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Are you a fox or a hedgehog?
That delineation comes from a fragment of ancient Greek text: “A fox knows many things but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” The metaphor, later elaborated on in a classic essay by philosopher Isaiah Berlin, captures two ways of thinking and navigating the world.
But leaders actually need a combination of both approaches to be effective, Harvard Business School emeritus professor of marketing Gerald Zaltman argues in Dare to Think Differently, a call for greater open mindedness in decision-making.
Most leaders he has found tend to be fox-like, staying abreast of many issues. But they appreciate the value of the hedgehog approach and know when to switch to it.
In the early stages of problem solving, they have a fox-like mien. They ask themselves and colleagues whether they are thinking broadly enough, wonder where else should they be looking for guidance and worry about where their knowledge is incomplete. After a solution is selected, they turn into more narrowly focused hedgehogs. They ask where do they need to drill down further and what they might be missing that could affect the outcome?
He notes we live in a time of abundance, especially of information. The knowledge explosion is both a cause and a consequence of burgeoning specialization.
“Specialities tend to exist in silos and while silos have much to teach each other, they seldom do. To change that, you need leaders who are able to venture beyond their intellectual comfort zones. Doing so requires curiosity, daring and, most importantly, analogical thinking, the ability to see similarities in difference,” he writes.
He calls this search for similarities in differences “panoramic thinking.” Some will be mundane or trivial. Others can be powerful, opening your thinking to new possibilities. But it’s not something managers have been told to do – particularly through the vehicle of analogies and metaphors.
“How often do you hunt for ideas in unfamiliar disciplines? When did you last challenge yourself or your colleagues to do that?” he asks.
Too often we sense we should, but don’t, held back by constraints of time and resources, although artificial intelligence is certainly making such searching across disciplines easier to explore. “Challenging problems have minds of their own and don’t really care about your constraints,” he warns.
While you want a broad sweep of possibilities, he adds you must remain attentive to research and best practices in your home terrain. When you face a problem, start by inventorying what you know from your primary field. Sometimes that will be sufficient. But given the complexities and interdependencies of our modern world, often you will have to hunt further.
“In doing so, it’s important to remember that panoramic thinking is a dispositional or mindset tool,” he says. “You’re exploring other fields to find insights or ideas you otherwise wouldn’t encounter which – you hope – will help you address your problem. After finding those insights and ideas, they will need to be adapted.”
In many cases, they will only serve as warm up ideas. They won’t be practical. But even impractical ideas can move us along, nudge us out of our comfort zone. They spark curiosity. They encourage open-mindedness.
This may seem tricky at first, particularly his encouragement of analogies and metaphors. After all, metaphors seem the preoccupation of poets, not managers. But metaphors are actually an active part of everyone’s life. We use them all the time. The fox and hedgehog idea, for example, are easily grasped, potent metaphors. “Metaphors can open up new ways of looking at things, revealing hitherto unconsidered attributes and similarities,” he says.
He points to IKEA, where the metaphors originally came from complaining customers. They would refer to stores being a maze, where they were constantly getting lost. But the executives spent time fully exploring the metaphor before moving to straight aisles with shelving. Mazes can be fun, after all – an adventure.
“Now IKEA stores have even less offramps than they used to. You wind your way through a twisty path and see everything the store has to offer. Customers find the shopping experience immersive and entertaining and the incidence of unplanned purchases has increased,” he says.
When Frito-Lay was looking for a way to reposition Cheetos to include adults without losing the core strength built up as a kid’s snack, his consultancy was brought in to advise. They heard a range of metaphors: Eating Cheetos was like playing hooky, like having fun in the mud or, as one person put it, “an upraised middle finger to all rule makers who dictate how a proper and mature person should behave.”
The key insight was that Cheetos give adults a moment of escape from adult responsibilities. The resultant orange residue left on their fingers was a badge of cheeky mischievousness, which was eventually featured in the highly effective Orange Underground campaign.
His message: Be open minded – panoramic. Delve into metaphors and different disciplines for analogies that can unlock better answers to your problems.
Cannonballs
- After two male runners broke the two-hour barrier in the London Marathon and a woman broke the women’s record – all wearing a new high-performance shoe from Adidas – Toronto consultant Donald Cooper asks: What special, amazing high-end product, curated service or extraordinary user experience will you create for your target customers? And when will you start?
- Women and people from underrepresented backgrounds hold more than 40 per cent of C-suite roles in S&P 500 companies, but representation varies widely across roles, a new study finds. Fewer than one-quarter of CEOs and chief operating officers are from these groups, compared with 78 per cent of chief human resources officers and 70 per cent of chief communication officers.
- Leadership happens in imperfect moments, notes executive coach Dan Rockwell. Too often in such uncertain situations, however, leaders default to fear and caution, allowing preparation to become procrastination. Ask yourself: What’s the next step? What’s a low-risk way to test this idea? What would you do if you had certainty?
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.