Dunning-Kruger comes for us all
I was walking the dog, listening to people have very smart conversations about wars and the US involvement in them, and things that they should do to limit us from getting entangled in foreign wars going forward, and I had an âAHA!â moment where I solved all the problems.
I started imagining all the ways that you could modify the structures of government in the United States to reward diplomacy over violence, intelligence over bluster, thoughtfulness over rashness⌠And I know this will shock you, but in my head every idea worked. I could SEE it happening, I could imagine that version of the world and it was so peaceful and wonderful and everything worked.
I was riding HIGH on my own supply.
And while that was happening, my brain started making a connection to a âconversationâ I had with Claude earlier this week⌠in that âconversationâ I was asking hard questions about how to have a difficult conversation and methodologies to see if I was the problem and if I was what to do about it⌠and as that continued, every time I asked it to pivot, reconsider, or think about something different it just did it. No questions, no âyouâre thinking about this incorrectlyâ no nothing like that. It got so far down that I finally just called it out that every answer was just a regurgitation of what I had just told it with some flowery language and youâll never guess what it did. It agreed lol. OF COURSE YOU AGREE. lol. Youâre made to agree with me!
And thatâs when it clicked, that I was in a Dunning Kruger moment for myself. Everything I could think of went well in my fake government. Of course it would! I only know enough to make dumb suggestions, but I donât know the details.
In my perfect world my brain was my own sycophant. It wasnât critically looking at things that I was considering. Like literally I was thinking âwhat if we folded the department of defense under the Secretary of State, so that we had their over-riding mission as âsafety through diplomacyâ as a first principle so that violence is a last resort rather than the first oneâ.
Like read that again and realize just how insane of a prospect it is, but in my head it sounded like unlocking a bank vault. I GOT IT! And I realize that this isnât treading new ground or anything, but I think itâs important to sometimes get in the mindset of being in a Dunning Kruger moment for your own empathetic reasons.
Imagine being in a room at work, and youâre brought into a meeting where youâre not the expert but someone is nevertheless looking for your perspective.
You might have a similar âahaâ moment, and then voice it and see everyone in the room just give you that âoh come onâ look. You know the one, itâs a mild eye roll, or a looking down at their hands to avoid eye contact, or a person randomly dropping off camera for a second because you know that they donât want people to read their face.
And this is where Iâm gonna say something youâre probably not expecting me to say⌠I think itâs actually great when people voice these ideas.
With a caveat.
I love when people voice these ideas WHILE RECOGNIZING THAT THEY MAY BE COMING FROM A PLACE OF IGNORANCE. Now I donât mean that I need people to be so self aware that they actually see their idea as ignorant. Thatâs not realistic or fair to people. But what I mean is people being willing to voice ideas and end up being told âno youâre wrong BECAUSEâ.
Which is another caveat, because without that âbecauseâ you transition this from a conversation to a scolding. If someone is willing to put themselves on the line and give you an idea, and you know it canât work, itâs not a problem in my head to explain why theyâre wrong. Itâs a kindness youâre giving to one another. And often times, explaining the limitations of a system gives you ideas for expanding those limitations.
The problem is that itâs risky.
And risky in a variety of ways!
Itâs risky to the person asking the question as theyâre opening themselves up to criticism. That criticism could even alter the way people perceive you or your work, or they could decide that youâre not as capable as they thought you were. Thatâs a real and tangible risk that would make a lot of people not want to open up.
Itâs also risky to be the person receiving the comment, because what if youâre too dismissive and make someone trying to help feel bad? What if you donât go hard enough on why their idea wonât work for fear of hurting their feelings and unintentionally make them think it COULD work when you know it canât? What if the wrong person in the room also hears it and green lights investments?
And what about everyone else in the room â theyâre carefully reading your reactions whether you like it or not, and theyâre going to calibrate their next time they have an idea based on your reaction!
The whole thing is fraught because weâre all people and weâre all judgmental and weâre all gonna end up doing and saying dumb stuff that we hope isnât how people see us, but could really affect our relationships.
And the logical person would take all of this in and say âfuck it Iâm just gonna sit here and be quiet, doing things in a dumb way is better than the alternativeâ.
After all, why take such bold risks when the payoff generally is someone just giving you more work? Seriously, whatâs the BEST case scenario for what you end up doing with actually asking a question or presenting an idea thatâs going to work out? Itâs more work, the same pay, and more stress/responsibility.
When you think about it, the risk hits no matter what the outcome. Thereâs no external benefit, itâs all risk.
The only thing that can possibly be beneficial is INTERNAL benefit. Your own emotional wellbeing.
This is the central tension that I deal with internally and Iâm assuming other people feel as well. And Iâm sorry if my bosses end up reading this but⌠I could give a shit if any company I work for is ever âsuccessfulâ. Companies donât have emotions, companies arenât people, companies donât give a shit about us as people. Weâre cogs in a machine, and thatâs just the way it is. And honestly⌠thatâs fine. Whatever, you live with the world youâre given, and do the best you can.
But the reason I still care, and the reason I come to work is because even if I donât care even a tiny bit about company success, I care DEEPLY about the success of the people around me.
