Recently, I learned a lot about what it means to think again. First, I read Adam Grant’s latest book, Think Again, and it presented compelling arguments for thinking like a scientist. Second, I engaged in a fiasco of problem solving with my neighbours that, in my opinion, makes for a fantastic case study of rethinking work life scenarios and decisions for better outcomes. My story involves a very persistent woodpecker.
The Players
I think it is a good idea to understand who is involved in this story. Here are the players:
- The Horn Family: John, Michelle, and our two boys (seven and five years old)
- Our neighbours from the front half of the duplex – I’ll call them Carole, Sam, and The Grandma
- Our next door neighbour – I’ll call him Arthur
- John the Plumber
- The Woodpecker
The main opportunity for rethinking my assumptions, decisions, and actions was with our neighbours who live in the front half of the duplex. Carole was the person with whom I spoke the most.
The Context
As discussed above, our family lives in the back half of a duplex and our neighbours live in the front. They have lived in their half for over 20 years, and we moved into the back nearly five years ago. According to our strata plan, each household owns 50% of the building’s exterior and we “share” the yard and walkway space. In practice, the front yard is theirs and the backyard is ours.
Over the years we have rebuilt fences, exchanged holiday gifts, and solved household emergencies, such as burst pipes and raccoon attacks. It is important to note that, while our neighbours and my family have an overall positive relationship, there is one point of tension. Since moving in, we have spearheaded improvements to the homestead – painting fences, cleaning gutters, power washing walkways – and also explored opportunities to beautify and maintain our home by painting the exterior and replacing wobbly gates and fences. Our neighbours have consistently resisted any maintenance or improvements that are not essential or urgent, which has been frustrating from our perspective.
What happened
This story took place one month ago. It started when Michelle, my lovely wife who is her own person, noticed a rattling sound coming from our furnace and/or hot water tank. We looked and listened for a few days and could not pinpoint the source.
At this point, I texted Carole and asked if she could hear any rattling. She said no. I let her know that we would call a plumber to stop by and check things out. She said “okay”.
Over the next two weeks, as we awaited the plumber, the rattling persisted. It could often be heard first thing in the morning. Michelle and I texted Carole and asked what it sounded like on their side of the wall. We consistently received the following response: “we can’t hear anything.”
This response seemed ridiculous to us, as the sound was reverberating loudly throughout the house. Michelle even recorded the noise from inside as well as outside and shared it with the neighbours. No response.
At this point we were approaching Captain Picard “there are four lights” territory.
According to Grant, we were demonstrating “prosecutor” thinking and influencing tactics here – using data, we were trying to prove that their perspective was objectively incorrect with the intention of Carole and Sam agreeing to accept out point of view (or at least acknowledge we were both living in the same reality…).
Finally, the plumber came by to assess the issue. After a quick look at the hot water tank and a rundown about the noise from us, John the Plumber hypothesized that it was because of corroded pipes. He said that it was most likely not coming from our side of the wall.
Interesting.
Almost on queue, the rattling commenced. I called to John the Plumber, who has popped out to his van, and he rushed inside to listen firsthand to the noise. I called Carole and asked her if anyone was in the shower or using the bathroom. She informed me that, “not right now, but Sam just got out of the shower”. I enthusiastically responded, “Okay! It looks like we solved the problem! I’ll send over the plumber to look!”
John the Plumber headed to Carole and Sam’s half of the house and asked to look at the shower drain piping upstairs. This is where things got weird. Sam and Carole did not let him into their home. Not only would they not let him in to assess and, ideally, solve the rattling drain problem, but they also insisted that they “don’t even use the shower. We wash our hair in this bowl and use the downstairs sink!” Perplexed, John the Plumber moved on to his next job and so began a virtual cold war between the two halves of our duplex.
Over the next 10 days I consistently sent Carole text messages about the noise and called several times to inquire about what actions they were taking to address the issue. First, I was inquisitive and genuinely curious about what the heck was going on and why, after agreeing to have a plumber come by and check out the noise, she would not let him upstairs or would not let him come back and check it out on our return visit. Using Grant’s terminology, I think I was being part priest and part politician here; I was trying to persuade and influence Carole and Sam by presenting the value of seeing things my way and, if I’m being honest, I was also delivering quite a priest-like sermon about equity, responsibility, and neighborliness with the intention of winning them over to our side of the argument.
