Unlearning 101

Big Problems Don't Always Require Big Fixes

Big problems such as health care, feeding the world and addressing climate change don't necessarily require big solutions. In the 19th century, Ignaz Semmelweis helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of women by getting doctors to wash their hands prior to assisting in the delivery of a new-born child. (Unfortunately, however, it still required the medical community nearly two decades to unlearn their stubborn and unhealthy habits.)   

Alas, in the 21st century, the number of infections in hospitals remains unacceptably high. Why? Many healthcare professionals still aren't employing good hygiene. If they were better at the simple act of washing their hands, the results would be impressive -- on the order of saving thousands of lives annually and preventing billions of dollars in unnecessary costs.

In the field of agriculture, it was the addition of ammonium nitrate -- a cheap but effective crop fertilizer -- which allowed the world's farmers to feed billions more people with the same land.

Continued advances in the field of genomics may also continue to increase the yield of corn, wheat and rice by making these crops more efficient in terms of how they utilize water and fertilizer. The result: More people can be fed using the same amount of land but with less impact on the environment. 

In the automotive industry, it was the installation of the seat belt that saved the lives of thousands of motorists -- even though the device was at first ridiculed as "inconvenient, costly, and just a bunch of damn nonsense" by auto executives. The next life-saving advance could be the introduction of super-strong, super-light nanomaterials.

As strange as it may sound, the problem of hurricanes may also just need a simple fix. As Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner outline in their delightful new book, Super Freakonomics, in may be possible to prevent costly hurricanes (which, since 2005, have inflicted an estimated $153 billion in damage to the United States alone) by deploying a few thousand "hydraulic heads" in those areas where hurricanes start. The devices work by bringing cooler water from the bottom of the ocean to the top thus cooling the surface temperature of the ocean water and preventing hurricanes from forming in the first place. The estimated cost: $1 billion. 

On the bigger problem of climate change, Levitt and Dubner also outline the logic behind "Budyko's Blanket" -- a super high hose which would spew sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere -- which could theoretically cool the planet for a mere $250 million.

Now, to be fair, both the "hydraulic heads" and "Budyko Blanket" may not work and serious questions remain on both ideas. But the broader point is that when faced with big problems there is absolutely no reason why we must first look to "big answers" as the solution. Often, big problems can be solved with small solutions. After all, as a child, how many of your cuts and bruises were solved with a tender kiss from your mother?

Grow a "Knew" Perspective

 

"Fifteen hundred years ago, everyone knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everyone knew the world was flat and fifteen minute ago, you knew that people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”  – Agent K, Men in Black  

Question: In a poll in early 1989, what percentage of West Germans’ believed the Berlin Wall would fall during their lifetimes? 

The answer is three percent. And yet today if you were to listen to the average historian explain the demise of communism and its impact on the Berlin Wall, the “fall of the wall” is often described as inevitable. This ability to retroactively construct detailed and plausible conclusions about the “destiny” of past events is referred to as a “hindsight bias.”

The problem with history is that while it flows forward, it is studied backwards. Consider, for example, the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand. It is the event now generally accepted as having triggered the First World War. At the time, the average European citizen scarcely attached any significance to the event. (This is known because if people had suspected the assassination’s calamitous impact on Europe’s economy this pessimism would have been reflected in a steep decline in the bond prices on various European stock markets. This didn’t occur.)

One way to unlearn our tendency for hindsight bias is to create a future bias and attempt to forecast events before they occur. As part of this strategy it is recommended you keep a journal to record the accuracy of your forecasts.

Be forewarned, this is likely to be a humbling exercise.

Consider the case the U.S. Cavalry, which in 1882, was charged with resuscitating Yellowstone Park’s gaming population. After implementing policies to protect against poachers and instituting generous feeding programs, the park’s elk population predictably swelled. Their numbers ultimately grew so large that the elk began overgrazing and eating aspen trees. This unforeseen consequence deprived the beavers of the trees they used to construct their dams which, in turn, lead to soil erosion and wreaked havoc on Yellowstone’s ecosystem all the way down to the spawning habits of trout.

