language

9 things that “lock us in” in our thinking

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There are lots of things that can take up residence in our minds and shape how we think. Just knowing that is empowering and can make a difference in getting us out of what can be a mental straightjacket. Here are some of those things:

  1. Language – There is still controversy in the social sciences about how, and how much language shapes thought, but it’s clear that the language we use reflects how we think about things. Sometimes, we need to take a close look at our language—our names for things. It may be holding back thought. See also, Culture wires the brain
  2. Culture – Culture obviously shapes much of what we think and do, and how we learn. You cannot escape your culture, nor the way it shapes your thinking altogether, but again, knowing how it may be affecting your thought and approach to things is itself powerful. See also, Culture wires the brain
  3. Built/sunk investment – We don’t want to let go of things we have invested in, either in money, effort, time or reputation. You may need to ask: is my investment in this blinding me to what I need to recognize?
  4. Framing – George Lakoff has written well and convincingly about how mental frames we carry around in our heads influence. Frames are conceptual structures we use in thinking, and they take up a spot in our minds and assert themselves over what we think until, if ever, they are replaced by other frames. My thoughts and more on Lakoff’s perspective are here and here.
  5. Not invented here – Similarly to sunk investment when that investment is through effort and emotional connections, we may often reject an idea that we and/or our colleagues didn’t think of ourselves.
  6. Invented here – When we, our colleagues, our classmates, our heroes, etc. are behind an idea, it takes up a hard-to-dislodge place in our thinking, and we may be reluctant or even unable to scrutinize and evaluate it for truth, usefulness, and so on. In essence, we can be too loyal in our thinking, and not open enough to ideas from elsewhere.
  7. Greed – Many of us are too easily swayed by looking at things from the point of view of how they could help us make money or reduce our chances to make money.
  8. Ignorance, misunderstanding – Simple lack of knowledge, or incomplete knowledge can lead to wrong thoughts and conclusions.
  9. Fear – Fear of change, perhaps foremost, but fear of the unknown, strangers, different cultures and customs, and so on, can make us shut out information and ideas as “foreign” or “strange"

And there are plenty more, of course.

What can you do about these things? The most important thing is to recognize the biases and mis-direction they can cause in your thinking, and talk about that. Try to offset the biases inherent in all this with time and effort spent considering other points of view. Open your mind, and work to keep it open. Involve your colleagues in this too, and try to build a general habit of confronting biases like these.

Image: shannonpatrick17, via Flickr, cc attribution license

Scenarios in five words or fewer

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“Off-roading on the moon”
 
“Carbon fasting”
 
“Ocean-front property in Arizona” (chorus from a 1973 George Strait song by that name)
 
These are short phrases that evoke possibilities. Like the Framers’ phrasing in the United States Constitution or the language of Shakespeare or Cervantes, they are open to ongoing and varied interpretation. And that is their value and power.
 
I started to collect such headlines and phrases because they stand out and evoke new thoughts. Being able to put words together like this is a great boost to communicating about the future. This may be more true than ever in the age of soundbites and Twitter.
 
These phrases are scenarios. They evoke a future you can think and discuss much more about. What would it mean to go off-roading on the moon? It might be powerful enough to just sit down for a discussion of a phrase like the one’s above.
 
Perhaps Sir John Browne meant to start that when he declared at Stanford, in the late 1990s that BP now stood for “Beyond Petroleum.” BP people I met with at that time agreed that most of what that phrase meant was aspirational, and yet to be determined when Brown uttered it in a speech in 2000. It used to mean, after all, British Petroleum.
 
Our work in foresight shouldn’t be dumbed down, made too clever or too terse, but consider the power of a phrase, or a short headline. It may be the critical piece you need to get people to pay attention, to think, to discuss and share. 

The power of words

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Thinking about roles

We may often get a breakthrough in thinking by changing the words we use. Linguists and psychologists have long debated how much language shapes how we think, but there’s little debate that it does. A powerful way to break down barriers to new thinking is to reconsider what words we use.I’ve learned a lot about this from a futurist colleague of mine, Mimi Stokes Katzenbach, who is also an actor and playwright. Mimi has taught my colleagues and me new things about how the work we do in exploring the future is about people, roles, and stories at least as much as it’s about data, trendlines, and technologies.

Mimi and I had a conversation this week about roles. In a World Futures Society session on the social future, I had supposed that some people might, because of strong and rising concern for environment, recast themselves from “consumer” to “sustainer”. Mimi seized on that word, sustainer, as a great example of how we can break through to new thinking by changing the words we use.

“Sustainer” is a role word. Having it can move our thinking off of the broad, theoretical noun: “sustainability,” to a role or function we can define and play. If you say “I am a sustainer, not a consumer” you redefine your role, and can have a much clearer idea what you need to do.

We live in roles we play; parent, executive, student, friend, cyclist, artist, and so on. Otherwise, we would not know what we are all about. By creating a “role” word for a situation, we can open up our thinking about what we will or should do.

Mimi’s other observation is the power of a verb over a noun. By transforming a noun into a verb, you move to action. So instead of saying that sustainablity is important to us, we might say that we are going to “lower our carbon footprint” which implies and can define specific action.

The lesson here is to move our thinking from the abstract to the specific and to put people into the change we want to understand and make happen. That’s a critical part of the bigger issue we face in foresight, which is to make the future clear, relevant, and real to people. There are no great changes in the world, good or bad, without people driving them.

Image: gemsling, via Flickr, cc license

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