Recently, I was hanging out with some friends, when one of them complained about the hide and seek that the Sun was playing with us. She was constantly trying to look for that patch of Sun to tan herself under, to get a bit of warmth during the cold wintery chills. At one stage, she got so cross at the Sun, she almost swore at it.
I wisely decided to step in to offer her some solace and perspective.
I shared with her a story I read not too long ago.
During World War II, Allied fighter planes would come back from battle riddled with bullet holes. The Allies studied the areas of the plane's body that were most commonly hit by enemy fire, and worked towards to reinforcing the most commonly damaged parts of the planes to reduce the number of planes that was shot down during battle.
Unfortunately, this did not reduce the number of planes that survived battles. In fact, they lost even more planes as the additional weight from the reinforcements made the plane heavier and slower.
A Jewish Hungarian mathematician, Abraham Wald, pointed out that perhaps there was another way to look at the data.
He proposed that maybe the reason certain areas of the planes weren't covered in bullet holes was that planes that were shot in those areas did not return safely. His proposal led to the armour being reinforced on the parts of the plane where there were no bullet holes. This eventually became known as "survivorship bias", the logical error of concentrating on the things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility.
I then deftly linked this back to her predicament.
I said to her, while it may appear that it was the Sun who was causing her grief, it was actually the clouds that were the main culprit. The Sun remains steadfast and unmoving, because it is...The Sun.
She reflected on what I had said for a second, and proceeded to not speak to me again for the rest of day.
While she may not appreciate my sagely advice, how many times in our lives have we been so confident we knew what the issues were, or leapt into conclusions when we have not had enough data or understanding of the problem, only to be proven wrong?
Your employee's inability to deliver work on time may not be due to laziness. It could be because the objective of the task was not communicated clearly or there is a lack of support and resources in getting things done.
Your manager's micromanagement style may not be due to a lack of trust in your abilities but a concern on his part for your well-being, or a perceived lack of communication regularity.
There is benefit to pausing and reflecting on whether you are asking the right questions or if there were any other aspects or perspectives of a problem that you haven't yet considered, before jumping into action trying to fix an issue the wrong way.
Or you could be like my Vitamin-D deficient friend, and continue cursing at the Sun.
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