In retrospect many of these consequences might have been for foreseen but even in closed systems it is difficult to account for every variable. In today’s infinitely more dynamic and complex world making accurate predictions is virtually impossible. It would behoove everyone – but most especially “Monday morning quarterbacks” -- to recall this fact the next time they or anyone else claims to have known in advance a certain outcome was “foreseeable.”

Remember, history’s path to the present day looks clear in the rearview mirror but from the front window where it must be watched and played out in real-time, it is decidedly murkier.

Homework Assignment: Next time you catch yourself, a colleague or a pundit claiming that they knew something was going to happen, ask them to apply some of their “knew” knowledge to forecasting the next big “new” event. Record their responses and monitor their accuracy over time. You’ll likely grow a new perspective on what people later claim to have known in advance.

Related Posts (11 Other Unlearning Strategies)

#11 See What Isn't There ... Understand things from more than one way.

#10: Don't Mind Your P's & Q's ... The future is changing faster than you think.

#9: Shoot Granny Style ... Unlearning may look funny but it's worth it.

#8: Don't Just Do Something, Sit There ... Action can be costly.

#7: Argue with Yourself (It's Not Debatable) ... Know all sides of an issue.

#6: Become Uncomfortable in Your Own Skin ... Different can be good.

#5: Watch Uranus ... You can't always tell the "stars" from the real thing.

#4: Don't Listen to Your Elders ... Inexperience is what counts.

#3: Study at an Anti-Library ... Know -- or is it "No" -- more books?

#2: Put one foot in back of the other ... To go forward.

#1: Engage in some situational unawareness training ... Don't yield to a past which no longer exists.

Unlearning from the Perspective of a Turkey

Being the day before Thanksgiving here in America, I thought I would recount a wonderful story from Nassim Taleb's outstanding book, The Black Swan:  

 "Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race "looking out for its best interests," as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief."

Taleb goes on to add this: "Think of the feeding again: What can a turkey learn about what is in store for it tomorrow from the events of yesterday? A lot, perhaps, but certainly a little less than it thinks, and it is just that "little less" that may make all the difference."

Here's to wishing you and your loved ones a Happy Thanksgiving ... but remember this: The knowledge you have learned in the past may have been useful, indeed, instrumental to your current success but it is no guarantee that it will insure your survival tomorrow. Just ask a turkey. Stay open to unlearning!

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A Future of Black Swans

An Unlearning Strategy: Training Your Mind to See What Isn't There

Following up on yesterday's post, I invite you to look at the logo to the right. Undoubtedly, it is one you have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of times. How many of you, however, have ever noticed the arrow between the "E" and "x." It is a wonderful  example of negative space and I want you to think of it as a metaphor for training your mind to "see what isn't there."

Let me give you a more concrete example of "seeing what isn't there." Consider for a moment the story of Abraham Wald. As a young man during World War II, the Hungarian-born mathematician served as a statistician and undertook a study on behalf of the British Air Ministry. Among his responsibilities was to assess the vulnerability of Allied airplanes to enemy fire. The intent of those who commissioned the study was to devise methods to better protect the aircraft.

Therefore, as the airplanes returned from their sorties, they were diligently assessed for damage. It was soon apparent from all the existing data that certain parts of the plane—such as the tail—were being damaged disproportionally more than other parts of the plane.

Naturally, this led RAF officials to recommend that those areas of the plane be reinforced with extra armor. Wald, however, reached just the opposite conclusion. He argued that data was only being collected from the planes that had successfully completed their mission. It didn’t include those unlucky enough to be shot down in battle. Recognizing that this created a selection bias, Wald came to the counterintuitive conclusion that the parts of the returning planes that were not riddled with holes should be the areas that received additional fortification. Why? Because he understood that those areas of the aircraft that had been hit and yet still made it back were not critical to the mission’s success.

Wald was only able to do this by "seeing what wasn't there." He "saw" the aircraft that didn't return.

