The Logic of Failure
There are only a few management books that serve as reference on my shelf. Dorner's "The Logic of Failure" is always worth a review. Let me start with a quote:
The motto “first things first” may well explain why, when confronted with a task, we immediately begin planning our actions and gathering information instead of formulating our goals in concrete terms, balancing contradictory partial ones, and prioritizing them. We’ve got a problem, so let’s get to it and not waste a lot of time developing clarity about it.
The Logic of Failure is an amazing analysis of the methods and behaviors that inevitable collapse into failure. What Dorner adds to the discussion is empirical proof that specific problem solving skills are better than others. As a psychologist he has created tests and measured the outcomes to display the convoluted distortions that occur to perpetuate a state of failure. It's the sort of book that badly deservers a Volume II, which could easily draw from any newspaper to see more examples deserving his analysis.
In one of his most interesting experiments, he created a simulation of a complex system and asked participants to solve a dilemma. In the simulation, an African third-world ecosystem was on the edge of disaster and required careful adjustments of resources for the survival of the region. The conclusion was interesting: there was no single human trait that demonstrated superior problem solving strategies. The brightest thinkers did not necessarily do better, nor those quick to act decisively. In a complex system, there are no direct, simple solutions. So, no matter how much pre-analysis that a participant would make, once the simulation would begin, the results in play were always unpredictable (that's why it's a complex system, of course).
The most successful decision makers continually tested and refined their decisions, even occasionally making reversals and radically altering their strategy. On the other hand, those most likely to create a failure felt that their initial solution (which was developed after much careful deliberation) was correct and only needed to be slightly adjusted throughout the course of events. When their failure inevitably came, those careful deliberators would blame the simulation, or other factors—all the while insisting that their analysis was correct, and, at worst, perhaps not implemented correctly.
While the good participants often reflected on their own behavior, commented critically on it, and made efforts to modify it, the bad participants merely recapitulated their behavior
The most successful participants were marked by their constant monitoring and adjusting by what they learned. Dorner found that there's no evidence that intelligence, specialized experience, or motivation produces better problem solvers.
I hope this whets your interest for Dorner's work and here are a few excerpts to encourage you to read up on "The Logic of Failure:"
- This may sound obvious, but as we shall see, the fact that most people’s actions are driven by an excessive (or exclusive) preoccupation with explicit goals accounts for a great deal of bad planning and counterproductive behavior. People concern themselves with the problems they have, not the ones they don’t have (yet). Consequently, they tend to overlook the possibility that solving a problem in area A may create one in area B.
- By labeling a bundle of problems with a single conceptual label, we make dealing with that problem easier—provided we’re not interested in solving it.
- Thinking by analogy may seem, after the fact, a rather primitive and obvious step, but many of our participants never make use of it and therefore bog down hopelessly in concrete situations.
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