INTERVIEW, PART II
AT: They would be?
….
MC: I’m waiting for the audience to find and attach their thinking caps.
AT: Let’s assume they are already wearing them, how’s that?
MC: Clever!
We can postulate that:
- All these disciplines probably work to some degree, or they wouldn’t exist.
- They all probably don’t work in some circumstances, or else there would not be so many.
- Likely, there are common variables across all these disciplines.
- Also likely, there are forces outside the realm of the individual that explain most of the variation. In other words, contextual variables.
This is obvious right? Well, I’m a slow learner; it took me 20+ years to figure that out.
I’m sorry, what was the question again?
AT: I asked what else made you an expert?
MC: So my point is that finding the key variables, the fundamentals, and not being satisfied with conventional explanations, when they are obviously bad, is important in developing expertise and in particular, wisdom.
If I may, can I quickly finish my story about psychology?
AT: Absolutely
MC: The most important context for the individual is the group. In the western culture, especially in the USA, individualism is supreme. It includes not only psychology, therapy, self-help but also our legal system, government policies, and our values. Yet, humans, like all primates and most mammals and many insects, are group creatures.
Returning to business, all business events and processes are group activities. Even solopreneurs have families. They network, market, buy, sell, and serve others, or they fail. Groups, even temporary and informal ones, influence every aspect of our lives. To understand individual behavior, you need to understand group behavior.
Which begs the question, who is crazier, the patient of the psychiatrist?
That reminds me of a Woody Allen joke:
A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office and he says, “Can you help me, my brother thinks he’s a chicken.”
The psychiatrist says, “How long has he been this way?”
The man says, “Five years.”
The psychiatrist says, “Five years! Why did you wait so long?”
The man says, “I needed the eggs.”
In the change-agent world, the eggs are call “secondary gain”. Eggs can stop change in its tracks.