Unlearning College -- For $99 a Month

Last month, I shared with you the story of the young woman who is suing her Alma Mater for $72,000 because she has failed to land a job. While opposed to the woman’s decision on political and philosophical grounds, I said at the time that it was a harbinger of things to come for colleges and universities because I’m convinced more and more young people will begin to question the wisdom of spending an exorbitant sum for an undergraduate education.

Today, I came across a fascinating article in the Washington Monthly entitled "College for $99 a Month.” It profiles the rise of StraightLine, an online educational company, which is delivering introductory college courses for a flat, monthly fee of $99. Students of Clayton Christensen’s “Disruptive Innovation” model will immediately recognize how dangerous Straightline is to traditional colleges and universities—especially non-elite 4-year institutions.

If those institutions hope to survive and still be around in 10 to 15-years time, I’d suggest they open themselves up to the concept of unlearning and begin thinking about how they might transform their existing educational models to remain relevant in the 21st Century.

In short, students (and their parents) are about to quickly unlearn the idea of paying between $10,000-$40,000 a year for what is often a questionable education. If colleges and universities don't similarly unlearn and begin providing a better education for less money they will soon find themselves irrelevant.

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The Future of College

Cathy Davidson on Unlearning

Earlier today I came across a tweet from a person (@riverblindmusic) in New Zealand who said that my post the other day (To Unlearn Learn to Disenthrall) was keeping him (or her) awake as he wrote a new song based on the word. At the time, I thought it was just a cool example of how new social media is making random connections. But, after watching this insightful video (posted below) by Cathy Davidson, it got me thinking that my pleasure in the serendipitous connection is actually something much more profound.

As I think about this, I invite you to watch the six-minute video by Ms. Davidson. To tease you fellow unlearners here are two quotes taken from the interview:

"You're in a deep pool and you're not even close to touching the bottom."

"We must go through a huge, massive process of unlearning."

Unlearn By Dispelling Old and New Ignorance

In his famous speech at Rice University where he declared that it was America’s intention to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, President Kennedy said “the greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds,” adding that “the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.”

 

Kennedy went on to offer a historical perspective for the magnitude of change society had experienced over the short course of human history. He asked his audience to condense the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history into the span of fifty years. Under this scenario, Kennedy noted that not much happened for the first forty years. Ten years ago, man emerged from his cave, and only five years ago did he learned to write. Christianity appeared two years ago, the printing press this year, and just two months ago the steam engine appeared. Last month electric lights, telephones, automobiles, and airplanes became available, and only last week did we develop penicillin, television, and nuclear weapons. To reach “the stars before midnight tonight,” Kennedy then poignantly added that Americans would have to “dispel old [and] new ignorance.”

 

Since achieving Kennedy’s goal in 1969, progress has continued exponentially. (Ironically, perhaps, with the exception of space exploration which, as Monday's 40th aniversary of the moon landing reminds us, has not made much progress.) Taking his historical analogy a little further, however, in the last proverbial "day" computers, biotechnology, the Internet, and the sequencing of the human genome have all appeared on the scene.

 

What Kennedy's analogy reminds us it that will need to continue to “dispel old ignorance” -- or continuously unlearn if you will -- only on a faster scale.

Learning to Unlearn

The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.

—Alvin Toffler

 

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

—Eric Hoffer

 

In some sense our ability to open the future will depend not on how well we learn anymore but on how well we are able to unlearn.

—Alan Kay

 

The three quotes listed on the previous are all really variations on the same theme. And, to be honest, the idea is an old one and is perhaps best captured by Mark Twain, who said more than a century and a half ago while he was toiling away on the Mississippi River as a boat pilot:

Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. One was that in order to be a pilot a man had to learn more than any one man ought to learn; and the other was that he must learn it all over again in a different way every 24 hours.

 

What Twain recognized is that the fundamental condition in his environment was change, and he understood that if he wanted to first survive and then prosper it was imperative that he master this context. To do so, he instinctively grasped that it wasn’t simply enough to know a lot, he also had to unlearn some things and then relearn them in the context of his changing environment.

