At 10:00 on April 4, 2020, there was a nationwide mourning event. People across the country observed three minutes of silence to deeply mourn the martyrs and compatriots who died in the fight against the new coronavirus epidemic.
The dead are gone, so are the living. Over two months, both long and short, it was the hard work of the most beautiful retrograde people day and night that allowed us to usher in the dawn in anxious anticipation through windows and railings, and let us pay tribute to them.
The epidemic in China is improving, but the international epidemic is getting worse. The United States and Italy, which advocate so-called "freedom," and the United Kingdom and other Western countries that adopt "herd immunity" are experiencing unprecedented disasters.
Why did the epidemic that could have been effectively controlled become so alarming?
In the early days of the epidemic, some government officials in some countries told the public that there was no need to wear masks and that freedom was more important; some countries even adopted a somewhat self-deceptive "herd immunity" policy. Isn’t it a bit like “the ignorant are fearless”?
An example was mentioned in the third season of "Wanwei Steel Elite Daily Class". I think it is quite suitable to explain the above phenomenon:
In 1995, there was a man named Wheeler, a middle-aged man, heard someone say that lemon juice can make you invisible, so he put lemon juice on his face, single-handedly robbed two banks, and smiled at the security cameras after the robbery. The robber in the movie at least wore a hood, but he didn't take any measures to disguise himself. But the police soon caught him and showed him surveillance video evidence.
Here’s a bit of knowledge: words written on white paper with lemon juice will become invisible after drying. When heated with a hair dryer, the handwriting will appear because the acidity of the lemon corrodes the paper.
Wheeler apparently misunderstood the meaning of "invisible".
Wheeler’s stupidity alarmed a psychologist at Cornell University, David Dunning, who, together with his graduate student Justin Kruger, I conducted a study to see why such a person with little knowledge can have such great self-confidence.
Dunning and Kruger studied the relationship between two human abilities. One is your skill level in a certain field, and the other is your ability to self-assess this skill - that is, whether you have an accurate judgment about where your level is compared to others.
They passed ability tests on three items of humor, logical reasoning and grammar, and measured the subjects' own ability to evaluate themselves in these three items. The conclusion is: the more ignorant people are, the more , the more confident you are.
This is the psychological effect that was only formally discovered in 1999 - the "Dunning-Kruger effect", also called the "Dak effect". And because of this discovery, they also won the "Ig Nobel Prize". The reason why it is funny, I understand, is that the behavior itself may be "ridiculous".
The "Dak Effect" tells us that the path to knowledge is difficult. When you only know a little bit, you don’t know what you don’t know, and you think you already understand it very well. You must first experience a low self-confidence before you can embark on a real path to study. Someone summed up this road as a curve:
Is the behavior of certain officials in the United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom similar to stupid Wheeler, precisely because they have "little knowledge" of the new coronavirus and their understanding of the new coronavirus? The failure to understand the serious consequences of human-to-human transmission led to the "fearless" behavior of the ignorant, which ultimately resulted in irreversible catastrophic consequences.
What’s more important is that they don’t know that they don’t know. What a terrible state this is.
Facing the epidemic and the lives lost one by one, we realize the fragility and difficulty of life, and hope that through reflection, we can work hard to become a better version of ourselves. But we must avoid blind confidence and cross the "barrier of ignorance".
There is a case of "obstacle of ignorance" in Chi Yufeng's book "Panorama of Human Beings", which we often encounter in our actual work: a certain company manager found the leader and thought that he If you can be responsible for more business and assume higher management responsibilities than you currently have, you should be promoted. When told that the time is not yet ripe, he often says: "I think I am ready. I am better than XX. He can do it, why can't I?"
The cause I am responsible for There was a department manager in my department who made the same request to me. But the actual situation is that he at least lacks the ability to think systematically, communicate effectively, and quickly identify key points. When he was told these questions, he didn't feel like he didn't have them, and even if he did, he would learn them quickly.
This is the mistake of "not knowing what is there and not knowing what is not".
"I don't know what I have and I don't know what I don't have" means not only "I don't know if I have something", but also "I don't know whether others have something or not".
Heard, know, understand, and can tell it yourself, these are four different levels of cognition. Some people tend to mistake knowing a truth for fully understanding it, but if they are asked to explain it, they cannot do it. The four levels of cognition are like seeing a car, being able to drive, being able to repair a car, and being able to build a car. The difference between cars is huge.
