An Illusion of The Unchanging World
And the Three Tens exercise to overcome it
Strategy — map it out yourself
And the Three Tens exercise to overcome it
People don’t think clearly. Our cognitive biases list is long and gets even longer over time. The good news is that we can overcome most of them. In this article, I will tell you about one widespread fallacy and how you can overpower it.
The End of History Illusion
In 2012 three scientists, Jordi Quoidbach, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Timothy D. Wilson conducted a study.
They asked as many as 19,000 people aged 18 to 68 to report how much they had changed in the past decade. All the participants said they had changed a lot. Then the experimenters offered them to make projections for the next decade. Most of them claimed that they would change relatively little in the future. The scientists called this effect the End of History Illusion.
Similar stories happen in the business world as well. Several months ago, I conducted a strategic workshop for an international enterprise. We had some difficulties with devising a strategic vision because the team was under the illusion of the unchanging world. Simply put, they believed that their industry would stay the same. And therefore, there were no reasons to change their business routines much. They insisted that there would be no significant shifts, even admitting that their domain was quite different ten years ago.
Why do we afraid of change?
The only person who likes change is a baby with a wet diaper
Mark Twain
The world is too complex for one person to know all about it. We use the so-called mental models to interact with it effectively. Mental models are simplified mock-ups of the universe we all have in our heads. Having these models helps us feel self-confident. We believe we know things.
But since mental models are imperfect, we face some new things from time to time that our models can explain. Unfortunately, it is often a painful experience. Let’s consider an example; another cognitive bias called the Just World Hypothesis. People tend to believe the world, in general, is just. So, whenever they face something they see as unfair, they suffer. It can even undermine their current mental model for some time.
Accepting the concept of the changing world equals admitting that our mental model is incomplete. It works for the world as it is, but it won’t be appropriate for the future one. This is also distressing, so we subconsciously prefer hiding our heads in the sand like an ostrich.
How can we fix it? I call it the Three Tens exercise
The best way to overcome this cognitive fallacy is to play a foresight game. But it needs professional facilitation. But there is a simple exercise you can do on your own — with your team.
1. Gather your team together in a place appropriate for a long group discussion
2. Ask them to recall at least ten business practices that were the norm for your industry ten years ago but have disappeared by now. Build a list of them and hang it on the wall. Make it visible to every participant.
3. Draw up a list of minor changes your team members see in the industry. Pay particular attention to not-so-obvious alterations that don’t influence your domain much today. Find at least ten of them.
4. Imagine a distant future, at least ten years ahead. Don’t look into the nearest future. Your industry will unlikely change dramatically in three or five years, so it will draw your team even deeper into the illusion.
5. Ask your team to create some plausible future scenarios in which these minor changes will become paradigm shifts for the industry. Imagine a world in which what seems strange now becomes a customary practice.
6. Add as many details to these scenarios as possible. Create a fictitious character, an industry expert who lives and works ten years later. How do they work? What problems do they solve, and how? What does their ordinary working day look like?
This exercise looks simple, but if you take it seriously, it will be difficult but useful. The key point is the number of details for future scenarios. If they are sketchy and insufficient, the value you receive will be moderate. So don’t save your time, add more colors to the future pictures, and your team will overcome the Unchanging World Illusion.
If you would like to learn more about foresight games, visit my website.