That is precisely the predicament that today’s leaders and exponential executives find themselves in. But the challenge is much harder than is generally recognized. Why is this? In part it is because humans are conditioned to optimize what we know and add to it. It is not in our nature to discard old knowledge or throw it away. 

Thomas Kuhn, in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which was deemed one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, discussed how it is that paradigms—defined as conventional ways of viewing the world and trying to solve problems—can and do change over time. One of the keys to managing this change, Kuhn wrote, was that “at times of revolution, when normal scientific tradition changes, the scientist’s perception of his environment must be reeducated—in some familiar situations he must learn to see a new gestalt.”

One of the tricky things about exponential growth, as been mentioned before but bears repeating, is that in the beginning it is almost indistinguishable from linear growth. Recall the example of the lily pad.

Think of day one, with the development of the printing press, as being the beginning. Day ten marked the creation of the steam engine. Day twenty saw the invention of the telephone and day twenty-three the advent of the integrated circuit. Recall that day twenty-six is when the growth curve finally begins to slope noticeably upward. Since 1947 we have experienced the personal computer, the cell phone, and the Internet. Yet we are still only at day twenty-five. To be sure, society has experienced an extraordinary amount of change in the past few “days,” and to a number of people and businesses—many of whom who been widely successful—they might be forgiven for thinking that this growth has been nothing more than fast linear growth. But that just isn’t true.

The amount of change that society will experience in the near future is nothing short of revolutionary. As Thomas Kuhn reminds us, during times of revolution we “must learn to see a new gestalt.” That new gestalt is exponential growth.

Unlearning 101: Lesson #23 -- Unlearning Labels

Today's addition to my anti-library is "Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud" by Peter Watson.

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How Can People (and Businesses) Unlearn

Yesterday, I wrote this post entitled "Why Businesses Must Unlearn." Shortly thereafter a thoughtful reader posed this question:

"I like this idea of an organization doing some top-down "unlearning" of bad habits. But what new habits do they develop and put in place -- how do you get a seasoned exec that's devoted to a way of thinking to accept another view?"

It is an excellent question. In short, the questioner is asking: How does a person unlearn?

The first step -- and I'll admit this the most difficult -- is to get the person to admit their ignorance. (Remember, "we don't know what we don't know.") One way of doing this is encourage the person to take the quiz prescribed in this post entitled "Have Some Intellectual Humility." A second strategy is to invite them to start what Nassim Taleb calls an "anti-library."

The second step is to get the person to at least acknowledge that there is a different way to do things. For a potential exercise, I would invite a person to "Study Carneades" and learn to debate both (or all) sides of an issue.

Three, as an adjunct to this exercise, ask the person to envision a future scenario that might require the person or the organization they are leading to change either their position or the direction of the organization. It has been proven that merely contemplating a different scenario (other than the one the person thinks most likely to occur) can help people and organizations adapt faster in the face of a fundamental change to underlying conditions. Two strategies I recommend in this arena are encouraging people to ask new questions and training them to see different points of view.

Four, tell stories. Personally, I am a big fan of telling stories and frequently, when addressing corporations, associations or government and non-profit organizations on unlearning and change management, I'll pepper my keynote speeches and consulting sessions with the antidotes. I recently had this post which served as a warning to the scientific community and, last month, I put together this short four-minute video telling the story of executives at Bethlehem Steel. (If you really want to scare the person into unlearning try this post entitled "Unlearn or Die." If, however, your selected audience is attune to sports try these sports-related unlearning stories: Unlearn Barriers; Why Not Granny Style; Unlearn Your Putting Game; and "Practice Your Unlearning Game."

The latter four strategies work well for most people, but if the person can't submit his or her ego to the unlearning concept; I would suggest this post entitled "Beware of Growing Icebergs." It outlines why everyone should be open to unlearning.

I hope this post helps and for organizations that are interested in unlearning I now offer full and half-days seminars on the topic. Interested parties can contact me at jack@nanoveritas.com or 612-267-1212.)