Drowned rats

May 13, 2021

Hope multiples effort

The image below may shock you (it did me), but stay with me here. There’s an important point to be made.

Curt Richter drowned rats for a living. He was an evolutionary biologist who, in the 1950s, wanted to understand hormonal responses to stressful, especially life-threatening, conditions. And, he discovered something fascinating.

Richter placed rats inside water-filled glass tubes and noticed they survived on average 15 minutes before drowning. He then wanted to see what happened if he ‘saved’ rats just before drowning. His researchers removed them, dried them, and let them rest before putting them back. After several instances of this treatment, can you guess how long the average time before drowning was?

Not double. Not even quadruple. Not even 100x. But 240 times as long. The average rat lasted 60 hours. Some made it past 80 hours. The conclusion Richter drew was that when rats believed they could be saved, their neurophysiology pushed them way beyond what was possible otherwise.

While Richter’s investigations were barbaric, his reasoning accurately predicted what psychologist Martin Seligman over 60 years later calls “The Hope Circuit”, explaining, in humans, why optimism, anticipation, and gratitude are such determining factors in being able to live a good life.

Question: How do you predict whether you should optimistically expend more effort or give up?

The value of ‘near successes’

Last week I wrote about the power of ‘near misses’. This week I worked with a large group of research institutes and universities who, along with government, are dismayed that just over 10% of public health and medical research grant applications succeed. This means that close to 90% don’t, but, more importantly, there’s a cusp: a great many promising research proposals that are not ‘near misses’ but ‘near successes’.

Even outside research, there are many such ‘near successes’. There is much to be gained from paying attention to proposals that ‘just miss’ the cutoff criteria. Think about heavily contested:

Projects that ‘almost’ make it to funding, but not quite.
Applicants who ‘almost’ make it to the final interview.
Business cases that ‘almost’ get through to the final review.

The image above is from the Art Gallery of NSW’s collection of photographic artist Tracey Moffat’s series, “Fourth”. All depict elite athletes in the moment of just missing the Gold-Silver-Bronze hierarchy. Does this mean they’re useless? Far from it; frequently, they’re milliseconds away from third. Even from first.

Yet, the reason why these ‘near successes’ exist at all is because of opportunity constraint. Not all are artificial constraints (who says in sport we have to only reward the Top 3?). Most are a result of rationed resources (we only have one position available, or $2m for a project). But both constraints mean that we cut off too early. By expanding inclusion to the best 25% (not 10-15%, as in research), what could be gained?

Question: What ‘near successes’ can you recognise and capitalise upon?

Change your base assumptions

If you haven’t heard of him, Russell Ackoff was an economic behaviourist before economic behaviourism existed, in the 1970s. His classic book, The Art of Problem Solving is a tour through this academic-consultant’s work, as he solves problems as diverse as “How do you keep fish in good edible condition on a fishing trawler — without freezing them?”

The surprising answer: keep them in tanks of water, and put a predator, like a shark (!), in with them, to keep them active. Sure, you lose some fish, but the greater good is served by the majority of fish surviving in good condition. Also, Ackoff is charged with answering, “Why are some street corners better sites for petrol stations than others?” (Again, a surprising answer, and it’s not only the amount of passing traffic). He also problem solves how black supervisors can gain the respect of white subordinates (yes, this was the 1970s) and how to make safe drivers aware of other, less safe, drivers (he proposed something that we absolutely take for granted today).

The gift of this book is that he shows how changing the base assumptions is often the path to a solution. Right now, as we try to emerge from a pandemic, base assumptions are changing beneath our feet, often out of our hands, but this gives rise to some very creative problem solving in organisations.

My question: “What assumptions prevented you from solving critical problems in your business, but have now changed?”

Weekly 5 Minute Strategic Mindset

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?