Upon reflection, this is the part of the story that makes me feel embarrassed. I was assertive bordering on aggressive in my communication and, from Carole and Sam’s perspective, I was probably being a bit of a bully.
One night, over a couple of whiskeys on my neighbor Arthur’s back deck, I vented to him about the rattling and Carole and Sam’s unwillingness to help us fix it (this is classic politician behavior, as I was trying to rally Arthur to my cause). I asked him to keep an eye on things from his side of the street and let me know what he noticed.
A few days later, while I was playing with my kids in front of our house, Arthur came running out his front door excitedly waving his phone. “John, I know what it is!” he exclaimed. “I am very certain that it’s a woodpecker! I heard it on your roof while I was in the bathroom this morning.”
Wow. Gamechanger.
And there was more.
“Also, Carole has a video of the woodpecker, but she doesn’t know how to bring it up to you,” said Arthur. “Of course she doesn’t,” I said. “I haven’t made this very easy for her and can totally see why she wouldn’t want to talk to us about it.”
Equipped with this new information, I hurried inside and shared it with Michelle. She was skeptical. John the Plumber had insisted that the issue was being caused by a corroded pipe. Carole and Sam were being super cagey about their upstairs bathroom. A woodpecker causing this ruckus seemed ridiculous if not nonsensical. We were still thinking like prosecutors and trying to destroy other peoples’ arguments, as opposed to rethinking the situation like scientists based on this new data.
The next time we heard the rattling I raced outside and investigated the new hypothesis. Sure enough, there it was. A f*cking woodpecker! Banging its stupid face against our metal chimney and sending reverberations through our side of the duplex because, for some reason, it was only choosing to bang the chimney that ventilated our side of the house.
Still skeptical, Michelle did not believe the story until I showed her a video and she witnessed the woodpecker banging its face on our chimney with her own eyes.
Sheepishly, I confirmed with Carole that we knew the noise was being caused by a woodpecker and I apologized on behalf of the family for our escalation and persistent bullying. We sent them an apology card and some cookies in an effort to mend fences.
After a few weeks, the woodpecker moved on and, to this day, we can observe it sharing its face pounding, noise making, gift with other houses along our street.
Lessons learned
Mitigate bias
In so many ways, I should have known better. After all, I oversaw three years of bias mitigation training, process improvement, and reinforcement as the head of organizational learning for Canada’s largest credit union. I learned that a plumber will often solve problems with plumbing related solutions, just like I would seek to diagnose organizational issues with questions about leadership, collaboration, or communication on teams, as opposed to processes or technology.
If I could do it over again, I would have asked the stakeholders in this scenario questions like, “if not plumbing, what else could be causing this noise?” or “what might be an unlikely cause of this noise?” or “what would my dad or what would a kid think was causing this noise?” While these questions might not generate a specific answer, they would raise my awareness and, perhaps, shift my perspective to embrace other points of view. Like Carole and Sam’s.
Slow down
Speaking of bias, I have a strong bias for action. The noise was annoying Michelle a great deal and, once, woke up our youngest kiddo from a deep sleep pretty early in the morning, which resulted in a day crankiness. In a world where things are moving too quickly and reckless decisions are made at pace every day, there are countless benefits of slowing down, thinking things through, and evaluating multiple options for what could cause a problem and, eventually, what could unfold as a solution.
If I could do it again, I would take several deep breaths before responding to Carole’s texts and I would write my responses, save them, let them sit overnight, and then review and, possibly, send them after they had some time to marinate. This approach would have staved off most of the tension that I created. Or, like, that the woodpecker created.
Rethink like a scientist
This is Grant’s primary conceit from Think Again. If more people thought like scientists instead of politicians, prosecutors, and priests then we would approach decisions with mitigated biases, learnings from experimentation, and more pragmatic and diverse points of view to inform our analyses.
If I could do it again, I would have explored a variety of options by asking questions like “what else might be possible?” or “even though this seems like a logical analysis, what else might be true?” and “what might be clouding our judgment or informing John the Plumber to make assessments the way he did?” I would have invited other perspectives, like Arthur’s, sooner to challenge my emerging assumptions.
Going forward, I know that whenever Michelle and I are faced with challenges, problems, or decisions in our work life, we will aspire to think like scientists and ask the all-important question: what would the woodpecker do in this scenario?