What Gorilla?

Why we can’t see the obvious

Apeman

You’ve heard about the invisible gorilla test, right?

Subjects are shown a video of two teams playing basketball. They are told to count how often one of the teams passes the ball. During the video, a man in a gorilla suit walks between the players.

Afterwards, the subjects are asked how many passes they counted. Then they are asked if they saw the gorilla. Half of them say “What Gorilla?’.

(Before the pedants amongst you descend upon me in a fury, this is a summary of the various versions of this experiment and I have used a little poetic licence for brevity!)

This demonstrates a phenomenon known as ‘perceptual blindness’ or ‘inattentional blindness’. We can literally fail to see what’s right in front of our eyes because our attention is focused elsewhere. Further experiments have shown that the greater the cognitive load of paying attention to something, the higher the occurrence of perceptual blindness.

So what’s this got to do with work? Well, I’ve long been frustrated by the fact that we know what works and what would make the work experience better for everyone. We also know that this would have multiple and significant benefits for the organisation, and yet organisations are continuing to ignore them and sticking with what doesn’t work and is making work more crap.

I have attributed this to self-interest (the bosses like the power, status and money the status quo gives them), incompetence (they don’t know how to change it), and just plain malice, even psychopathy. But perhaps there’s another reason. They just can’t see what’s right in front of them.

The things that would make work better for all and deliver consistent benefits to the business are not rocket science. We all know what they are, they are obvious to most people who work in these organisations (just listen to the conversations they have with their peers). But perhaps the bosses just can’t see them because their attention is so heavily focused elsewhere.

To be fair, the challenge they face has got harder. The old certainties have melted away, the pace and degree of change has increased, the level of complexity has leapt up. This more complex, uncertain and frightening world can be overwhelming (and many of them are just not up to the challenge, lacking the training and the mental ability to work with complexity).

Maybe the reason they don’t address the elephant in the room is that they can’t see the gorilla walking between us.

(Here’s a version of the Invisible Gorilla Test, if you want to try it yourself)

I Can See Clearly Now

A few months ago, James Elfer posted about the four most mindblowing workplace insights he’s ever read. They are:

1- People who want to be leaders tend to be worse leaders than everyone else

2- There are people who can reliably make teams better, and this is unrelated to their individual performance

3- People’s satisfaction with their monetary reward is deeply connected to whether their psychological needs are met at work

4- Retention is contagious. When a high performer leaves, more high performers leave. When a low performer leaves, more low performers leave

The first one should surprise none of us. We’ve all come across that guy, solely interested in personal achievement and feeding his own ego and not caring a jot about anyone else.

The second is a concept I’ve written about before, the ‘glue guy’ who makes everyone perform better. It’s the player who is ‘good in the dressing room’, the rower who’s not in the top eight rowers individually but makes the boat go faster when he’s in it. It’s the admin assistant who brings everyone together and creates a great atmosphere (and is the first to get cut because, well, that’s not ‘real’ work, is it?)

The third shows that, for most people, pay is just a hygiene factor.

The fourth is new to me, in that I knew it was an effect amongst high performers but not also amongst low performers.

Elfer goes on to say:

‘For me, these are utterly remarkable. They demand we rethink leadership. They challenge our assumptions about talent and performance. They suggest the ROI of £billions of reward is dependent on intrinsic motivation, and reveal a profound ripple effect in the talent inflows and outflows in an organisation.’

These are the Invisible Gorillas. If we could make leaders see these and organise accordingly, what a profound difference that would have on our organisations and on the work experience.

And these are only a few of the gorillas, there’s a whole troop out there waiting to be seen.

Little Lies

Another experiment on this phenomenon shows how it can impact the workplace.

Using virtual reality, participants were immersed in a group decision making environment and required to make a decision based on information shared by the other team members. During the experiment a team member repeated another team members idea and erroneously received credit for the idea, a case of idea stealing. Results showed that only 30% of participants noticed the incidence of idea stealing. (From Wikipedia).

Shocking, right? But not surprising, we’ve all been in meetings where this has happened. Although, of course, we might not have noticed (!). In which case, we’re suffereing from Social Inattentional Blindness.

So before we cast too many stones at others, we need to look at our own behaviour. A little humility is needed here.

Although I also wonder why the the 70% that did notice didn’t call out the idea stealer. That’s not good either. My guess would be a power imbalance (especially if the idea stealer is also a HIPPO), low-trust culture, or the need to conform with the group.

Look At Yourself

So how do we overcome this inattentional blindness?

We can point to the Invisible Gorillas and shout “Look, there’s a gorilla!!”. That’s going work with some but many won’t like their failure to see it pointed out. It will make them feel foolish and they will not respond positively. Instead, they will dig in and stay with the status quo.

What is needed is a break, a period away from the intense focus and overload, an opportunity to get some perspective on what’s going on. That can be quite hard for leaders to achieve, and may be counter to their nature (or their ingrained habits). That’s why sometimes things have to break and cause a crisis for a re-evaluation to take place (it could be them or the organisation that breaks, or a crisis caused by external factors).

As well as making time and space for a complete break, whether that’s a holiday or a retreat of some sort, it’s been shown that mindfulness exercises can also reduce the level of inattentional blindness. This underlines how important management of the self is to good leadership. Indeed, how important it is for all of us.

The best place to start is with yourself. How many gorillas are you failing to see. And what can you do to get better at spotting them? As I said, a bit of humility is necessary here.

In fact, a bit more humility in the workplace would make it better for all of us.

And bananas. More bananas in the workplace. Because everyone likes a banana.