On Attitude & Aptitude

 

CIO: “It seems like we’re all set in the right direction. Things look really great.”

IT Manager: “It’s awesome! We’ve never been in such a good shape before.”

Product Manager: “This is going to be the next killer app.”

Business Analyst: “Yeah, it looks really fantastic!”

Project Manager: “Kudos to everyone in this great team.”

…

And this went on and on and in the next few minutes, the room was filled with a cacophony of deafening clapping and laughing sounds. I could have joined in and sung the ‘Kumbaya’ like the rest of the folks. Yet, deep inside me, a voice was ringing. “Are these people crazy?” Unfortunately, the voice was too feeble to be noticed and eventually subsided in the sea of laughter.

Scenarios like this are very common and happen every day in every organization. Whenever the top person says something, the rest will join in the chorus eagerly just like the chicks following the mother hen. Has anyone bothered to do a reality check and challenge the sanity of the optimism? It looks as if people are so afraid to be seen as holding a different view from the leader – the inherent fear of being blacklisted as ‘Negative’. Why is everyone ignoring the elephant in the room? Where is the little boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong in thinking positively and I am not going into a lengthy debate on optimism versus pessimism with “a glass with water at the halfway point”. However, there is a difference between attitude in thinking and aptitude in judging. The former is about our perception, or worldview, of a situation and the latter is about our ability to assess a situation. Complacency builds and danger looms when the emotional part of attitude overshadows the logical part of aptitude. This is usually the case for those failed projects that are overdose with optimism. It is important to have dreams, but we still have to wake up someday.

Now, if we split aptitude into ‘Weak’ and ‘Strong’ and attitude into ‘Pessimistic’ and ‘Optimistic’ and plot them against one another, we could easily come up with a quadrant similar to the one shown in the diagram below.

Let’s first take a look at the two squares in the lower half of the quadrant. These are the people who are weak in their ability to assess the situation and, therefore, often overrule by their emotional mind. They react to the situation based on what they perceive. Hence, the pessimists will be more negatively inclined and assess the situation in a negative way while the optimists will tend to think more positively. In other words, their aptitude is strongly affected by their attitude. On the other hand, those with stronger ability to judge are in the two squares in the upper half of the quadrant. They are the rational thinkers who are able to balance biased views with better judgments and assessments; not the typical dreamers or naysayers that you would bump into in a day-to-day encounter.

“Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude.” – Zig Ziglar.

Some of you would likely to argue that attitude is more important than aptitude, so it is imperative to have positive thinking. No doubt this is true, but it is equally essential to maintain a logical mindset. Be skeptical and take all the optimisms with a pinch of salt. Challenge a positive view critically with negative assumptions and see if it survives the test. You won’t get too wrong doing that. In fact, this is the exact approach that we should take when we are managing risks in our projects. Do not be afraid to be labeled as a ‘devil’s advocate’. If positive thinking is the fuel that keeps you going, then negative criticism is the GPS device that helps you stay in the right path and avoid dead ends. The aim is to get to the top right corner of the quadrant – i.e. to be negatively positive.