Shayne is cofounder and CEO of Blooma, a data-driven solution for the commercial real estate industry. Connect with Shayne on LinkedIn.
I was at a birthday party not long after the news about SVB hit and as a tech investor and startup CEO, you can imagine the number of times I got asked about it (it was a lot). Mostly, people were curious if I had been impacted, what I would do, and what I thought happened. So much for small talk.
Pundits, politicians and financial scholars will make their hypotheses about what went wrong and who was ultimately at fault. While they’re doing that, economists will continue to forecast the looming trouble on the horizon for the market. Influencers will heckle from the sidelines as our faithful news circuit will put the entire thing on a loop and blast it 24/7. My point is: It’s noisy out there—and trying to filter through all that noise to understand the facts or determine a path forward can be incredibly difficult.
This is not a critique of our inability to predict unexpected events. Nor is it another retrospective of what we could have done differently if only we had known “X.” That said, this isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve been here before, and we’ll be here again. So what can you do to be a better consumer of information and how can you use the overwhelming amount of it out there to help you make better business decisions in the moment instead of spinning out?
Point 1: Shift from mindless to mindful.
If you’ve ever tried to “disconnect,” you know how hard that actually is to accomplish—not because you can’t, but because most of the time, we sabotage any effort to do so. Staying in the know is simply too irresistible, or perhaps, the fear of being out of the loop is too great a risk. Either way, keeping up with the news feels like a full-time job. The problem is that if you’re only consuming information, you’re doing the job halfway. The missing component is critical thinking, and if the term “mindlessly scrolling” doesn’t give it away, you’re probably not doing a whole lot of it bouncing back and forth from app to app with the news on in the background.
In his book, Think Again, Adam Grant explores rethinking and unlearning and extolls the benefits of each as a shield against the ignorance and dangers that come with believing we already know it all. It’s critical thinking on steroids, and while it sounds exhausting, here’s why you should consider toning this muscle as a leader: it’s easy to think that what you’re stumbling upon online is a matter of happenstance. It’s just as easy to forget that your feed looks drastically different from your neighbor’s. The important thing is to exercise your choice in what you consume as a leader, to question what you do see, and on to my next point, to remain skeptical of “experts.”
Point 2: Differentiate between experts, charlatans and influencers.
In addition to an overabundance of information today, the proliferation of digital outlets has also created a dramatic rise in the number of experts out there. Whatever your definition of an expert is, be it 10,000 hours, multiple degrees or a near-perfect record, I believe the bar online is on the floor. It seems that anyone can be an expert these days, and depending on their level of conviction when speaking on a topic, it can be difficult to spot the fakes. Some of this is likely due to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which “occurs when a person’s lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area causes them to overestimate their own competence.” This becomes problematic when we pair this with point 1 above (not being thoughtful about the information we’re consuming) and is compounded further when the issues at hand are ambiguous or complicated, which they often are.
Solomon Asch conducted a series of experiments on conformity in the 1950s, and Cliff’s Notes are that smart people will feel compelled to say dumb things if: A lot of other people say a dumb thing, a person in a position of power says a dumb thing or the topic or task is perceived to be really difficult. I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point. Sure, question your ideas, but make sure you’re using the advice of real experts and valid sources to do so.
The smartest people I know don’t have to talk about how amazing they are but instead just show you with their actions and, ultimately, the results they produce. At the end of the day, the only thing that any of us have to prove ourselves and our solutions are the outcomes we harvest.
So how does one protect themselves from falling prey to false proclaimers? Look at past performance to better ensure future results. There has never been an easier time to check the results of individuals and organizations. We can find customers and individuals that have already experienced the results of these claims and either verify the legitimacy or discount the claims as untrue.
Point 3: Embrace the unknown.
In finding a balance between constantly scanning for more news online and putting my head in the sand, I look to the idea of the Antilibrary as an intellectual guidepost. For those of you that have read Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan, you’re familiar with the concept, but I’ll do my best to sum it up quickly. Essentially, an Antilibrary is a personal collection of books that are mostly unread, and it says more about our relationship to ego and knowledge than it does about discipline or expertise. Taleb says, “We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order.” If you’ve ever been afraid to admit you don’t know something, you’ve felt the dark side of this.
Getting more comfortable admitting what you don’t know can be an important tool and can help you avoid panic and avert reactive behaviors when making difficult decisions for your organization. The concept of the Antilibrary isn’t a call to visit your local bookstore. Rather, it calls out our underestimation of the value of what we don’t know and the over-importance placed on what we do. A problem that results in a total misunderstanding of the nature of unexpected events and why they happen. And if you haven’t noticed, there have been a lot of “surprises” over the last few years.
As the saying goes, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” But admitting it might help.
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