Stop Inadvertently Setting Yourself Up To Fail

As some of my other blog posts might allude to, I'm an engineer. This means that I try to make sense of a lot of different scientific phenomena, manipulate them in a way that allows me to use them, and then use them to make money, or "add value" (which, if aligned well with the rules of a capitalist system, then translates into money).

At the moment, I'm getting more responsibility with a piece of kit that measures reflectivity of things (think of it as something that scientifically measures how much glare your phone gives on a sunny day). With this kit – we can’t think about all the mechanisms and how they interplay together simultaneously. It’s just too much work. When I was younger I thought that as I learnt more about pieces of equipment, I’d be able to see more about how they interplay simultaneously together. I'm starting to think that I was barking up the wrong tree. What we can do is to create processes to control each mechanism, so that we don’t have to worry about them: we’ve already got them under control. This can be generalised to a problem mitigation process: when we realise problems are happening, we need to set up a system that deals with the problem automatically, which means we’re not allowing the problem to catch us out later on or to unnecessarily test us (and potentially allow us to fail the test) later on. And I think this way of thinking can be applied to everyone in their daily lives.

I know all of this sounds very complex and engineer-y and you might be thinking, "gosh I don't think I have anything in my own life that this could even apply to". That might be because I'm over-complicating things a bit. Or maybe I don't understand this simple idea well enough to apply it - still simply - to more complex task. But I believe that this idea, when solidified from it's nebulous form into the purest version of itself, can be applied to everyone's lives. Here's an example.

The backstory
About half a year ago, I was part of a work baking competition, so I had baked some super-tasty cakes the evening before taste-day and left them on dining room table to take to work. When getting ready in the morning, I saw them in the dining room and thought to myself, “don’t forget those cakes just before you leave the house”. The classic memory-test-for-future-me. Then I continued with my day, and went up to brush my teeth. No. All wrong. I’m setting myself up to fail. And guess what happened? I forgot the cakes. I had to go back for them.

The next time I had cakes to bring in to work, I was getting ready in the morning, saw them on the dining room table. At this point, I told myself, "OK, I forgot them last time, but I've learnt from my mistakes: I remember that I forgot them last time therefore this time... I'll remember not to forget them." That's the logic that I've had for the last 26 years... until now. And honestly, that's one of the most insane things that I've allowed myself to believe. Nothing about my memory has changed since last time I forgot them. Only the new information of, "I forgot cakes this one time." No suggestion that my memory has actually gotten better because of it, and the knowledge of having forgotten things in the past doesn't mitigate any forgetting I might do in the future. Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. In fact, all evidence suggests that I will forget the cakes this time, because I forgot them last time, and because my memory probably hasn't changed.

The pivotal moment
So, second time round of seeing cakes. I froze, mid-run up the stairs as I spotted them on the table. Game time. I had a crucial decision. I could either set myself up to potentially fail by deciding to "remember not to forget them later". Then I thought, “I’ve remembered them right now, which means that I have a window to make sure I don’t fail. How do I create a system where I don’t fail?”

So I placed them on top of my work shoes. Sure-fire way to make sure I won’t forget them.

Doesn't sound so complex now, does it? And I bet we all have one or two areas of our lives that we allow ourselves to fail in.

The most common ways we set ourselves up to fail & further examination
Ultimately, there are two reasons why we go wrong: due to the lies we tell ourselves, or by failing to appreciate the ways in which something can go wrong. By looking at the questions/statements we ask/say about the situation, we might be able to illuminate whether we've fallen into either two category:

"What could go wrong?" - Asking this question could be due to a failure in appreciating the ways in which something can go wrong. Be careful.

"Last time something bad happened, but I've learnt from this and now it won't happen again" - This is a tricky one, and requires a two step process to examine whether you have justification in saying this.

First step: Always ask yourself how you're learnt and are now mitigating the mistake. E.g. "I've remembered that I forgot last time, so this time (how I'm mitigating the mistake:) I'll remember not to forget."

