??? The Thinker Thinks, The Prover Proves

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At a certain impressionable and rebellious age, I read several whacked-out books by the subversive, hallucinogenic Discordian Robert Anton Wilson. Thankfully, I managed to discard the unhinged conspiracy theories, LSD evangelism, and pseudoscientific nonsense (much of which Bob didn’t even believe himself!), but there’s one insight from Prometheus Rising that’s been incredibly useful in my career and my coaching.?

Wilson postulated that human brains have two subsystems: the Thinker, who thinks up clever ideas and principles, and the Prover, whose job is to find evidence to support the Thinker’s thoughts. The crucial insight is that the Thinker goes first: although we may believe we reason deductively, in fact people typically start with conclusions and then find facts to fit them. This is why it’s so perversely useless to “induce” your boss or your tech team to try something new and better by listing the logical reasons to change; as Jeffrey and I argued in Agile Conversations, you have to reach the Thinker first by building trust and reducing fear, and only then will the Prover be ready to help you. (For an extreme example, check out anosognosia, a medical condition wherein the Thinker is convinced, say, that a paralysed limb is working fine, and the Prover does everything it can to deny the injury.)

Wilson’s apt phrase came to mind recently as I was helping a CTO learn how to pitch his product to customers. (Your engineers do participate in “ride-alongs” with your salespeople, don’t they?? If not, start today!) He kept wanting to explain what the product did and its great technical advantages, but that appeal to the Prover was unsurprisingly falling on deaf ears. I advised him to reach the Thinker by playing rugby not chess: learn the buyer’s language and the story she believes in, and then use that narrative to make an emotional appeal instead of an analytical argument. It’s just as vital to understand this Thinker/Prover dynamic when leading internal changes or negotiating with partners or designing software; you can have all the reasons in the world on your side, but they’ll never reach the Prover unless you talk to the Thinker first. That’s why I never let my clients use the word “convince”!

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