Be Agile: “Think on Your Feet” using TCP (Trimodal Cognition Process)
If you’re taking a walk in the jungle and you spot a lion (hopefully before he spots you), what’re you going to do?
Technological development is forcing changes at a much more rapid pace than we’ve ever experienced in our history on this planet.
If you want to keep up, you need to be Agile, that means:
-you can see the “big picture” and where things are headed,
-you’re always alert and open to changing tactics, and
-you achieve consistent results by following a specific formula.
The Trimodal Cognition Process (TCP) is based on neuroscientific research.
It’s a method that reduces decision failures and cognition errors due to human emotion.
It trains you in the 3 specific areas you need to master to become a leader in the world of tomorrow.
2) Systems Thinking (including processes and checklists)
3) The 8 CPS
You train your thinking muscles to move in a specific manner.
It may seem complicated at first, but once you start doing practicing it, it becomes automatic.
Back to the lion. So, what’re you going to do?
Are you going to perform a rational analysis duly considering all the facts and alternatives?
Are you going pay attention to the sheer terror rising up in your gut and run in the opposite direction?
Or, will you stand there, frozen to your spot and wait for the lion to decide the outcome?
Hint: this wouldn’t be a good time to get analysis paralysis.
Another hint: hitting the dirt and lying flat on the ground isn’t going to work either.
Even if he doesn’t see you, it wouldn’t be long before he smelled dinner.
The first time one of our ancestors saw a lion eat another of our ancestors, three things occurred:
1) the scene (pattern) was permanently burned into their memory.
2) they tagged it emotionally (sheer terror).
3) a bias toward immediate and decisive action was born, especially in people who are (or think they are) leaders. In fact, one of the worst insults you can hurl at someone like that is to call them indecisive. After all, most leaders believe that they can’t allow someone else to decide the outcome.
That’s how what neuroscientists call “Pattern Recognition” and “Emotional Tagging” became the way we make most of our decisions.
For a lot of people, that’s the only way.
But, technology is already changing everything.
How?
That’s still not clear.
But, that doesn’t mean you’ve got time to wait and see before you take any action.
There’s no such thing as maintaining your status quo anymore, you’re either moving ahead or falling behind.
The problem is that the higher up the ladder we climb, and the more experience we gain,
the more we’re convinced that we’re doing things in the right way (Overconfidence Bias).
We think we’ve got it all worked out, so we can take things as they come.
And, in order to avoid the risk of making mistakes, we stick to what we know and apply a set of patterns that we’ve become familiar with to every decision we have to take.
But that’s just complacency, and it can be very destructive on your finances, and to your life as well.
That might be OK for less complicated situations, but as technology develops, rapid changes are forced upon us, and that creates a lot of uncertainty until we work out how to cope.
Meanwhile, the world has become heavily populated and that means we need new solutions, new ideas.
In turn, that means more decisions have to be taken, but you can’t deal with new problems using old methods.
To make matters worse, we have a nasty habit of “shooting first and asking questions later”.
That means we decide first and then go looking for evidence to confirm what we’ve already decided (Confirmation Bias).
“Data Analytics” and “Big Data” are buzzwords everybody is throwing around as if by just using the words it means you’ve got it all figured out.
But, research done by Dr. I. Mitroff and Dr. J. Emshoff shows that executives often use data analytics to support decisions that have already been made.
What’s the point of all the “Big Data” if we’re simply going to look for what we want to find?
According to a study done by McKinsey & Co., “In our experience, two particular types of bias weigh heavily on the decisions of large corporations — overconfidence bias and confirmation bias”.
These 2 biases contribute to 75% of decision failures.
We’re absolutely convinced we’ve got it right, but the facts prove otherwise.
We don’t know how to decide (50% failure rate) and execute (67% failure rate).
McKinsey & Co. research has shown that 72% of executives believe that strategic decisions in their company are not formed and executed correctly.
