Let’s be completely honest with ourselves: sometimes we give gifts to others at least as much to make ourselves look good as to make the recipient happy. For example, when you buy a bottle of wine to give to someone important, you want to get something they will enjoy, but you also want to show your good taste and sophistication.
It’s the same way with books: if there is someone you want to suck up to, maybe your boss’s boss or a prospective client, here are some book recommendations that will meet both goals. They will please the recipient and mark you as an especially discerning and intelligent person at the same time.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman is one our most important thinkers, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work, even though he’s a psychologist. This book is both instructive and entertaining, and will help you understand the quirky workings of the human mind. If you’re unsure whether to give this book as a gift, think of what will happen if someone else does before you do.
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, by Adam Grant. Grant is described as a top-rated teacher at Wharton, and this book shows why. There are several reasons you might not want to get this book for someone, the most important one being that it can be dangerous to be perceived as an original thinker, especially within a large organization.
Pre-Suasion, Robert Cialdini. This is the newest book by one of the acknowledged legends of the influence world. Honestly, I didn’t think it was as good as the book which he’s famous for: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, but giving it will make you look smart and up to date.
Superforecasting, Philip Tetlock. This book is full of practical ideas to improve your judgment and predictive ability.[1] Using the National Intelligence Council’s 7-point scale, I predict that you are almost certain to impress anyone you give this book to, especially if they think you’ve read it.
How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery, by Kevin Ashton. This book will fascinate and impress anyone who works in or with technology, and they might even find creative ways to thank you for it.
Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Surviving in an Age of Accelerations, by Thomas Friedman. I’m breaking my own rule by recommending a book that I haven’t finished reading yet, but I didn’t want to be late in making this recommendation. If you’re concerned about the state of the world, Friedman will restore your optimism.
P.S. One of the best qualities of each of these books is that they are each so well-written that the recipient will actually read them. So, if you’re going to give one of these, it’s a good idea to buy a copy for yourself and read it!
[1] Although I have to admit I read it and still got the 2016 election wrong.
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
There is a huge market for forecasting in our country, from political talking heads on TV, to investment advisors, to the approximately 20,000 intelligence analysts working in our intelligence establishment. But, while the stakes for getting it wrong can be huge (see Iraq’s WMD), there is no formal reliable way of measuring or analyzing the track records of those doing the predicting. Pick your favorite commentator or columnist, what’s their hit rate on their predictions? That’s impossible to answer, first because no one has compared what they said would happen to what did happen, and even if they did, so many of their predictions are so vaguely worded that most of them can easily claim they meant something else and wiggle off the hook.
Philip Tetlock is trying to change that. Beginning in the 1980s, he has been studying how good experts are at prediction (answer, just slightly better than a drunk monkey throwing darts). One of his findings was that pundits who were the most confident tended to be wrong more often, but they also got on TV more often. They are hired more for their ability to tell a compelling story with confidence than for their track record in forecasting.
This latest book details his findings from a four-year project funded by IARPA, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, to test the forecasting performance of several different teams of experts. It was a large test which asked over 500 questions to more than 20,000 participants between 2011 and 2015. It was also rigorous, with questions designed to eliminate the wiggle room problem. For example, they asked, “Will any country withdraw from the Eurozone in the next three months? How many additional countries will report cases of the Ebola virus in the next eight months?”
The study found that about 2% of participants, which he calls superforecasters, are consistently more accurate in their predictions. By identifying the superforecasters, and then testing different combinations and variables, he was able to tease out what makes them successful, and the bulk of the book explains the traits, techniques and habits of thought that make for superior judgment.[1]
The basic theme is that it’s not superior intellect that distinguishes the SFs, but how they think. Here are just a few of his recommendations:
- Break down tough problems into their components, and make estimates or judgments about those.
- Pay attention to base rates first, and then adjust. For example, I may think that my friend is very likely to strike it rich in a very difficult venture, because I start with knowing how smart he is. But if I begin by considering that the odds are 50 to 1 against success, I could double his chances and still think it’s very unlikely.
- Be actively open-minded, not only being open to new information but looking for it. Once you have formed a judgment, pay attention to new information, especially anything that would call your initial judgment into question.
- Write down your forecasts and your reasoning, because the mere fact of writing it will help distance you emotionally from your first prediction. If it’s important that you get it right, take the further step of writing down all the reasons you might be wrong, and then synthesize the two.
- Expand your range of alternatives. Most people have a three-position dial about predictions: yes, no, and even odds. You can force yourself to become more systematic about your own thinking by adopting a 7-point scale as recommended by the National Intelligence Council as you see here:
Remote Very unlikely Unlikely Even Probably, likely Very likely Almost Certain
Even better, use percentages. It won’t guarantee[2] you’re right, but it will force you to examine your own thinking and help you adopt a more nuanced viewpoint.
There’s far more good advice than I can summarize, but frankly I’m struggling a little in deciding whether to recommend that you read Superforecasting. On the plus side, I predict that it is very likely that if you read and apply its lessons, you will become a better thinker. On the other hand, it’s an even chance that you will become a worse persuasive communicator. That’s because an effective salesperson radiates confidence about the future they recommend, while effective forecasters are far more cautious and humble about their predictions.
My personal choice would be to begin with better thinking. First, for the obvious point that you owe it to yourself and to others to give them your best thinking. Second, sustainable influence depends on credibility, which will in the long run correlate strongly with your predictions. It’s true that TV pundits who are the most confident in their predictions tend to be wrong most often, and they don’t suffer for it. But when people are putting their own reputations or money at stake based on what you predict, they tend to have longer memories.
[1] I use judgment in the sense that they are better predictors, not that they necessarily make better decisions.
