14/ Cognitive rigidity is the opposite: where the person is impervious to new data, and is 'dominated by a rigid framework or paradigm that acts to filter out new, possibly relevant, information, creating blind spots.
Conversation
15/ This explains a LOT. I've written about how I am uncomfortable with frameworks in the past, because I've often been put in situations in business where no framework could fully explain the effects I saw around me. I've grappled with this topic a lot:
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16/ In fact, I've also observed that the WORST people to hire in a startup environment are those with high 'cognitive rigidity'. I even wrote an entire blog post attempting to pin down that property:
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17/ DiBello got there more than a decade before I did. I was delighted to learn that other businesspeople have noticed:
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18/ The key point that DiBello makes re: cognitive agility is that it is by far the more important skill when it comes to business. More important than general problem solving ability.
And she developed a way to evaluate it, too.
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19/ I'm skipping over a lot of methodological detail to justify the assessment, which you can read in the actual paper: wtri.com/wp-content/upl
One last thing before we talk about the assessment. Expertise in a given company is by nature a form of distributed cognition.
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20/ The implication is that the entire exec team has to be evaluated together, because deficiencies in some legs of the triad may be shored up if some members have it and others don't. The best business experts have all 3, of course.
But a team can collectively have all 3 too.
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21/ DiBello's core innovation is something called a Profiler. It takes a similar company in the same industry, extracts public information about said company, and then presents it to execs.
The execs are asked to predict performance of that company, given cues in the data.
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22/ The questions ask users to evaluate that company with respect to its (you guessed it!) strategy, leadership, and finances.
These questions are predictive of expertise because they map closely to real world decision-making these execs have to make.
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23/ Then, the users are presented with the next year of results, and they are given feedback on their predictions.
This is how DiBello is able to evaluate cognitive agility.
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24/ The end result is that DiBello and team can generate a heatmap of exec team blindspots, and use that to guide their interventions/training.
Here's a picture of an actual Profiler heatmap of an exec team:
Replying to
25/ Some of these intervention stories are wild. For instance, DiBello and team was called to do an assessment for a financial services company in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis. The exec team disagreed with the CEO and wanted to oust him. (Oxford Handbook):
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26/ But only the CEO showed high predictive accuracy for financial risk in the Profiler. With the results of the cognitive assessment, DiBello and team convinced the board of the firm not to fire the CEO.
Like I said, wild.
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27/ DiBello believes that business expertise relies not on superior analysis, but is instead on better organisation of knowledge, which allows the expert to perceive better, and therefore make better decisions.
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28/ As a result, her training methods focus on 'cognitive reorganisation' — she doesn't really aim to teach new mental models, but instead attempts to reorganise what existing domain-specific models they already have, perhaps by establishing the triad organisation in their heads.
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29/ Ok, this is the high-level thread. I've written about this body of work (and linked to all the relevant papers) in this week's Commonplace members-only post:
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30/ This happens to be Part 7 of my series on tacit knowledge, but also the first part of a new series on tacit business expertise. DiBello's work is fascinating enough that there are still a few elements I have yet to explore.
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31/ For instance, how can we use this if we are business practitioners? My instinct is to use the core expertise model as a syllabus for learning.
Knowing that shape of business expertise looks like a triad of relationships is VERY useful to know.
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32/ But the truth is that I'll have to test all of that. And I haven't even gotten into the meat of DiBello's training work.
(Again, if you're not aware, she contributed to Accelerated Expertise, a book prepared for the DoD on accelerating trial and error cycles).
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33/ Follow if you'd like more tweets on business or career decision making. I have one on 7 Powers in action that I particularly like:
Quote Tweet
If you’re an investor or analyst, 7 Powers is a remarkable lens you can use to analyse companies.
But if you’re an operator, the book is a little … weirder. What I mean by this: the path to Power is totally weird and unique, and it’s more important to pay attention to that.
Show this thread
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34/ Or subscribe to my newsletter, if you'd like notifications on new pieces: commoncog.com/blog/subscribe
The end!
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