One of the top 15 Global Challenges listed by the United Nations think tank “The Millennium Project” is the need to enhance decision making by “integrating improved global foresight during unprecedented and accelerating change” (due to technological developments).
The reality is that although the technology we build is growing at a much faster pace than before, the lifespans of businesses are getting shorter, and the number of failures is increasing.
The problem isn’t the technology, it’s us.
We’re still doing things in the same way: simple patterns and emotions.
Unfortunately, however, the reality is that we don’t want to know because it pains us to be reminded of how fallible we really are.
It’s considered as a sign of weakness.
The number of people that will admit that our decision-making mechanisms need upgrading diminishes as you rise in the organization, beginning with the C-Suite and rising up to the Directors.
It’s time to evolve a bit more; otherwise, we should hand it all over to the robots and give them the chance to do better.
But that would mean handing over our role as the Alpha “species”.
Who knows? Maybe they can do a better job at running things.
“Pattern Recognition” and “Emotional Tagging” was the way we originally brought order to the world around us.
We need order, we have a hard time with chaos (uncertainty); it scares us.
But, the accelerating growth of technology is bringing on increasing and more complex levels of uncertainty.
That means you can’t use such simple methods anymore.
Research published by Dr. Jerome Kagan showed that resolving uncertainty was a major factor in our behavior.
We have a strong need for security and consistency and until we achieve that, we’re in a state of Cognitive Dissonance (extremely uncomfortable).
A study by Dr. A. Kruglanski and Dr. D Wester showed that the more the ambiguity, the stronger the desire for closure.
We need answers, and we need them as quickly as possible or we begin to get anxious.
I have to admit, I used to be really bad when it came to ambiguity.
If someone I knew were to come up to me and say “Hey, can we talk this afternoon?”
The conversation would have gone something like this:
“Is everything ok, any problems?”
“No, don’t worry about it.” (That would make me worry more!)
“Can’t you tell me what it’s about, give me a hint?”
Does that sound anything like what you might feel in a similar situation?
Now, I’m a lot older, with a lot more experience under my belt, so I don’t get as concerned.
But, not knowing still bugs me. Now I look for other signs, like body language, tone of voice etc.
It’s automatic.
And, if my current state is stressed, ambiguity affects me more… “oh no, I don’t need another hassle!”
And, to add to the tension, in the course of “the mind-games people play”, you don’t want to let the other person think they’ve hit a raw nerve (a sign of weakness), so you keep quiet.
But your brain is still whirring away trying to figure it all out… buzz, buzz, click, click.
In fact, allowing your emotions to control you is a sign of weakness.
But, not having any emotions is also a sign of weakness.
It means you can’t make decisions in the right way.
Emotions play a big part in decision-making as shown by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Herbert Simon (considered as one of the founders of advanced Artificial Intelligence, (AI) (see here, “#4 Emotions”).
Decisions can’t be made without emotions as shown by Dr. Antonio Damasio’s research on Elliot, a man whose IQ was in the 97th percentile. Elliot underwent a tumor removal in his ventromedial frontal lobe thus blocking his ability to feel emotions. His successful business and family life completely fell apart (see “#5 under Decisions and Emotions” for more).
But, Emotional Tagging isn’t useful when we’re forced to deal with new problems.
This is especially true because emotional tagging affects memory formation (see Dr. R Richter-Levine, and Dr. I. Akirav).
Just because some of the factors may appear to be similar, you can’t immediately assume they are the same.
The world has changed, and it will continue to do so.
Different nationalities, different combinations, all living with each other. Things are far more complicated than they were when we were living in caves.
But, rather than embrace the changes, people want to hang on to the more familiar (see “Consistency”).
- “Emotional Intelligence” is the first mode of a cognition process that allows you to make decisions in the best manner possible.
Emotional Intelligence refers not only to recognizing what’s going on inside you and keeping it under control but also to empathy in interpersonal relationships.
Empathy is the single most important thing that differentiates us from AI.