Only by breaking through the "barrier of ignorance" can we avoid falling into the trap of the "Dak Effect".
The higher the position, the greater the impact of "not knowing what you don't know". Just like the politicians in power in some Western countries during this epidemic, because they hold high positions, their words and deeds have a great impact on the people of the country. Their wrong guidance caused the epidemic to develop out of control.
Some managers act like they are omnipotent and have a high self-esteem in front of their subordinates. In fact, these managers may be worried that their subordinates will think that they do not understand, which may affect their authority. As everyone knows, the sense of power will damage people's emotional ability, making us unable to understand other people's thoughts and feelings, becoming self-willed, and causing arrogance syndrome. Without arrogance, no grass grows, so that the strengths of everyone in the team cannot be fully utilized, and the ultimate result is failure.
I have worked with the founders of two companies. As the company gradually grew, the situation gradually improved, and my self-confidence expanded, I used my own identity to intervene in areas that were originally good at others. Not to mention the final result, the person left.
This is the most common mistake that many founders and executives make. People with a superiority complex are blindfolded and cannot recognize themselves. It is also a common phenomenon of the "Dak Effect".
In the section ""Ning Xiangdong's Management Course"-Duck Effect: High Self-esteem and Bankruptcy", I mentioned Adler's words: People with a strong sense of inferiority are prone to come from other aspects. Prove one's superiority and obtain compensation, so some people have poor emotion reading ability, and their self-perceived ability level does not match the actual level. Whether they are executives or founders, although they try their best to show their superiority, it also reflects their "inferiority".
Chairman Mao once said: "Mobility makes people progress, and pride makes people fall behind." Humility means having self-awareness and is a manifestation of self-cultivation. Only when a person is humble can he be respected by others. This saying also holds true in reverse, that is, "Progress makes people humble, while backwardness makes people proud."
The content of the "Dak Effect" talked about in the third season of "Wanwei Steel Elite Daily Class" is "Progress makes people humbly, backwardness makes people proud" as the title. I didn't realize it at first. But it makes sense when you think about it.
When I first landed in the company, most of my colleagues were younger than me. Although the products were similar to what I had done before, they still had many special features. The most typical one is that the original products tended to be universal, while the current products tend to be customized. This difference will lead to differences in working methods.
Although I have rich experience, in the nearly half a year since I joined the company, I have not guided my work based on my previous experience. Instead, I have been learning about the company’s solutions and products, and asking for advice if I don’t understand. In this way, I quickly integrated into the team, and more and more I discovered that the problem was not as simple as it appeared, which encouraged me to understand it further, and then put forward my ideas and opinions.
Because I know that no matter how experienced I am, I may not be accustomed to it.
"Progress makes people humble, while backwardness makes people proud." This is also a description of the "Dak Effect". As you get to know more and more, you feel that you don't understand more and more. As a manager, you should know how to delegate authority, and don't pretend to understand. You should also keep learning and asking for advice in order to understand the essence of the problem.
For example, many colleagues in the company now, although younger than me, have more experience in this industry, and they can give me a lot of help.
Russell has a famous saying: The trouble in this world is that fools are very confident, while wise men are always full of doubts.
The Dak Effect is ubiquitous. How can we avoid falling into the trap of the "Dak Effect"?
First, we must correctly understand ourselves.
Follow the advice of teacher Ning Xiangdong: Learning to see one's own shadow in the eyes of others, to examine oneself, to know oneself, and to know what kind of person one is is a great knowledge in itself.
The second is to maintain a heart of awe.
The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno once said: "Human knowledge is like a circle. Inside the circle is known, and outside the circle is unknown. The more you know, the bigger the circle will be. , the more you don’t know. ”
Be respectful of any industry. You never know how many pitfalls there are in places you haven’t set foot in. For example, after I resigned from a company, I practiced cross-industry for half a year. I thought that the same methodology could be used to do well according to the previous routine, but in fact it faced different environments, different targets, and different customer groups. So after half a year, I returned to a relatively familiar track.
Steve Jobs said, stay hungry, stay foolish. It means "be sincere and fearful, and maintain awe". It is actually the "way of a wise man" in Chinese culture and should become the basic quality of every manager.