Do you ever think about how you think? Not what you think, but how you think about it?
I once listened to an interview with Jim Collins, he made a casual comment about changing the framework that he was using to think things about a specific topic. Intrigued the interviewer pulled him up on it and drilled down on just exactly what he meant. He explained, that often we implement a specific framework through which to think, and 9 times out of 10, we’re totally oblivious to what we’re doing.
Remember the food pyramid of the 1990’s. Apparently it’s debunked and presented now as a great piece of marketing, regardless it serves as a great example of this idea. The food pyramid was meant to show us what we should eat the most of, and what we should eat less of. In concept it was great, easy to understand, immediately an image that we could connect with. It was not just a good piece of content, but it was also presented through a familiar framework which we could use to think things through.
Having been reflecting on this and observing my conversations with those around me since listening to this interview, it’s my experience that there are some really destructive frameworks that people adopt to tackle problems. The challenge is the framework can be totally ill-fitting for the problem you’re trying to wrestle with. You don’t need a new idea about the problem, you need a new framework, a new lens, to see the problem through. Over the next couple of articles I want to tackle three specific frameworks, the dichotomy, the spectrum and the tension.
The Dichotomy
What is a dichotomy? It’s best seen through how hungry your children are. It’s either all fine, or the wheels are coming off, and there is no in-between. More conceptually it’s an either/or. On, off. Black or white. Red or Blue. As a framework for thinking it leaves no room for people to meet. It’s uncompromising. Stifles collaboration and leaves no room for creativity. The Coddling of the American Mind, by Lukianoff and Haidt, refers to this as ‘dichotomised thinking’ and presents it as one of the great mistruth people are taught, ‘people are either evil or good’.
It’s easy to see this way of thinking in society. Look at politics, look at some issues of social justice, look at economic strategy. We have capitalism vs. socialism, progressive vs. conservative, left vs. right. Even the language we use to define these issues is combative and immiscible, i.e. they don’t mix. More and more it seems this way of thinking is one of the most damaging to society, to business, to parenting and to relationships. In a more connected world, we seem more divided, not because of our ability to interact, but because of the framework we use to think. It’s a way of thinking that puts a barrier between me and you. The dichotomy inadvertently, and unquestionably holds one up as right, the other as wrong. One is virtuous, one is good, the other is evil.
However, the dichotomy also stifles creativity. It doesn’t allow for the option of a win/win, a middle ground, the best of both worlds. Chris Voss, a famous practitioner and writer on the topic of negotiation, tells of a class that gets given an orange and two students are told they must negotiate over the orange. In practise both are given outcomes to achieve. One is to make orange juice, the other is to use the zest to garnish a salad. Apparently, most students are not able to negotiate for their outcome despite the fact that both functions can obviously be achieved with the same single orange. They are simply too busy thinking through the lens of a dichotomy, either I have the orange, or you do.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the dichotomy is appealing. To those who like a sense of correctness, control and organisation, the dichotomy forces issues and topics into their right box. Whichever right is. We can tick it off and move forward, clean. In a Type-A world where we sacrifice deep thought and often relationships on the altar of speed this can be so appealing. But alas, life very, very rarely confronts us with such a black and white choice.
It seems to me that dichotomised thinking is one of the simplest frameworks for though, it should be left in our childhood playground, where we fought over ownership of the sand pit, it was either yours or mine. But many don’t. The world is more complex than ever, relationships, I would argue, are more important than ever. We can’t simply approach things through a dichotomised framework. We can build better relationships, engage with more people, and outwork more creative solutions than ever.
The question is how? I’d like to suggest by changing the framework we use to think. To that end, next time, let me introduce you to the spectrum.