Kill the Savior Geniuses
I’ve been chewing on the same infuriating question since before the holidays. I knew I needed to solve it, and yet it resisted all attempts, and I churned.
I tried to think this question out. It would not be thunk into submission.
I tried to diagram it. It sneered in the face of my circles and arrows.
Thus affronted, I pulled out the big guns: I threw math at it. I was left holding empty Google Sheet boxes, and a clue. That unsettlingly blank spreadsheet showed me that the root problem was not missing answers, but missing data. I spent a couple of hours pulling data and Ahoy land! By the third month’s data, the pattern was clear and the answer so obvious it did not bear writing down.
And so I started to wonder: is missing information the root of all unsolvable problems?
Not sure what to optimize for? Interview more users, find out what’s important to them.
Can’t decide between Option A and Option B? A/B test it,and let the data reveal the answer.
Machine learning algorithm not accurate enough results? Give it more data. Interesting side note: although I’m mostly a UX advisor these days, I decided to do an AI certificate on a lark (highly recommend Wharton AI program). One concept in particular seemed surprising: the data matters more than the algorithm. Students want to hear that the algorithm conquers all but the fact is that a middling algorithm with more data beats the best algorithm with weak data.
In each case, one might expect that some sort of super intelligence (human or otherwise) is going to solve the problem with furious scribbling on a whiteboard, when in reality, the data makes the answer obvious.
Why do we struggle with this?
We fear that we’re giving up some of our power. If we’re going to let the facts decide, it might decide something we don’t agree with. That’s especially hard for big visionary thinkers and Enneagram 8’s, but you’ve got to stay ruthlessly focused on getting to the truth. It helps to redefine the way in which you are powerful: not by pulling answers out of thin air, but by carefully framing the questions that will get you there. It may also help to remember that a good researcher generally doesn’t ask the subject what the answer is either – you don’t see medical researchers asking those afflicted with a disease how they ought to cure it – a good researcher, rather, uses interviews and data to learn as much as can possibly be learned about the problem so that the solution will make itself obvious.
It feels like a delay. You might have to ask another department for data, conduct interviews, manually pore through spreadsheets - none of which feels as fun as the big reveal. It’s true, gathering data is often unsexy work and takes a bit of time. It’s scrubbing spreadsheets and conducting interviews. You want to rush through and get to that moment of triumph when you finally get to perceive the result of that work and all of the anxiety of not knowing is resolved. But this is not the path to success as you will be tempted to jump to an ill-fitting conclusion in order to be rid of the dreadful feeling of Not Knowing. But take heart: it doesn’t take that long in the perspective of the entire project, and certainly doesn’t take nearly as long or cost nearly as much as going down the wrong path.
We want the glory for ourselves. There seems to be an uneasiness at times that letting the information reveal the answer tarnishes the individual glory of having solved it. This is insecure thinking. A math problem with too many variables and not enough known values is unsolvable - the only option is to guess. That’s not a failing of the mathematician, it’s a fact. A strong problem solver maps out the problem and then goes searching for the known values that make the problem solvable.
At the risk of echoing every self-help book on the shelf, the best thing we can do is get out of our own way. How do you feel when you have a problem you haven’t solved yet? I was feeling frustrated, a little ashamed that I had not yet solved it, and also a trifle exhilarated with the impending prospect of voila! solving something tricky and triumphing over confusion. That’s all probably natural but at its root, each of those feelings stems from the underlying suspicion that real leaders are savior geniuses who look at problems and instantly know the answer through some sort of instantaneous brilliance.
There is a simple test for discerning whether a person is operating in savior genius mindset, or truth collector mindset: when thinking about the problem, are they picturing the joy or relief of it being solved? Or are they anticipating sharing their miraculous conclusions with suitably impressed colleagues or clients, like an artist pulling the drape off a finished masterpiece with a flourish.
It is not about the big reveal and looking like a magician — it is about getting to the truth, and allowing the truth to reveal the solution. It’s not that there is no creativity or inspiration in problem solving. The spark of genius, however, that little kernel of inspiration, is earlier in the process: in the definition of the framework that describes the problem, not necessarily the solving of it.
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