At this point your brain will probably want to go, "I have a reason why I won't fail, therefore I won't." Daniel Kahneman, author of "Thinking Fast And Slow" calls this mode of thinking, "The Lazy Controller". The Lazy Controller often likes to replace an answer to a hard question with an answer to an easier question, because thinking is hard and The Lazy Controller is lazy. This is the case here.  The question we're answering here has turned into, "do I have a reason why I won't fail for this task?" But anyone can come up with any reason for anything. The real question is, "Do I have a good reason why I won't fail this task?" This is a harder question, which requires another step to establish whether our reason is good or not:

Step Two: challenge the reason you've given yourself. Why is, "I'll remember not to forget", a good enough reason? Well... as soon as we start to challenge this, we realise there are a few flaws in our logic. Remembering to forget is only moving the "forgetting" part to another step along an infinite step cycle of forgetting. Next time after forgetting, I'll tell myself, "but this time I'll remember I forgot I forgot, therefore I won't forget again". On examination, it's using the same tool that failed at the task before, and there's no reason why this should change next time. So we need to change the method, and then critically ask again why this one would work.

Closing message
 So next time you come to a decision like this in your lives, try to remember the idea of setting up processes to mitigate failure. It might stop you from having to walk home for some cakes.


FUN META-NOTE: At the end of writing this post, I realised that it was a more developed version of another post that I wrote last year, entitled, "The Lies That We Tell Ourselves".

Issues With Big Companies

As I delved into the idea of blame, failure, and incompetence found at work in the last blog post, I started thinking about how these things really start adding up in large companies. It made me realise that it's vital to employ intelligent, self-aware employees. Self-aware, because incompetence in itself isn't a killer: but the lack of self-awareness to see that we're incompetent in a certain area is.

Finding a root cause for problems is hard enough when it's just mechanical: when we're trying to find out which piece of equipment is failing. Finding out if a person is incompetent is one step more complex. They may be in charge of a process or piece of equipment, so the equipment might be hard to control or the person might not have good understanding of the kit. We have to take into account the equipment and the person, now, not just the equipment. After that, they may be interacting with others, and the interdependence between others starts creating problems where blame can be shared. It starts becoming pretty hard to find the cause of why something is going wrong, and it'll be hard to test the process to see that the point of failure is someone's incompetence.

In this way, the more employees we hire, the more chance there is of any one of them being bad at their job and taking down the whole company. It only takes a few incompetent, un-self-aware people who are let off the leash to ruin a company. They start tinkering in areas they think they have minimal knowledge in, and all of a sudden, the car has no brakes. In this way, hierarchy becomes important. If the employee can't take responsibility in assessing whether he's competent at his own job or not, a manager is vital to keep their employees in check. But this isn't ideal: it means that a lot of time is spent by the manager just assessing a subordinate's work to see if it's good enough or not.

The solution, in my mind, is self-awareness. After that, you can de-localise the manager to a greater extent. Each part conducts their job self-sufficiently, and each person says when they know they're out of their depth. From there, more help can be given accordingly, and then the manager has a larger bandwidth to work on other things. Because ultimately, a manger will never be able to fully keep up with everything each employee does anyway, so if a subordinate is good at being incompetent, it's only a matter of time until problems arise.

Blame Culture: Part 2

I've been thinking about the idea of a "blame culture" a lot since it's been put on my radar by leaders in the company I work for. In the last blog on this subject, I said that, "my leader is at fault for even blaming himself, as in this way, he's encouraging the blame culture. Even if it is by blaming himself, he's still using blame culture to try to eradicate blame culture."

However there was a flaw in my argument. And I knew it. Now I was blaming the leader in my company for using blame culture when he shouldn't have done. I was falling into the same pit as the man I was condemning. The flaw had been nagging at the back of my mind for the last two weeks. It seems like every way we turn, we can't avoid blame. So what's the solution?

Let's look at what happens when we're trying to assess machines on the manufacturing line. When we see problems in the manufacturing line, we try to assess the symptoms. From there, we try to associate a cause with those symptoms. The cause is usually an out-of-control piece of equipment. From there, we can blame the piece of equipment, treat the problem with the equipment, and solve the problem.

If any one person is incompetent, just like a piece of out-of-control equipment, it can cause serious issues with the whole process. Just like how we should blame a piece of equipment for a failure if we find out the equipment is malfunctioning, we should blame a person if they're incompetent at the job we give them.