[2] In fact, you may have noticed that the seven-point scale does not include certainty on either side.
Knows one thing very well
If you want to develop maximum credibility, is it better to be a hedgehog or a fox?
I’m referring to the terms that Isaiah Berlin used in an essay classifying thinkers as either hedgehogs or foxes. According to parable the hedgehog knows one thing very well, and the fox knows a lot of things.
Is there a clear advantage of one style over the other? A hedgehog thinker would answer yes; he would come down squarely on one side or the other and support his position to the hilt. And he would be very credible in doing so.
For developing credibility, there is a lot to be said for being a hedgehog. By concentrating on one area, you can focus your learning and develop deep expertise which can differentiate you from others and establish your reputation. According to Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, the “hedgehog concept” was one of the factors that helped that companies make the leap to greatness. They focused on one thing and did it really well. Because they figured out what they could be good at, they had the advantage of clarity, focus, and confidence.
When applied to individual success, the hedgehog concept makes perfect sense because it ties neatly into the popular idea that when you can find something you are passionate about, you will succeed because you will pour your heart and soul into it. That level of concentration can get you to the point where you know more than anyone else, and you will have rock-solid credibility in your field[1]. And, with knowledge accumulating so rapidly in so many fields, that concentration will keep you abreast of the state of the art. You would probably not want to go to a doctor who stops reading medical journals so he can broaden his mind in other areas.
Hedgehogs also have an advantage when it comes to persuasion: they are listened to more and are more believable when they speak, because of their confidence and conviction. In fact, I would propose that the most successful bloggers are definitely hedgehogs, and most best-selling business books are written by hedgehogs. When readers and listeners are suffering from ever-shrinking attention spans, no one has time to explore the shades of grey between black and white. Very few people nowadays have patience for nuanced arguments; we prefer to be like Harry Truman, who complained that he wanted to meet a one-armed economist, so that he would never have to hear him say, “on the other hand…”
But could there be a downside to single-minded concentration on one big thing? Philip Tetlock thinks so. Tetlock studied the track records of political commentators over 15 years, those folks you see on the Sunday talk shows who get paid to make predictions about what will happen during political crises and trends. He found that hedgehogs were not only wrong more often than foxes, but that they were less likely to recognize or admit that they were wrong when events did not match their predictions[2].
The advantage that foxes have is that they are more likely to seek out new information from a broader range of sources, and are comfortable with uncertainty and new information. When something happens that contradicts their view of the world, they treat it as new information, not as an aberration or an exception. They try to incorporate it into a more nuanced viewpoint rather than finding reasons to exclude it from their thinking. They are also better calibrated, meaning that they have a clearer estimation of what they know and don’t know.
Knows a lot of things
The irony is that although foxes are more often right, they get less air time. In fact, judging from seeing the same faces all the time on television despite being woefully off on their predictions, it pays to be a hedgehog. Maybe people just have short memories, so being wrong is rarely fatal.
So, which is better?
I’m going to try to answer the question in a foxy hedgehog style. In other words, there are clear advantages for each style, depending on the situation. We’ll look at three different activities – learning, thinking, and persuading – each considered over the short term and the long term, for a total of six different scenarios.
Learning. In focusing on what to study and learn, there is no question that you should be a hedgehog early in your career, so that you can establish solid credentials and expertise in one particular area. It could be an academic discipline such as electrical engineering or finance, or it could just be becoming a deep expert on your craft, or even your specific accounts. You want to get so knowledgeable and so good at what you do that you become recognized as the “go-to” person. So many fields require years of focused learning and improvement to master that it behooves you not to scatter your attention early.
Even when you think you’ve mastered your field, you can’t stop learning. Because we are learning so much about so many things, there is a half-life to knowledge in any field, and a lot of “facts” that you take for granted are probably wrong, or will eventually be proven wrong.
Yet, as you get promoted to positions of higher responsibility, you’re going to find yourself dealing with more and more situations that your expertise has not prepared you for. In order to avoid Peter Principle, you have to become more of a fox; get curious about the wider world, broaden your knowledge, and learn to blend in different perspectives. In general, learn like a hedgehog early to establish a secure base, and then evolve into a fox.
Thinking style. I come down solidly on the foxy side on this one, both for the short and the long term. We all crave the comfort of simplicity, the stability of “timeless” ideas, and the seductive clarity of apparent patterns, but that’s dangerous in a complex and dynamic environment. Especially as you rise in an organization, more and more of the problems you will have to solve are people problems, and people are too diverse and complicated to fit into the neat little certainties that hedgehogs love. Plus, the world changes too quickly for a single big idea to hold its power for very long. Check out the subsequent track records of the “great” companies that Collins wrote about for all the confirmation you need about that.
You should almost always think like a fox. (I would say always, but that would turn it into an oxymoron.)
Persuasive expression. In the short run, it’s clearly more persuasive to speak like a hedgehog, because listeners respond to clarity and confidence. If your only goal is to win others over to your point of view – right now – then go full hedgehog on them. That’s what TV pundits and transactional salespeople do, because it works.
But if you care about long term credibility, keep in mind that most people have excellent memories about things that affect them directly. They will pay attention and they will keep score, and they will be especially more likely to remember your inevitable mistakes unless you learn to speak with a certain amount of fox-like humility. It’s good to have conviction and clarity, but sustainable agreements are more likely when you remain open to others’ reactions and inputs. They will feel greater ownership of the decision taken and you may actually learn something that will improve your original idea. To encapsulate this approach, it’s hard to improve on Bob Johansen’s phrase, “strong opinions, which are weakly held.”
In summary, the choice between being a hedgehog or a fox is a false trade-off. The most effective way to go through life is to strive to be that rare hybrid known as foxy hedgehog!
