Innovate My Cheese

I delightfully enjoy cheese. I enjoy a variety of cheeses. From Cheddar to Cotija, Brie to Pepperjack, and Gruyère to Gouda, I am a fan of cheese. Yet, I agree with comedian Jim Gaffigan's assessment of his passion for cheese; we love cheese even though we all know that cheese isn’t the best for us. Spencer Johnson, in his book Who Moved My Cheese?, places cheese right in the middle of a metaphor that explores how people and organizations approach change. Johnson concludes that change is inevitable, and your cheese will someday be gone. You can either innovate and move forward or get stuck in a cheese-less past.

[Azzedine Rouichi via Unsplash] https://unsplash.com/photos/a-bunch-of-cheese-stacked-on-top-of-each-other-YW_5rJvAdKw?utm_content=creditShareLink&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash

Leadership is about shepherding people and organizations forward in their personal growth, their investments in others, and in fulfilling their purpose. Leadership is always an upward push, moving people from complacency to commitments, disorder to order, and from nostalgia to innovation. While some are ready to move forward and embark on finding new cheese, others are not. Nostalgia, or the heuristic of historical or anchoring bias, is the most consistent barrier to shepherding people forward and developing systems that promote flourishing.

Why? Because, despite the best human intentions, humans can behave irrationally. The disciplines of economics and psychology collide in the field of behavioral economics, which helps us recognize and understand the problem of judgmental heuristics. Heuristics are mental shortcuts that everyone uses to simplify complex tasks or decisions intuitively. Judgmental heuristics are effective at first glance and often make life more manageable, enabling us to make decisions quickly. However, historical bias, or an anchoring effect, can introduce errors into our shortcuts. In other words, when we rely on our personal histories to make quick decisions, we sometimes get it wrong.

Relying on judgmental heuristic, when moving forward, some people mistake the rearview mirror for the windshield, focusing on past successes instead of innovating solutions that address today’s needs. A significant amount of time and energy is invested into recreating the past or attempting to transform past success into a formula. Since we relate to our histories through experience and emotion, we may be unaware or blind to our biases. As humans, we can be overly confident that we know where our cheese ought to be, justifying our anchoring biases or nostalgia-blindness. We become blind to the needs of others and blind to innovation.

How do we lead people in helping them overcome their nostalgia blindness? We begin by assessing our personal blindness. Our personal or organizational values, vision, and mission establish our identity and point us forward. Have we personally drifted from our identity and our direction?

After assessing ourselves, we then begin the long process of learning the stories of those we lead. We help those we lead connect their histories to their identity and direction. Just like with the cheese, for some, moving forward will be easy. Yet, for others, moving forward will require patience, love, and grace as we consistently call them forward into their identity, belonging, and purpose. In other words, we constantly remind them that their cheese has moved, and we will find it as we move forward together.

Sources Referenced

Camerer, C. F., & Lowen, G. (2006). Behavioral Economics. ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY MONOGRAPHS, 42, 181.

Furnham, A., & Boo, H. C. (2011). A literature review of the anchoring effect. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 40(1), 35–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2010.10.008

Johnson, S., & Blanchard, K. (1998). Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life. G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Mullainathan, S., & Thaler, R. H. (2000). Behavioral Economics (Working Paper 7948). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w7948

Slovic, P., Finucane, M., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. G. (2002). Rational actors or rational fools: Implications of the affect heuristic for behavioral economics. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 31(4), 329–342. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-5357(02)00174-9