There’ll always likely be a gap because as human beings we need to learn by going through things, feeling the pain, to really understand what it means.
Some things you just can’t teach people; they have to go through the experience themselves.
You can’t really understand what it’s like to lose a parent or child unless you’ve lost one yourself.
You can’t really understand the pain of making a mistake unless you’ve made one yourself.
I’ve made enough of them to know.
Emotional intelligence is a crucial factor in reaching decisions and in communication with other human beings.
Where we fall down is in allowing emotions to control us.
So, as uncertainty increases, so too will our need to “settle” things down. That will cause stress and have even more of a negative effect on our decisions; unless we learn how to control (not eliminate) our emotions.
2) That leads us to the second cognition mode: “Systems Thinking”.
“Systems Thinking” is a more advanced level than “Pattern Recognition”.
As we evolved as a species, our ability to recognize patterns was a major contributor to not only our intelligence but to our survival too.
By the way, we’re not the only animal that has pattern recognition capabilities, it’s just more refined than other species.
Our survival has always depended on how well we categorize and interpret information.
In his published research entitled “Frame Analysis”, Dr. Erving Goffman showed how humans interpret their world (see “Frames” here) by putting information into “boxes”.
Studies done by Dr. Linda Putnam and Dr. Majia Holmer on negotiations showed how these frames affect the outcome of negotiations, even hostage release efforts.
The point is that what you choose to put into the frame affects how it is interpreted.
What the viewer sees depends on where the camera is focused.
Frames are the most basic way of categorizing information.
One degree higher is Pattern Recognition which is an important element of Artificial Intelligence (AI) learning methods.
Pattern Recognition goes beyond examining individual frames and examines bodies of data for recurrences in order to find a “most likely” answer.
But as computer engineer George Fuechsel once said, “GIGO”, or “garbage in, garbage out”.
In other words, the quality of the data is crucial. How was it collected, how was it categorized?
Another problem with pattern recognition is that we can see patterns where none exist. Apophenia is our tendency to see patterns in random information. Related to that is Pareidolia where our minds “see” familiar patterns like the “face” in the Cydonia region of Mars as taken by the Viking 1 orbiter.
In his book “How to Create a Mind”, Ray Kurzweil, futurist, inventor, and a major contributor to AI development, reveals that he’s teaching machines how to think through introducing increasingly complex patterns (Singularity University and SingularityHub).
In fact, AI is based on computers being able to analyze vast amounts of information and finding patterns, even though they may be hidden from normal human ability to “see” them.
A step higher (more complex) than patterns are “Models”.
Models are explanations of how something specific works.
They’re aids in cognition, critical thinking and problem solving (as well as decision-making). They can also be an excellent template to measure execution.
But models are very specific, and that’s potentially a serious limitation.
Take, for example, Business Models.
Each business type has its own model.
It’s possible to construct and operate the business precisely according to the model you design and still see it fail.
Why?
Because the model is limited to the workings of the specific business.
You might have an extremely efficient widget manufacturing business.
In fact, it might be the industry leader.
But then tomorrow technological advances create a product that makes widgets completely obsolete.
You may have been able to have seen it before it happened and prepared for it, but for that, you need “Systems Thinking” (I’ll go into more details on this in a future article).
You need to know what’s going on in the industry, in the economy, in the world around you (see here for more).
Proper Risk Analysis requires Systems Thinking; you need to be aware of not only internal issues but external ones as well. It’s only relatively recently that we’ve accepted the fact that continuing to do things the way we’re doing them is leading to global warming. We knew about it a long time ago but chose to ignore it because making money was our only focus.
But perhaps most the most important part of Systems Thinking is Processes and Checklists.
Given how emotions affect us, we need structure (see here for more about structure) and specific processes to follow.
It’s ironic that all businesses are based on precise models but what causes most failures is decision-making at the top.
It seems that that the higher up one climbs (in politics and in society not just in business) the less the feeling of needing to stick to processes.
