TBM 380: “But We Have To Try Something!”

You’ve likely heard the saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, and expecting different results.” Humans have an intuitive sense of what scientists call attractor states, the concept that systems tend to revert to the same patterns unless external factors change. We’ve captured this intuition in all sorts of sayings:

“History repeats itself.”

“You reap what you sow.”

“If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

“Don’t expect new flowers if you keep planting the same seeds.”

Our intuition for attractor states is complicated by the fact that we are narrative-producing creatures. When it comes to asking what to reap, what to change, or what new seeds to sow, we jump to convenient, coherent-to-us answers. Nassim Taleb coined the term’ narrative fallacy’ to describe our tendency to weave neat causal stories after the fact, but the concept is well-worn. 

Plato went further, suggesting that we crave what he called a “noble lie” (gennaion pseudos): a story so sweeping and coherent that it can hold a society together, even if it distorts reality. Anyone who has lived through company layoffs and the ensuing narrative spinning can relate.

Our intuitive sense that the present is “held in place” by certain factors must be balanced against our tendency to frame narratives around those factors. On the one hand, we sense, “We’re stuck and need something to change.” On the other hand, we reach for neat stories like, “We just need to hire someone who’s done this before” or “We just need to visualize the work and reduce work in progress!”

Companies pour billions into these narratively pleasing solutions, only to end up back where they started, this time with added skepticism and weariness. Granted that may not be a problem for the people who make those decisions (picking the safe, narratively persuasive option is a wise career move, and scapegoating is a time-honored political tradition). Still, the outcome leaves a lot to be desired.

Why is this important?

Many systems and complexity-informed thinkers become bogged down in selling complexity, uncertainty, systems thinking, and the like. Meanwhile,  most people in an organization are looking for a solution and path forward, not a lecture about “the system”. They rightfully see outcomes as a result of collection actions and behaviors, so they are really wondering what you should do, not necessarily think.

They also want to be a co-author of the solution and the narrative.

“OK, you with all of your theories, what CAN we do here?” “What are you proposing?” “What will it look like?” “Why is this the right choice?” “And what is the story behind that? What’s the narrative?”

Or put another way:

• We have an intuitive sense of attractor states.

• We sense that something must change.

• We create a simplified narrative when deciding what to change. It’s hard, but you can short-circuit this in yourself and others.

• But whatever you dream up has to fill the same void:

  • For a narrative

  • For a connection between action and effect

A basic example.

I was chatting with a leader recently who was feeling a lot of pressure to take bold steps to make her team “more predictable”. Her manager was hinting that they expected her to lay off some people. But something felt off. She didn’t really think individual changes would make a big difference. She could imagine the same issues creeping back again and again, regardless of who was involved. However, she struggled to explain this to her manager, who was caught in a form of narrative fallacy (they were both relatively new, and seemed eager to spin a story involving old hiring habits). It sounded too theoretical.

In practice, she wasn’t going to win by challenging her manager’s narrative head-on. To her boss, she framed it simply: “We’re putting in place practices that will make risks visible earlier and commitments more reliable. I’ll hold myself accountable by checking in on these measures every two weeks.”

And then she worked with her team to shift the narrative around what “predictability” really meant. Together, they created a shared language that made it safe to escalate risks early, rather than absorbing them. She also began exploring with her engineering counterparts the hidden incentives that pushed engineers to overfill their plates.

This reframing achieved two things simultaneously: it provided her manager with a story they could support (”the team is building stronger habits for predictability”), while also creating space within the team to experiment with more complexity-aware practices. It wasn’t about rejecting the narrative fallacy outright, but about co-authoring a better story.