MM#272--Assumptions Can Lead Us Into A Trap

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. Let's kick off this Mojo Minute with a quote. On a cold January day, a 43-year-old man was sworn in as the chief executive of his country. By his side stood his predecessor, a famous general who 15 years earlier had commanded his nation's armed forces in a war that resulted in the defeat of Germany. The young leader was raised Roman Catholic in faith. He spent the next five hours watching parades in his honor and stayed up celebrating until three o'clock in the morning. You know who I am describing, right? It's January 30, 1933, and I am describing Adolf Hitler and not, as most people would assume, john F Kennedy. The point is, we make assumptions. We make assumptions about the world around us based on sometimes incomplete or false information. In this case, the information I was offered was incomplete. Many of you were convinced that I was describing John F Kennedy until I added one minor little detail the date. This is important because our behavior is affected by our assumptions or our perceived truths. We make decisions based on what we think we know. It wasn't too long ago that the majority of people believed the world was flat. This perceived truth impacted behavior during this period. There was very little exploration. People feared that if they traveled too far they might fall off the edge of the earth, so for the most part they stayed put. It wasn't until that minor detail was revealed that the world is round that behaviors changed on a massive scale. Upon this discovery, societies began to traverse the planet. Trade routes were established, spices were traded, new ideas like mathematics were shared between societies, which unleashed all kinds of innovations and advancements. The correction of the simple, false assumption moved the whole human race forward. Now consider how organizations are formed and how decisions are made. Do we really know why some organizations succeed and why others don't, or do we just assume, no matter your definition of success hitting a target stock price, making a certain amount of money making or meeting a revenue or profit goal, getting a big promotion, starting your own company, feeding the poor, winning public office how we go about achieving our goals is very similar. Some of us just wing it, but most of us try to at least gather some data as we make educated decisions. Sometimes this gathering process is more formal, like conducting polls or market research. Sometimes it's informal, like asking our friends and colleagues for advice and looking back on our personal experience to provide some perspective, regardless of the process or the goals, we all want to make educated decisions. More importantly, we all want to make the right decisions. As we all know, however, not all decisions work out to be the right ones, regardless of the amount of data we collect. Sometimes the impact of those wrong decisions is minor, and sometimes it can be catastrophic For the result. We make decisions based on a perception of the world that may not in fact be completely accurate. Just as so many were certain that I was describing John F Kennedy at the beginning of this section, you were certain you were right. You might even made a bet on it, a behavior based on an assumption Certain. That is until I offer that little detail of the date. Not only bad decisions are made on false assumptions. Sometimes, when things go right, we think we know why, but do we really? The result? That the result went the way you wanted does not mean you can repeat it over and over. I have a friend who invests some of his own money. Whenever he does well, it's because his brains and ability pick the right stocks, at least according to him, but when he loses money, he always blames the market. I have no issue with either line of logic, but either his success and failure hinge upon his own prescience and blindness, or they hinge upon good and bad luck, but it can't be both. So how can we ensure that all our decisions will yield the best results? For the reasons that are fully within our control, logic dictates the more information and data are key, and that's exactly what we do. We read books, attend conferences, listen to podcasts Thank you for listening to this one Ask friends and colleagues, all with the purpose of finding out more, so we can figure out what to do and how to act. The problem is, we've all been in situations in which we have all the data and got lots of good advice, but things still don't quite go right, and maybe the impact lasted for only a short time or something happened that we could not foresee. And a quick note to all of you who correctly guessed Adolf Hitler at the beginning of this section the details I gave are the same for both Hitler and John F Kennedy. It could have been either. Just have to be careful. What you think you know. And that, my friends, is a quote from a wonderful book titled Start With why how Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action, by Simon Sinek. Now, simon Sinek, in case you don't know, is a great author and an inspirational speaker. This book was his first book he had ever written, and that was way back in 2009. He's written over five other books. Those titles are either, if I can talk, leaders Eat Last, why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't written in 2014. Together is Better a little book of inspiration in 2016. Find your why, discovering Purpose for you and your Team in 2017, and the Infinite Game in 2019. Now, interestingly enough, we just covered and went into the deep on his book Leaders Eat Last, and we covered it with a Mojo Academy review, which will be published here in the next couple of days. If you're interested Simon's writing, you can go deep in the Mojo Academy with that one. You can be sure to sign up to be a member there at themojoacademycom. Now back to our book. Start With why, how Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Sinek makes a great point in that quote that we just read from, which is our nugget of wisdom for today you have to be careful. We do have to be careful, extremely careful, about what we think, we know. We saw all this play out before our very eyes for the last three years, and most especially and specifically with the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic. There were so many assumptions made by our so-called experts and our ruling national leaders that took us down the wrong path, and we are just now unpacking and hopefully, hopefully learning from that experience, though I'm not sure we are. Now this business about Hitler and Catholicism. Let's clear that up real quick. Yes, adolf Hitler was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith by all counts. He never practiced the faith. His parents never practiced the faith. He never practiced the sacraments, he never studied the faith. In fact, if you want to go deeper into this question, a well-known Catholic apologist, jimmy Akin, has done extensive work in this area. We know for sure that Hitler was not practicing his faith at all. Most likely right after he was baptized, his family just completely went away from the faith. If you're interested, I'll put a link in the show notes on Jimmy's article and podcast on this very subject of Hitler's actual religion. He does great research and always cites his stuff. So thank you, jimmy Akin, for that great work. Now back to our book on Starting with why. Sinek provides for us a great piece of advice. Let's go back to the book to grab that. Assumptions, you see, even when based on sound research, can lead us astray. Intuitively, we understand this. We understand that, even with mountains of data and good advice, if things don't go as expected, it's probably because we missed one sometimes small, but a vital detail. In these cases, we all go back to our sources, we seek out some new ones, and then we try to figure out what to do and the whole process begins again. More data, however, doesn't always help, especially if a flawed assumption set the whole process in motion in the first place. That's some pretty good advice, but then Sinek tells us this Super important. There are other factors that must be considered, factors that exist outside of our rational, analytical and information-hungry brains. There are times in which we had no data, or we choose to ignore the advice or information at hand and just went with our gut, and things worked out just fine, sometimes even better than expected. This dance between gut and rational decision-making pretty much covers how we conduct business and even live our lives. We continue to slice and dice all the options in every direction, but, at the end of it, all the good advice and all the compelling evidence were left with where we started how to explain or decide a course of action that yields a desired effect that is repeatable. So how can we have 2020 foresight? And that is a wonderful question and it's a question we will hold for another Mojo Minute, but in today's Mojo Minute, I just wanted to focus us in on the negative wisdom that is, assumptions can lead us down a rabbit hole rabbit hole, rather, down a rabbit hole that could take us a day to get out of, or it could take us a lifetime to get out of. So we just need to be very weary about our assumptions, because assumptions it can shape our worldview, much like thinking the world is flat. It can shape our worldview, and our worldview is very important to us and we've studied this before in previous Mojo Minutes and our worldview can shape us in a direction we might not want to go. But, as the old saying goes, don't assume, because they make an A-S-S out of both you and me. Ha, let's not fall into that trap.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your Mojo on.