complex task of assessing probabilities in an uncertain world.’1 In other words, when something becomes or is overwhelmingly complex, we tend to refer back to what we know. While this is important for navigating everyday life, it can be a hindrance in navigating fast-paced, ever-changing environments and when dealing with diverse teams full of people from different cultural backgrounds, with various levels of expertise, or unique ways of doing things. Our brains simply give up computing all of these new stimuli and refer back to what we already know; the elephant becomes a red ship. The elephant in the room remains unaddressed.
But this is not the only issue. When we ignore the root cause of a problem (i.e. the elephant in the room), we focus on the symptoms. The headache that emerges is treated with painkillers, the error in the process is treated with a quick fix, and the person telling us what we don’t want to hear we call an idiot. When we avoid looking at the underlying cause of the symptoms we experience, we will continue to experience the symptoms. They will get even worse over time until they get so bad that the only option left is facing what, all along, we didn’t want to see.
What is wrong with a red elephant walking on the sea? It doesn’t fit in with what we know. Just imagine, we allow ourselves the following exploration:
What do we know ourselves within the context?
For a start, we think we see a red elephant which appears to be walking on the sea. We know that elephants are grey. They are mammals and live in Africa, Asia or in a zoo. The sea is a body of water which is often perceived as blue. We also know that it is impossible to walk over water as we would sink. However, we also learned that ships can float on water and sail from one place to another. We have never seen a red elephant. Neither did we ever see an elephant walking on water.
Before we allow our minds to make any further rational conclusions, let’s move on to the next step.
How do we get more understanding of it?
By raising questions, we allow ourselves to be curious about an experience. We may ask: Is what looks like an elephant really an elephant? Why is it red? How far away is it? Can we get a closer look? Who could help us identify what we see? How come that the elephant is walking on water? What are the details that we are missing here?
The more questions we raise, the more understanding we get. Let’s say we shared the impossible sighting with the people in our team. One of the team members heard someone else say in the cantine that The Red Elephant, a Chinese restaurant in Wexford, Ireland, has received an award. Another one had found on the internet a poster on sale with a red elephant walking on the sea. Someone asked you, where you have seen it. It appears that you just read about it. Great, but what do we do now with all this new information?
How do we build connections with these additional details?
Now, that we figured out that there are some things, we didn’t know before, we can organise the new information and make new connections. There is a Chinese restaurant called The Red Elephant. They have received an award. Someone sells posters with a red elephant walking on the sea. You never saw the elephant walking on the sea, you just read about it. Looking at all of the details gathered, it appears it wasn’t an important issue at all. However, would you still think of the red elephant as a red ship, to make sense of it? Probably not. So, what do you make of it now?
Based on what we know now, what do we decide is the best course of action?
Based on the initial context, you probably know now that there wasn’t an actual red elephant walking on the sea. But talking about it has given you interesting insights. Did you know that someone sells posters of an actual pink elephant walking on the sea? Or that The Red Elephant is an award-winning Chinese restaurant in Wexford? Well, I didn’t.
However, it was worth the exploration to make a point about our habitual thinking patterns. Now, if you translate that into your every day in the workplace, what is your takeaway? Before you read on, I invite you to jot down a few points.
Have you taken the time? To journal on something you have just read helps you to make sense of what you have just learned.
‘Reflection can also provide a structure in which to make sense of learning, so that concepts and theories become embedded in practice, and constant thought and innovation are simultaneously fostered.’ - Ruth Helyer2
To take your learning a step further, you can try this exploration with an elephant-in-the-room problem that you currently experience in your work. To make it easier to follow each of the four steps, make use of the KUBA Pilot Strategy. This strategy helps you make sense of a problem and allows you to make room in your mind for new information to come in. This allows you to make more informed decisions based on input from others that you would have missed otherwise.
It is as simple as the example above. Here it goes:
K - Know Yourself - What do we know ourselves within the context?
U - Understand Others - How do we get more understanding of it?
B - Build Connections - How do we build connections with these additional details?
A - Align Decisions - Based on what we know now, what do we decide is the best course of action?
The more often we use this strategy, the sooner we carve the pathways to new thinking habits. Such new thinking habits are highly effective in workplaces as they help us to look at the red elephant in the room from a curious mindset. With such a mindset, we not only explore details and possibilities that we would have missed otherwise, but we also open ourselves up for collaborations and the opportunity to learn something new. In addition, we will find that instead of treating symptoms, we start to fix problems at the source and resolve them for good.
CONCLUSION
What works with a red elephant walking on the sea works with everything that initially doesn’t seem logical. Instead of allowing yourself to make the facts match your frame of mind, take note of something being off and explore it further. By using the KUBA Pilot Strategy, you won’t wander off too far but get a good sense of what else escaped your point of view. With a broader set of details, your decision-making becomes more effective and, over time, you will experience your thinking to become more effective, too.
What is your takeaway from this article? Share it in the comments.
Levy, Jack S. “Daniel Kahneman: Judgment, Decision, and Rationality.” PS: Political Science and Politics 35, no. 2 (2002): 271–73. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1554738.
Helyer, R. (2015), "Learning through reflection: the critical role of reflection in work-based learning (WBL)", Journal of Work-Applied Management, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 15-27. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWAM-10-2015-003