It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a… Frog?
A frog?
Well, okay, it wasn’t a frog. But that incongruous answer definitely got people’s attention in the old Underdog cartoon. The whole phrase, minus the frog anyway, was made famous by the old Superman cartoons of the 1940s, before it was parodied by Underdog and Rocky the Flying Squirrel in the 1960s. The fact is, when we see something flying through the air, we can be reasonably certain that it really is a bird or a plane, not Superman or a flying dog, squirrel, or even frog. However, if it were one of those things, we’d probably have much the same reaction as the people in the cartoons: at first glance, we’d see what we expect to see, not what it is actually there.
Professional magicians rely on this phenomenon all the time. It’s not so much that the hand is quicker than the eye, it’s that in an ambiguous setting, the eye can be fooled quite easily. This can be quite enjoyable when watching a magic show. In competitive sports, such as fencing or judo, that sense of ambiguity or uncertainty is what makes it fun. On the other hand, being tricked into seeing and responding to the wrong thing is particularly frustrating as you can quickly have points scored against you. At least the feedback is immediate and you can quickly adjust your strategy now that you know what to look for.
If you’re leading a team or a business, however, that rapid feedback is frequently not present. While most people know to doubt the evidence of their senses if they do happen to see a flying dog, squirrel, or frog in or out of the office, most ambiguous situations are not so clear cut. The problem with ambiguous scenarios is that when we don’t know exactly what to do, we tend to do what we can do. As many an athlete has learned, that’s not usually the way to win.
The problem with ambiguous situations is that, without appropriate training, we tend to see what we expect, a bird or a plane, not what is actually there: that rare flying frog. Or, to be a little less facetious, we tend to ignore the warning signs of trouble exactly because we are so focused on the success we expect to find. After all, those warning signs probably won’t amount to anything.
The fencer, of course, solves this problem through training. When something they ignored hits them, in a very literal sense, they practice to avoid making the same mistake. They can do that because they are in an environment in which they get rapid feedback and in which they have a coach who can help them analyze what happened.
For a manager or a business leader, it’s more difficult. While I’ve certainly helped various managers, directors, and so forth, analyze a situation and develop a plan to move forward, coaching is only half the solution. The other half is learning to become comfortable in ambiguous situations. Like the athlete, we have to become aware of the types of mistakes we tend to make before we can act to correct those mistakes.
The secret, in turn, to becoming comfortable in ambiguous situations is to spend time in ambiguous situations. However, not all scenarios are created equal. Fencers learn to deal with ambiguous situations in fencing by practicing sword play. Judo players learn to deal with ambiguity by practicing throwing one another competitively. We want to be in scenarios that require us to use our professional skills: that force us to lead others, motivate people who may not be interested in our goals, and negotiate with those who are opposed to our success.
In one such predictive scenario, a manager wasn’t sure whether he could count on a particular team member. He responded to that uncertainty by minimizing the person’s involvement. Eventually, that person become so frustrated that he went to another team in the exercise and offered to work with them. They enthusiastically accepted his contribution. His original team failed to complete their goals without his involvement. Afterward, that same manager was able to recognize that his handling of similar situations in the office had cost the company several top employees. Similar situations provoke similar behaviors… and results. Finding out what those results are is much cheaper in an exercise than in the real world.
Whether you see what is there or whether you overlook key clues is up to you. What are you doing to increase your ability to handle ambiguity?
