Are You a Fossil-Thinker?

Are you a fossil-thinker? Here's one way to tell... you want to know what a fossil-thinker is, and if you are one (or not).

Alright, that was a bit of a set up but here's why it's important: we all think inside our own little boxes, i.e., categories. X vs Y vs Z. The key question centers on if your thinking style is able to question your own categories and re-categorize efficiently? Are you able to throw preferences aside? Do you get excited (or do you roll your eyes) when a young staffer comes to you and says, "What if we...?"

Biologically, we humans must categorize things very quickly. The human brain is organized to categorize and prioritize what we're sensing and thinking, otherwise we'd be overwhelmed and paralyzed trying to figure out too many things at once. (Hold that thought)

The problem is, while we do categorization very quickly, we also do this very poorly. We make decisions based on incomplete and downright wrong information all the time. The oft-used example is we know statistically it is safer to fly on an airplane than drive a car, but fear is much more elevated around air-travel. It's because we're familiar with cars, we prefer them and we're often the ones in control of them. We have no problem getting into a neighbor's car for a road-trip, but getting into a neighbor's plane... ummm, for most of us, that's a different story.

We've categorized car-travel into "known risk and safe" and airplanes into "unknown risk and please-God-just-get-me-there." Car travel has been fossilized as known risk with emphasis on the known, the familiar, the understood. We prefer it even though we know the risks are higher.

Let's make this real for a small business:

• Should you stop servicing some customers?
• Should you fire your longest-standing employee?
• Should you create a new product/service package even though no one is asking for it... yet?

Using categorization is necessary for tactical decision-making, but strategic-decisions requires something different. It requires de-fossilization. You have to break out of a psychological mold that you have carefully encrusted around a process or product or service or price point, etc.

• You have to ask, "What if we____? "

Now let's be clear, a lot (if not most) of what comes in that blank will not work straight away, if at all. Usually the first draft of anything is the worst, but it is also the most valuable. Nothing changes without asking that question AND GETTING IT WRONG most of the time. But getting a wrong answer is much worse than not asking the question at all. Every good idea starts with asking "What if...?" and has to go through the edits/revisions/honing process.

If you don't have a culture that facilitates asking, "What if we....?" then be prepared to ask yourself/your team: "Why aren't we....?" Why aren't we more profitable? Why aren't we winning against competitors? Why aren't we growing our sales? Why aren't we able to keep good employees?

• Fossil thinking will always end up asking, "Why did ___ happen?"
• De-fossilized thinking asks, "How can we make ___ happen?"

Let's get back to what happens when we get overloaded. We're too busy. We have too many things to do, too many things coming at us, etc. When that happens categorical/fossil thinking gets stronger! We get strategically paralyzed. Our brains are in crisis mode and we must prioritize quickly, and that means we don't have to time to think about the category, we can only think about what we have to do next. We all have days like that, so be sure to COUNTER-SCHEDULE time when you aren't busy and can question your own categories and stop being a fossil-thinker. Don't just de-stress, de-fossilize!

I'm told for good LinkedIn articles we're supposed to put some figures down on the difference for our thesis: between fossilized thinking versus de-fossilized thinking. So how do you measure the value of successful business ideas that started with asking "What if...?" Answer: 100% of successful ideas were at first incomplete, malformed, and imperfect, and all of them began by questioning the category they were stuck in. Every successful business idea began by someone having the courage to ask, "What if we....?" Of course, every bad idea began that way too. It takes courage.

So be courageous.

Here's a long but good read on the dangers of thinking categorically, for those that want the science behind the behavior.

https://hbr.org/2019/09/the-dangers-of-categorical-thinking?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr