
Portrait of Isaac Newton (1642-1727). This a copy of a painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1689). Image courtesy Wikimedia.
When solving problems we sometimes reach conclusions that don't serve us well. In the less harmful cases, we discover our error before we make significant investments. In other cases, we commit resources and energy that lead only to the ends of blind alleys, compelling us to reconsider, or find alternatives, or to ultimately abandon efforts altogether. And that's if the organization survives. Human creativity ensures that we can create blind-alley "solutions" in endless variety. But one particular pattern is what I call the Newtonian Blind Alley.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a natural philosopher who created many of the early models of natural phenomena: optics, gravitation, and mechanics, to name a few. He was a revolutionary, in the sense that his conclusions were based on a method of reasoning not widely used at the time, but which we now identify as scientific. His work was founded on a limited number of assumptions about how the natural world works.
Those assumptions — often called "laws" — have since permeated Western culture. Nearly everyone knows the more famous examples: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Or "A body in uniform motion tends to stay in motion unless an external force acts on it."
Unfortunately, these assumptions are routinely and often implicitly applied in domains for which there is little evidence of their relevance. And that's where the trouble begins.
For example, consider the assumption that the laws of physics are universal — so that a law that applies at Point A must necessarily apply everywhere. Newton used this assumption when he proposed his theory of gravitation, which states that the attractive force between two point masses acts along the line between them, is proportional to the product of the two masses, and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Newton proposed that this law is universal, applying to all masses throughout the universe.
Newton's theory We assume that the laws of physics
are universal — a law that applies here
must necessarily apply everywhereserved astronomers well until definitive experiments confirmed Einstein's theory of gravitation, but the assumption of universality stands: even for Einstein's theory, we continue to assume that what holds in one place in the universe holds everywhere.
The "laws" of physics might well be universal — we have scant evidence to the contrary. But applying an analogous universality assumption to managing organizations is risky. An example of an analogous assumption might be something like, "If Re-engineering worked in six companies, it will work here." Or "If social media helped the X foundation raise the funds it needed, it will help us." Many a management initiative has failed because it was patterned after initiatives that worked well in several other organizations, without thoroughly understanding how the context, culture, and history of those organizations affected the results of the initiative.
The flaw in their reasoning is that the past efforts might have succeeded because of particular features of those organizations that aren't present in every organization, and when those features are absent, the pattern doesn't work as well, or fails utterly. When the pattern does fail, Newtonian thinking has led to another blind alley.
Misplaced belief in universality is just one example of a Newtonian Blind Alley. We'll examine another example next time. Next in this series Top
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Related articles
More articles on Problem Solving and Creativity:
The Shower Effect: Sudden Insights
- Ever have a brilliant insight, a forehead-slapping moment? You think, "Now I get it!" or "Why
didn't I think of this before?" What causes these moments? How can we make them happen sooner?
Ten Tactics for Tough Times: I
- When you find yourself in a tough spot politically, what can you do? Most of us obsess about the situation
for a while, and then if we still have time to act, we do what seems best. Here's Part I of a set of
approaches that can organize your thinking and shorten the obsessing.
What Makes a Good Question?
- In group discussion or group problem solving, many of us focus on being the first one to provide the
answer. The right answer can be good; but often, the right question can be better.
The Questions Not Asked
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it isn't there. Learning to see what we believe isn't there is difficult. Here are some reasons why.
Design Errors and Group Biases
- Design errors can cause unwanted outcomes, but they can also lead to welcome surprises. The causes of
many design errors are fundamental attributes of the way groups function. Here is Part II of our exploration.
See also Problem Solving and Creativity and Critical Thinking at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming April 14: What Micromanaging Is and Isn't
- Micromanaging is a particularly dysfunctional pattern of management behavior, involving interference in the work others are supposedly doing. Confusion about what it is and what it isn't makes effective response difficult. Available here and by RSS on April 14.
And on April 21: Choice-Supportive Bias
- Choice-supportive bias is a cognitive bias that causes us to evaluate our past choices as more fitting than they actually were. The erroneous judgments it produces can be especially costly to organizations interested in improving decision processes. Available here and by RSS on April 21.
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