Amateur mistake
What rules show group members they belong — and are you okay with that?
This is Andrew Benedict-Nelson, social change strategist and innovation educator. Each week, I share a question that you and your organization can use to find a new perspective on the toughest problems you face. Reply to the e-mail or comment on the site and we can talk about them together!
NOW FOR THIS WEEK’S QUESTION…
When new people starts working in your company or profession, they probably all make the same mistakes. These mistakes often involve rules that are not clearly explained or that are interpreted differently in the real world from the way they were learned in school. What rule of your world are newcomers most likely to break? What does this say about your social group and your effort to solve problems?
Every exercise I share in this space is designed to help you see and understand social norms, the unwritten rules of social interaction. This question helps you to see norms you may normally overlook by asking you to temporarily adopt the perspective of newcomers who are just beginning their journeys from “outsider” to “insider.” On the way to “insider” status, most of us make mistakes. Of course you yourself may have made such mistakes when you were first joining your organization or profession!
Whether we do it intentionally or not, we often treat these tricky rules as tests or social belonging. In almost every organization there are rules that “insiders” ignore entirely because they know no one cares about them. For example, in the Caravaggio painting above, the “insiders” are breaking rules of fair play while the naive “outsider” studies his hand. One can only imagine what would happen if he challenged their behavior.
As in Caravaggio’s Italy, callous and cynical responses to the rules can be treated as signs of sophistication and belonging. In other cultures, there are people who are happy to help amateurs overcome their mistakes and become members of the community. Reflecting on these responses can help you learn more about the environment in which you operate.
HOW TO DO IT
Start by putting yourself back in the shoes of an amateur. Perhaps walk around the environment where you work or picture yourself going through your first day. Talk to colleagues or peers about their own “beginner” experiences. You’ll probably find a few rules that people missed in those early days. Pick just one for this exercise; you can always go back and do it with another.
Now re-create in detail the experience of the “amateur mistake.” Was it all about forgetting an important rule — or taking too seriously a rule that everyone else ignores? Are there consequences for these mistakes, and how are they handled? Once people become “insiders” do they all avoid this mistake in the same way, or are there a variety of approaches?
Next, try to write out the rule that newcomers tend to break. You should do this if the “insider” behavior is all about ignoring the rules. For example, in many neighborhoods a person would expose themselves as an “outsider” by walking to the crosswalk when everyone else just runs across the street. In this case, the “rule” they are violating is “No one takes jaywalking laws seriously in this neighborhood.”
This next step is tricky. You want to figure out what the behavior around the “amateur mistake” tells you about the environment you’re in more generally. Your imaginary beginner’s experience may help here too. When you first learned to behave like “insiders” do, did anyone explain to you why it was so important to behave that way? Did it indicate any greater values or principles? Or perhaps it showed a degree of cynicism or accommodation of powerful interests? The significance of these kinds of behaviors varies widely, but try to form a sentence like, “The reason this really matters is…”
Finally, because all of these exercises are about solving social problems, consider what your analysis means for the problems that are most important to you. Would the world be better if we all acted like the “amateurs”? Or does the contrast between your old hands and the newcomers reveal a worldview you wish more people would adopt? Frequently, it will be a mix of both, so challenge yourself to come up with ways in which the behavior you discovered is an asset and a liability for solving your problem.
CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE?
Yup. Graduate school is a treasure trove of “amateur mistakes.” When I was applying to PhD programs, I figured I should take not just the GRE, but also the specialized GRE in history (my chosen field). But my undergraduate adviser told me that not only would my scores on the history exam be irrelevant, but that in fact I should not take it at all. It was not taken seriously, he said, and would suggest I did not have enough experience in the field to know that.
Since I had just begun my journey from “outsider” to “insider,” I felt good about learning this. I felt it showed that the ranks of academic historians I would soon join were too serious to care about some silly standardized test. But looking back, it also seems like one of a series of ways that academic history excluded people who did not know its peculiar morés, potentially excluding new perspectives from the field. This is relevant for any number of problems historians say they are trying to solve.
COOL, SO WHAT MAKES THIS WORK?
This question is an example of how to explore behavior around your problem using the limits dynamic. It’s one of six innovation dynamics I help people master to improve their critical thinking and build strategies for social change. Reply to this e-mail with your answer to the question and I’ll let you know what I think! Or learn more by visiting http://www.teachingsocialchange.com.
This is really helpful as I’m thinking about how to build our company. Thanks, ABN.