Whether itâs right or not, or misguided or not, I see the people I work with first as friends. And youâll see in movies and TV shows that people in leadership roles will always give you the âyou have to be tough they canât just be your friendsâ spiel (Iâve been watching a LOT of below deck and you hear it a lot from Captain Lee lol) â and I get what theyâre saying but I think itâs different from what Iâm saying. Theyâre saying (fuck it I just mean Captain Lee lol thereâs no they itâs just him lol) that your prime responsibility as a leader is to lead and not to make everyone happy. And I donât see that as being in conflict with friendship.
Friendship isnât just âI make everyone around me happyâ â thatâs called sycophancy. And no one needs a sycophant â though if you do there are plenty of AI chatbots happy to help. What a friend is, is someone that makes you better and that you want to spend your time with, and most importantly to me someone you can rely on. Whether that relying on is something physical like helping you move or emotion like being there to listen to your problems, that reliability is huge.
And I see the people I work with as people that can rely on me. And thatâs not only going to be to say the easy things but also to say the hard things.
Which doesnât comply with the risk model I pulled out of my ass earlier in this post. If speaking your mind in places where youâre not an expert puts you at risk, you shouldnât be incentivized to say the hard things. But if your colleagues arenât just cogs in a wheel, but rather are friends, people that rely on you and that you in turn rely on, then thereâs an incentive toward honesty and healthy conflict.
One of my favorite friendships involves me doing something, my friend telling me all the ways I did it wrong, then me going âshit, I hate you youâre rightâ then us battling to get to a good outcome (WHATUP ASH). We bicker, we make fun of each other, and we love it. We make each other better. If we were both only focused on not pissing the other off, we couldnât say anything! And we wouldnât be getting better. But itâs because we built a human relationship based on the idea that first and foremost we respect one another as a person and value each others opinions. That makes it so that we can then have ridiculous opinions or be flat out wrong and not have it be a âriskâ. Itâs a part of the process.
As any 76ers fan will tell you, the process isnât always pretty and doesnât always result in wins. But the process is whatâs important. Outcomes are random. Letâs be honest about that. Sometimes you can do everything right and the outcome is still shitty. Sometimes you do everything wrong and you strike gold.
Process can make it so you are more likely to get better outcomes but in the end you arenât in control of how things turn out. As Iâve repeated before, my former boss said (probably once lol) and I internalized it forever: if you could predict whatâs gonna happen youâd be betting on the stock market and living an easy life on a beach, not working here.
So if you have no control over the outcome, the control you have is over the process.
What does that control look like? It looks like creating human relationships with people that enable them to do the things that youâd need to do to not just achieve success once but rather to create a program that is more likely to result in success in the long term.
You donât get that from sycophants, you donât get that from fear, you donât get that from taking credit for other peoples work. You get that from teams. Which is why I always preach that teams are the ways companies win. You need to have a multi-disciplinary team of people with different view points that can have healthy tensions like the one I described above where you can poke and prod one another and also see where your team is smarter than you and admit it without fear of negative outcomes.
This is why we talk so much about psychological safety. Part of it is of course about the humans feeling good where they are. Thatâs a given and most of the time itâs what people think is the intended outcome. But thatâs just fundamentally wrong. Itâs not the outcome, itâs the vehicle to create better outcomes. Because people who are scared do worse work. People who are bored do worse work. People who donât care do worse work.
So if you create an environment full of fear, or full of pitfalls, or full of busy work⌠youâre gonna get shitty outcomes.
But if you create an environment of fun, of healthy tension, of people working together on shared goals, of people who respect one another, of people who want to succeed not because of some external factor but because it makes them FEEL good, youâre gonna get really great outcomes.
Itâs kinda fun starting a section with âyou canât control the outcomesâ then telling you âbut here is how you get great outcomesâ lol. And I think itâs because I changed the definition of outcomes in the middle of the section â at the beginning weâre talking about BUSINESS outcomes, things like revenue and stuff that the financial analysts care about. Then I changed the definition to what I think outcomes SHOULD be which is about how we build things.
And part of what I like about writing and thinking is this â the world is complicated. Itâs full of contradictions. And those contradictions are where the fun really lies. Joy doesnât exist without sadness. Fear doesnât exist without security. Pain doesnât exist without happiness. And you canât experience what a good team looks like and understand that itâs good unless youâve been a part of a bad team.
And itâs why Iâm so fascinated with Dunning-Kruger because the only way you can know youâre wrong sometimes is to know enough to know you donât know things! What a weird concept. How do you even unpack it without knowing enough to know what to unpack!
But itâs also why the times Iâm in a room and NOT the expert are often the times I have the most fun. Iâm probably doing my best work when Iâm the expert, but the only reason I can do that good work there, is by experimenting when Iâm not the expert. That failure, that loss, that internal scream of âyou donât know what youâre doingâ is what enables me to experience the success, wins and feelings of âoh shit I really know what Iâm talking about here huh?â
And that internal tension is what you need to drive you. You can work with the external structures to create a world thatâs really comfortable and makes you feel good, but itâs not going to feel fulfilling unless itâs ALSO feeding your internal motivation. Unless you know what you believe in, what makes you tick, why you do the things that you do and why they make you feel the way you feel, youâre not going to feel anything beyond the superficial external structures others create for you.
So even though itâs full of risks and fraught with negative outcomes⌠do something stupid. Suggest something insane. Try out a new way of describing the world.
The worst thing that happens is that you discover itâs not what you care about â and even that learning is important and useful, and is what will lead you to discovering what you DO really care about.