Hindsight is not 20-20

22 January 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

Successful people are successful because they're good at what they do, right? We tell ourselves, "If I tried to be more like Johnny Depp, I'd be successful," or "If I could do what Bill Gates did, then I could be rich like him."

The problem with that is what Ed Catmull calls the Hidden. There are so many random events that end up causing what we are living today, that it is impossible for us to know exactly everything that contributed to our success and our failure.

Ed Catmull talks about how he missed dying as a young boy by two inches. Those two inches could have stopped Pixar from being created and all the couples who met at Pixar from meeting each other and all their kids from being born.

He talks about how there were several other things that could have stopped Pixar from happening, and that there are too many to know and understand. And since our brains can't cope with that kind of impossible randomness, we simplify.

We attribute our success to our own actions and we attribute our failures to things that we know for sure. "Success convinces us that we are doing things the right way." And then we tell ourselves that we can look back at our mistakes and since 'hindsight is 20-20' we'll be able to figure out what went wrong and learn from it.

Hindsight is not 20-20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future …. Not only that, because we think we see what happened clearly … we often aren't open to knowing more.

So what's the cure?

In a healthy, creative culture, the people in the trenches feel free to speak up and bring to light differing views that can help give us clarity.

That kind of openness is only possible in a culture that acknowledges its own blind spots.

and

The Hidden—and our acknowledgement of it—is an absolutely essential part of rooting out what impedes our progress: clinging to what works, fearing change, and deluding ourselves about our roles in our own success.