As you get higher up the ladder, there is less structure and more human emotion.
Pride and arrogance make us believe that we’re “above all that” or that it’s “for others, not me”.
In other words, decision-making becomes an event when it should be a process.
Many companies fail to grasp the full meaning of “Corporate Governance”.
It’s not just setting the rules, it’s making sure that everyone adheres to them.
They overlook what is perhaps the single most important element, the process they need to follow when making a decision.
A friend of mine, KC, is a Chief Pilot who has 38 years’ experience with well over 22,000 hours of flight time. He now flies the Airbus 380 which can be configured to hold up to 868 passengers plus crew. It weighs 17 tons and costs about $450 million.
He calls it “a small village”.
There are procedures and checklists for every phase, including takeoff and landing.
They have them for emergencies as well, several types in fact (blown engines, smoke, etc.).
These are drilled into them over and over during their training and through refresher training as well.
According to KC, “If there’s an emergency, I’m a lot calmer knowing that I have a well-tested procedure to follow. It also helps to know that I can predict what my team will do because I know they’re following their own pre-set procedures, which I know too.”
In other words, he doesn’t look at procedures and checklists as shackling his freedom. Quite the opposite, they help him make the right decisions in the face of uncertainty and rising stress levels.
Decision-making should follow a specific procedure, one that is designed to mitigate the effect of emotion on the outcome. Please see here on my site for more on the decision-making process.
Just as with pilots, there should be a formal checklist to follow, for every level, including (perhaps especially) the Board of Directors.
If a Chief Pilot does so, why should any senior manager or Director find it embarrassing to admit to being an emotional human and be required to follow a checklist?
3) The third mode is acquiring the eight necessary skills to meet the waves of uncertainty the future will bring.
With these skills, emotional intelligence, and a specific process to follow, you have a much higher chance of turning potential disaster into opportunity.
The World Economic Forum, MIT, Manpower, Singularity Hub (a tech think-tank co-founded by AI expert Ray Kurzweil), NEU President Joseph Aoun, McKinsey & Co., The Royal Bank of Canada, Visual Capitalist, NACE (Forbes report on survey of 161 major companies such as Chevron, IBM, Caterpillar, Merck, Schlumberger, and Seagate Technology), Billionaire Venture Capitalist Scott Hartley, Billionaire Mark Cuban, and even LinkedIn, have all reached (more or less) the same conclusions.
As uncertainty increases, people that can understand where things are heading on a global level, decipher, synthesize, and explain that to others, put together the resources, and then guide the execution, will be at a premium.
This is something that AI will likely never be able to do.
1) Problem Solving: learning specific techniques that can be applied to ensure that all the issues have been covered.
2) Critical Thinking: how to think and analyze clearly and objectively, specifically separating your own biases from facts.
3) Decision-making: learning, installing and adhering to decision methods and procedures, including voting.
4) Influencing: the “art” of persuasion and the scientific bases behind it. Learning how to make others aware of the alternatives and how to give effective presentations.
5) Conflict Resolution: how to reduce conflict and get people behind a cause.
6) Negotiation: how to forge agreements.
7) Networking: how to establish the links necessary to move ideas forward.
8) Leadership: how to motivate and inspire others.
As described on Acoobi Systems home page the Trimodal Cognition Process (TCP) is based on neuroscientific research.
It’s a method that reduces decision failures and cognition errors due to human emotion.
It trains you in the 3 specific areas you need to master to become a leader in the world of tomorrow.
2) Systems Thinking (including processes and checklists)
3) The 8 CPS
The TCP method can be used in managing life issues as well. It’s especially useful when you’re trying to reach an important decision, but you’re under a great deal of emotional stress.
So, what would you do if you spotted the lion?
Unless you have someone next to you that you can outrun, the prognosis isn’t great!
The whole point of TCP is to stay aware of what’s going on around you, and not let yourself or your company get into that situation in the first place.
