A Cool Book

I just finished an eye-opening book, The Intelligence Trap: why smart people make dumb mistakes, by David Robson. It presents an exploration into several different mechanisms that result in failures both trivial and epic executed by people who really do know better. Robson discusses current research into the psychological issues at play and then some strategies that have proven useful in heading off these disasters.

Reflecting on my career, I thought about some of my failures and successes: was I subject to the mechanisms and thought processes Robson described? Well, yes. Happily, the successes of my career over the last couple of decades have been the result of one of the strategies he discusses at length, which is: promoting intellectual humility by seeking out and incorporating input from others. I ask team members to look for flaws in the designs and execution plans. I make sure to celebrate their hard work and intelligence when they improve projects by pointing out my dumb ideas or lapses.

My teenage daughter surprised and impressed me when we were talking about this and some creative work she is doing. She said that the opposite of pride is not necessarily humility, but rather respect. I think that is a great insight. To keep oneself from falling into the traps of too much intellectual pride you need not denigrate your own contributions, but you must respect the contributions of others. That means sincerely asking for their help, incorporating their contributions and making sure they get recognition for their efforts. Successful teams that I have worked with all did this very well.

So, I recommend the book. There is one grain of salt to take it with, however. Most of the research discussed in the book is very recent. That means that some of the work has not been out long enough to have other groups replicate the experiments and verify the findings. There have been many research findings published that looked intriguing and made sense but turned out to be caused by factors very different from the factors reported by the researchers. That means they could not be repeated and the conclusions were not valid. Now, the work reported in the book may all be very solid, but there is always the chance that future work may show some of it is not actually correct.