Blame IS important, as it helps us to realise our weak links and points of failure. Without blame, we can't move forward and start to fix the process. But if we can't get rid of blame, what can we do?

We can change our perspective of what failure/incompetence/blame allocated onto people means. No-one comes to work wanting to do a bad jobs, some jobs are harder than others, and sometimes we're not given the correct training. Sometimes we're given tasks that are greater than our bandwidth. These things are all okay - we can't all be amazing at everything and it doesn't make us lesser human beings if we fail in a certain area - but we need to address them so that we can move forward.

It's the way in which we blame people that's important, not blame itself. So how do we go about giving blame? It all comes back to emotional intelligence.

Bad:

• Giving "fixed mindset" blame: blaming the person irregardless of the task or failing to show a temporary, time-dependence to the failure. We all fail some times. That doesn't make us inherent failures. Example of bad inherent blame: "You're a failure"
• Emotionally negative connotations: "You fucked up"

Good:

• Giving "growth mindset" blame: saying the task is hard, rather than person being intrinsically incapable. As well as this, focusing on people's skill set: they're not incapable, they just may not have the correct skill set at the moment. This implies it can be learnt later. Again. Not intrinsic, only temporary. Example: "How can we make sure you can keep on top of things? Do you need more training? More help at the moment?"
• Emotionally neutral/positive connotations: "We're should address how we can keep on top of this problem" / "It's good that we've addressed this problem as now we can look to solve it"

There is something I was right about in the last blog post, though. In the last few paragraphs here, I touched upon how the person who had failed should perceive blame, but the last blog post did a good job at addressing how others should perceive blame in the person who has failed.

The last blog touched upon the fact that the person who failed doesn't make them any worse than us. We all fail. It's just that - on this occasion - someone else was the weak link. We all need to address the failure together, work to solve it, and move on. We need to be careful to maintain respect for others, maintain collaborative effort. Because a lot of the time, we're better together.

Why I Prefer Science & Engineering To Music

I've always loved music. I've played the guitar & piano since the age of around 12, I've created mixes and songs, have my own soundcloud etc. But there's something that really bums me out about music. Scares me about being a musical artist, even...

 It's so contemporary.  I can't deal with the idea that 99.999% of musical artists are only big inside their own spheres, or big names around the world, but only for a few years. Only a few choice names can be remembered. The Beetles. Led Zep. Mozart. I wonder who these names will be for this generation? (Please, history books, don't let Beiber represent our generation). After that, everything the 99.999% ever worked towards gets buried underneath the sands of time. No one will have known they even exist, there will be no reason to try to uncover them. There are so many great artists that I know people won't have heard of in twenty/thirty years time. Won't know they exist, and will never know. Submotion Orchestra. Wolfgang Gartner. Chiodos. Panic At The Disco. I just can't work in an area that has such a fallible final product. There's something about it that really scares me. Perhaps it makes me all too aware of my mortality. Of my scale. I am just a tiny drop in a limitless ocean. Perhaps I have yet to come to terms with my scale. Because what is an ocean, if not a multitude of tiny drops?

In contrast to music, science and engineering works from a series of platforms. "If I can see further than others, it is only because I stand on the shoulders of giants". The progress made within science today is made build from the foundation created by Newton, Einstein, Tesla, Feynmann. In this way, scientists are immortal. Every piece of work is coherently woven into the great tapestry of scientific knowledge. Even the areas on the fringes - these are peer reviewed, are deemed good papers or not, and then act as sense-checks for each other. After that, they act as supporting documents that always lead back to the middle. Everything works with each other. In this way, even the weaker scientists contribute and become immortal in their quiet, unassuming way. And this reassures me in some wierd way. There'll be some part of me left when I'm gone. I'll exist through the value I've created. And that value will always be relevant, because it will always act as a foundation.

Perhaps I'm looking too short-term. In a few billions of years, chances of humanity still existing is slim. Which means that everything we've worked together to achieve, all of our knowledge, will be lost. Like the £5 I dropped whilst drunkenly ordering a double vodka coke I shouldn't have last weekend. Faced with a realisation of such insignificance with everything we do, maybe I should just stop worrying and do what I enjoy doing in this moment.