Run the Experiment
The Science of Behaviour
Back in my University days, I was a dirty behaviourist.
Think Pavlov's Dogs & Skinner's Boxes. Behaviourism was the most hard-nosed and hard-hearted of approaches to Psychology. It didn't speculate. It didn't guess. Everything was figured out through observation.
My supervisor, David Leach, was the last real behaviourist in Australia. He had no patience for belief or emotion. He was only interested in results.
Every so often, I'd encounter the usual road blocks in writing my thesis and I'd reach out to David. I'd be confused as to which method to use or be unsure how to recruit participants. As a somewhat inward-focused little boy (age 24), these questions all had real gravity. I shared my tensions, thoughts, and ideas. I poured it out like a poet. I hoped for some insight.
Instead, no matter what I said or shared, David always responded with the same cheshire grin. Whatever the problem, his advice was always the same:
"Run the experiment."
Run the Experiment
David’s churlish impatience was often what I needed.
His invitation was to take whatever was rolling around in my head and test it in the world. “Experiment,” didn’t mean anything formal. It wasn’t a high-stakes randomised controlled trial. It was a low-stakes adventure. A probe, a prod. It could be as simple as sharing a sketch or making a phone call.
“Run the experiment,” meant to fling open the gates of the mind, letting the idea out and uncertainty in. Experimentation is an encounter. It’s recognising that ideas stand or fall in the real world, not in our minds.
Importantly, experiments help us overcome our feverish addiction to planning. To experiment is to acknowledge not only that we don’t know, but we can’t know (at least, not without an encounter).
Smart people (and organisations) don’t plan for a future they can’t control.
They experiment with whatever in the present they can control.
Difficult Conversations
Let’s make this practical.
A common issue many of my clients face is a lack of difficult conversations within their teams.
Often what they mean by this is: “There are things I believe that I have not shared, or made explicit, and don’t feel comfortable sharing or making explicit.”
In short, they often haven’t even tried to have a difficult conversation.
So, I grin a cheshire grin and say: “Run the experiment.”
Of course, there are truly difficult conversations that require listening, empathy, and nuance to navigate effectively. However, I reckon for every actual difficult conversation, there are two easy conversations we refuse to have because we mistakenly believe they will be difficult.
So, run the experiment. Share the view, say the dangerous thing, or suggest the idea. You might find that the result of that experiment is not a difficult conversation but a “Yep, I agree. What should we do about it?”
Good result, I reckon.
