Lateral thinking
Last week’s post about a 150% mindset receieved some pushback. A few people asked whether it was a recipe for mental illness, since a constant call to surpass one’s previous performance standard seems to guarantee perpetual torment and eventual burnout.
Excellent question. It has forced me to refine the 150% concept. I think we can do so by distinguishing three types of thinking. To illustrate, I’ll tell you about a famous 2009 experiment at Stanford University.
Professor Tina Seelig split her engineering class into 14 teams, challenging them to earn the highest possible return on a $5 “seed investment.” The teams would have five days to prepare their strategy, then only two hours to execute it. The following week, they would share their learnings in a 3-minute presentation to the class.
Most teams demonstrated incremental thinking. They tried to squeeze every additional penny from the $5 investment. They purchased inexpensive items at a discount store and re-sold them for a small profit. They maximized the volume and intensity of these efforts to yield a modest return.
Some teams showed expansive thinking. They looked past the $5 benchmark and pushed themselves to find arbitrage opportunities within the two-hour window. They bought and sold reservations at trendy restaurants, or they offered to refill bike tires for unspecified “donations.” These teams generated a much higher return.
The winning team used lateral thinking. They saw the $5 investment and the two-hour window as distractions. They realized the true source of value was the 3-minute class presentation. They offered this speaking slot to companies that were interested in recruiting Stanford graduates, ultimately selling it to the highest bidder for $650. That team earned a 1,200% return.
Lateral thinking is fundamentally different from incremental and expansive thinking. It is neither linear nor logical but fiercely contrarian and fearlessly creative.
Perhaps there are three questions behind a sustainable 150% mindset:
1) What are my assumptions? The winning team began by interrogating their premises. Before leaping to execution mode, we should ask what is automatically, and perhaps unjustifiably, taken to be true.
2) What can I eliminate? The winning team narrowed their scope, sensing the perils of an overly ambitious agenda. As our lives get increasingly complicated, we should identify the diversions that can be safely ignored.
3) What am I undervaluing? The winning team discovered a source of asymmetric leverage. How can we make better use of peripheral sources of value that may have outsized significance?
Incremental and expansive thinking may well be unsustainable. Maybe only lateral thinking can keep us all sane.