Ready or… maybe not?

When I decided to go back to school after being in the workforce for a while, I believed I was ready. I had been there before and this time I had the benefit of ‘real world’ experience to enhance my learning. What I wasn’t ready for was the workload and expectations. I made it through, but it was an uncomfortable and sometimes overwhelmingly daunting experience.

Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, talks about ‘the illusionary certainty of hindsight’. There is no question I suffered from this when I thought I was ready to go back to school. I relied on my past experience and all the memories I had of gaining new insights and didn’t do a good job of considering my current context. Things like, I had a family now (husband, two kids and a dog) and a full-time job. My capacity, commitments and the expectations I had of myself, and others had of me, were different.

Kahneman notes that this overconfidence in predicting how things will go is normal and happens a lot, to everyone. The trials and tribulations of navigating school while raising a family and working full-time made me keenly aware of my tendency to believe that my understanding of the past isn’t enough to predict how things will go. In my time working on engagement, I’ve found this learning to be incredibly helpful. It is easy to get into a pattern of engaging. We become familiar with what we believe to be the triggers for inviting people to provide input based on our previous experiences and projects. But that can mean we aren’t considering what might be different this time. 

Kahneman and his colleagues Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony[1] suggest that our tendency towards ‘the illusionary certainty of hindsight’ can be mitigated by putting some structure to how we assess things. In the case of engagement, this means taking a bit of time at the beginning of a project to assess capacity, commitment and expectations. Do we have what we need to do the work? What can we commit to? And what are people expecting? This becomes our readiness practice. It’s a structured approach that lifts us out of our default patterns and helps us form the habit of considering the role of engagement in our projects and how to make the most of our efforts.

I look forward to exploring the idea of readiness and engagement. I will use this space to draw upon and share the wisdom and experience of others. I hope you will find the posts useful as you seek to make the most of your engagement. 

[1] Kahneman, D.; Lovallo, D.; Sibony, O. A Structured Approach to Strategic Decisions. MIT Sloan Management Review; Spring 2019; 60; 3; p67.