Cassandra

 

Every morning when we wake up, we stand in front of the mirror, fill the toothbrush with toothpaste, look into the mirror again and start to brush our teeth from the same spot. We move on to the next spot when we are done with the current one. Depending on the habit, it could be the one on top or the one on the right. We continue doing this until all the teeth are cleaned. The same teeth-brushing process is repeated every morning starting from the same spot and going through the same flow. We never know why we have to start exactly from the same spot or why we follow the same flow. It seems like our subconscious minds have registered the pattern and taken over the control. It is habitual. If someone now insists that we have to start brushing our teeth from a new spot and in a different direction, I am sure most of us will find it uneasy to adapt to the new method and will probably sink back to the old habit in no time. We loath at change and we curse at those that tell us to change.

So far, we are just looking at the habits of individuals. If habit is manifested on a grander scale, say organization, then what we are dealing with will be a cultural issue.

“If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

“Left well enough alone.”

“Let sleeping dogs lie.”

We have heard phrases like these echoed through the office corridors many times. Mark Twain once said – “Nobody likes change except a wet baby.” As much as we dislike those green-horned change agents, we abhor the bearers of bad news even more. We love sweet words and flattery, and turn a deaf ear to those who try to warn us.

In my previous article “Antemortem Confession of an Ant”, I wrote about a valiant ant who tried to warn the fellow ants that they might have been trapped in the ‘Spiral of Death’, but was eventually being dismissed as having a hallucinated fantasy. We have a special name for such people who are disbelieved when they try to warn others about something bad that is going happen. We call them ‘Cassandra’ – the name of the daughter of Priam, the King of Troy, who was both blessed with the gift of prophecy and cursed in such a way that no one would believe her warnings. You probably have come across a few Cassandras in your organization. Sad to say, there is a high chance that they are being thrown into isolation in one of the Gulag camps by now.

So, why do we shy away from bad news and warnings? Why we avoid Cassandras like the plague? Could it be ego, hubris or simply just being too timid to face the warnings? Perhaps, we may find an answer in a report issued by Richard Stevenson, Trevor Case, and Betty Repacholi called “My baby doesn't smell as bad as yours: The plasticity of disgust”. This report that appeared in the September 2006 issue of the journal “Evolution & Human Behavior” provides evidence suggesting that mothers regard their own baby’s fecal smell as less disgusting than that from someone else’s baby. This implies that we have a preference, or higher tolerance, for our own body odors and those from close kin over those from other people regardless of the intensity of disgust of the odors. Perhaps we have a similar inclination when it comes to warnings. We have higher tolerance for warnings that concern us and may tend to perceive them as less critical, thereby paying less attention to or even ignoring them completely.

Unfortunately, this does not imply that the warnings are less valid. The diaper will still get wet and we need someone to inform us when the diaper needs to be changed. In other words, Cassandras are invaluable to an organization. It is always a good thing to have a couple of them around. No matter how unpleasant they are to the ear, we may still need to rely on Cassandras’ warnings in order to help the organization to evade the potential pitfalls ahead. The price to pay for shunning them is too high. Instead, we may take the warnings in a positive light, perhaps as inputs to our continuous risk assessment process in projects. Have you identified any Cassandra in your team? Do you have an environment that will encourage them to voice up their opinions and warn the team of any looming danger?