The guy who came to install the new septic tank had some advice for the President - who, sadly, wasn't there, so he gave it to me to pass on in case Mr. Obama ever comes to visit. "It's so basic," said the septic-tank guy: "he just needs to ship back the illegals, cancel all bonuses, reserve jobs for Americans, cut taxes, increase defense spending, bomb Iran. Bingo: problem solved."
The words "it's not that simple" were forming on my lips, but I knew you shouldn't alienate the man who controls the fate of your plumbing - so I steered the conversation around to the job at hand. "Say, why'd you mark the site for the tank way down the yard like that? Shouldn't you dig it nearer the house?" "It's not that simple," he retorted: "looks like you got boulder clay at the top of the yard. Site it there, your tank‘s likely to back up in a couple of years. Down the way seems to me more like gravel. I might be wrong; I won't know for certain 'til I get in the backhoe in, dig down six or seven feet."
The septic-tank guy was doing what we all do, revealing a basic human quality: the less we know about a subject, the more cocksure we are about our answers. In one study, people who were actually betting against the researchers in real money insisted, at 100-to-1 odds, that the potato originated in Ireland. It seems that the fewer close dealings we have with a topic, the more important it is to have a quick answer – even if that answer is wrong.
This isn't necessarily a sign of stupidity; it's just another way our thrifty brains save on scarce mental resources. After all, if you're certain of something, you can stop thinking about it - so, yeah, the capital of Colombia is Caracas. Of course I'm sure. Next!
When we actually know what we're talking about, though, we willingly admit complexity and uncertainty. It's a mark of expertise, not indecisiveness, to qualify your statements and avoid simple mantras for success. Tiger Woods knows there's more to the game than just keeping your head still, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson won't always fold on a 5-8 hand, and Warren Buffett freely admits that some of his investments were "real stinkers."
In fact, the more you know something, the more fascinating, even baffling, its complexities can be. The great Japanese painter Hokusai only felt he'd grasped the rudiments of his art when he reached the age of eighty. Leonardo da Vinci, someone you would think had ample reason to look back on a lifetime of achievement with pride, instead complained on his deathbed: "was ever anything actually done?"
Our basic problem with politics is that nobody is a true expert - in fact, nobody can be. The game of anticipating and shaping history is just too complicated to master, even in eighty years. The greatest leaders are humbled by its complexity: Lincoln himself said, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
As for the rest of us watching from the outside, the whole business of government is so far removed from what we know well that it quickly takes us into Caracas-in-Colombia territory. This is probably the reason we tend to judge candidates for office based on their apparent certainty, not their expertise. We reward "vision;" we hate "flip-flopping;" we seek the simple plan that will set all things right - despite knowing that no leader has ever succeeded with such a plan.
Liberal or conservative, urban news-junkie or benighted yokel, we all fall into this trap: having watched every episode of The West Wing doesn't really make you more expert at government than those people who type in capital letters and end every sentence with five exclamation marks.
What does, then? What sets apart the successful leader? At Dietrich Dörner's lab, experimental subjects get the chance to be benevolent despots of a fictional West African country, Tanaland. This computer-simulated world has some of the interlinked complexities of real life - human population, agriculture, trade, industrial development, ecology - but the rulers enjoy a freer hand and more resources than is usually the case. Even so, most of them fail abysmally, producing in only a few simulated years a catastrophic meltdown that makes Zimbabwe seem a paradise by comparison.
Some, though, succeed, maintaining stability and even improving things slightly. What's their secret? They act like the septic-tank guy - that is, when he's dealing with septic tanks. They make conditional plans, checking their assumptions step-by-step as they go. They describe their goals in detail, not as a universal vision. Most revealing is their choice of language: they use probabilistic terms like sometimes, in general, if, often, a bit, or on the other hand. The failed leaders prefer always, never, certainly, only, and must. Interesting: all those hang-tough terms from the leadership manual turn out to be a prescription for disaster.
Probabilistic, conditional thinking. Stepwise application of inputs. Simultaneous approaches on many levels. Recognition of complexity. These seem to be the secrets of successful rulers. So if the President ever does come to our house, I'll keep the septic-tank guy's advice to myself – but I might mention his actions as a model to follow. After all, the tank still works perfectly.
