The Overconfidence Cycle and its Effects on Learning and Growing.

When we get entrenched in our beliefs and assumptions, we are unwilling to change them and resist any incoming information that seems to challenge them.

While in this state, we enter the overconfidence cycle where we get fully invested in our beliefs and assumptions that they become a part of our identity.

The overconfidence cycle is a closed loop where learning is selective. We deliberately select the information that comes to us for consistency with our beliefs and assumptions.

This is because humans are wired to act and think consistently with their identity. Not doing so leads to cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is disharmony between what we know to be true and the actual observations.

To avoid dissonance, we defend our beliefs and assumptions by gathering evidence that confirms them.

According to Adam Grant, in his book Think Again, this confirmation bias for our beliefs and opinions leads to us preaching, politicking and prosecuting.

We preach to people about our beliefs and opinions for validation. We are elated when they agree with us. We feel like we have gotten new converts to the faith that we are proclaiming.

On the other hand, we prosecute those who do not agree with our beliefs and opinions. Their disagreement is taken personally. These beliefs and opinions have become a part of our identity. When they are rejected, we feel like we have been rejected.

We also actively politick to gain support for our beliefs and opinions. We campaign for their support. The more people we get to share our beliefs and opinions, the better we feel.

By doing these three, we create an echo chamber that reinforces our beliefs and opinions.

The problem with this cycle of seeking evidence to confirm and to validate our beliefs and opinions is that it impedes learning.

All the advances that have been made by humans have been because of open mindedness that has resulted in discovery. Learning via experimentation, own experience and other people’s experiences has been responsible for our dominance as a species. Discovery via learning has been our vehicle for growth.

The opposite of being in discovery mode is being in defensive mode. We continued with a practice like bloodletting for centuries while seeking for confirming evidence of its effectiveness. We defended the ineffective practice and dangerously carried it out at the expense of human lives.

When a patient died of bloodletting, it was because he was ill beyond what bloodletting could help reverse. If a patient got better, it was because of the timely exercise of bloodletting. There was no argument that could possibly win against the practice.

We were in an overconfidence cycle for centuries. This is a closed loop that does not encourage information that challenges what is believed to be working. While in this closed loop, we continue validating and reinforcing the value of practices that don't work.

The overconfidence cycle in organizations looks like bloodletting. Processes and systems of doing things are defended. If the systems fail, it is attributed to the individuals’ ineffectiveness in using the systems. If the systems work, their support is reinforced.

There is no learning in such spaces. Discovery is inhibited and defensiveness is the dominant trait. Where there is no learning, there is no growth. There is decline and eventually there is elimination from the game. Eventually, such organizations close shop.