Jim Whitt, Contributing Editor

You Can’t Outfox the Hedgehog

Wherever I’m speaking I’ll ask the audience, “How many of you want to reach your full potential?” Every hand goes up. Now, I believe they mean it. They really want to. But I also know that when most of them walk out of the room, they will continue to do what they’ve been doing, and that means they will continue to live far below their full potential. Why? I think part of the answer can be found in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great: “We d on’t have great schools because we have good schools. We don’t have great government principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good ­— and that is their main problem.” He summarizes it in one sentence: “Good is the enemy of great.”

It’s just too easy to be good. We talk about living the good life. That’s code for complacent. We live in the most affluent time in history. We complain about the heat while we live in air-conditioned homes, drive air-conditioned cars and work in air-conditioned buildings. We eat out more than we cook at home. Life is good — too good. Too good for us to even think about great. So how do we go from good to great? How do we climb the ladder to the top of our potential? It’s simple. You have to build a new schema. Schema is the root word of schematic. A schematic is a structural or procedural diagram. Your schemas are constructed from your past patterns of behavior. They are intricately constructed neurological pathways through which your thoughts travel. Those pathways have been constructed to steer you around the roadblocks of pain and send you full speed ahead to the destination of pleasure. If it feels good, do it. If it doesn’t, avoid it. The good life. Ah, but good is the enemy of great.

You come to the fork of your neurological pathway and one road leads to great, but the other continues down the path of good. You want to take the path to greatness but you can’t. The problem is you’re addicted to the pain and pleasure, which confine you to the path of good. The ruts are cut too deep. You lack the motivation to crawl out of those ruts, so you just keep going down the good road.

We’re actually designed to do great things. The human mind has put men on the moon. You were created for a purpose and uniquely equipped to fulfill it. You have to know what that purpose is in order to build a new purpose-based schema. Purpose establishes the destination on the road to great. It takes time. You’ve spent a lifetime building your good schema (reward and punishment, pain and pleasure). Once your purpose-based schema becomes stronger than your reward-and-punishment-based schema, you become intrinsically motivated. Studies show that our productivity and effectiveness increase by as much as 40 percent whenever we are intrinsically motivated. You have to be intrinsically motivated to go from good to great. As your purpose-based neurological pathways are strengthened, you start crawling out of your good (pain and pleasure) ruts. You start climbing the ladder to reaching your full potential. Now you’re on the path from good to great.

What I’ve just described to you is not complex; it’s very simple. It’s what Jim Collins would call a “hedgehog concept.” Borrowing a page from Isaiah Berlin’s essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Collins points out that even though the fox is more cunning and clever, the hedgehog successfully thwarts the fox’s attacks simply by rolling into a ball of sharp spikes. The fox fails using a myriad of strategies. The hedgehog succeeds by doing exactly the same thing repeatedly. Collins applies the lesson of the hedgehog to life and business. In a nutshell, simple beats complex every time.

As a consultant, I’ve observed that people look for complex solutions to simple problems. Why? Maybe it’s because they can’t believe there is a simple answer. If the solution is so simple why doesn’t everyone do it? Why didn’t someone figure it out a long time ago? I think part of the problem is that we don’t distinguish the difference between simple and easy. I’ve discovered that simple is not necessarily easy. So when presented with simple solutions that require time, money and effort or maybe even blood, sweat and tears, we opt for the fox’s approach. Try something else.

Collins notes that we live in “a world overrun by management faddists, brilliant visionaries, ranting futurists, fear mongers, motivational gurus,” etc. The reason these “flavor-of-the-month” approaches proliferate is because like the fox, humans believe there has to be an easier way. An example all of us can relate to is losing weight. If you want to lose weight you eat less and exercise more. That’s the hedgehog approach. Simple ­— but not easy. So we latch onto the latest fad diet and exercise program. And fail. Then try another. And fail. Then try another. And fail. Been there, done that.

Losing weight is the result of behavior modification — the most painful process known to the human race. Behavior modification requires motivation, and that takes us back to my hedgehog concept. It is so simple that it can be condensed into one sentence: Without a purpose our only motivation is reward and punishment. It’s simple but it’s not easy. So rather than engage in the process of building a new purpose-based schema ­— which requires an investment of time and effort — we consciously seek more complex solutions while subconsciously hoping they will be easier. That’s why we’re suckers for the flavor of the month, like the commercial I heard on the radio the other day pitching the “spend your way to wealth” system.

Like the hedgehog that wins out over the fox, history has proven that simple triumphs over complex. Princeton professor Marvin Bressler offered this observation to Collins concerning the hedgehog concept: “You want to know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.” They’re people who take seemingly complex principles and condense them into simple concepts. For example, Einstein’s theory of relativity, e = mc 2 — now that’s simple.

A good friend (and client) of mine emailed me after hearing me speak at a convention recently. He explained that he has heard me speak several times, has read all of my books and reads all of my articles, but when he heard me speak this last time the light bulb came on. He “got it.” What he’s experiencing is a schema shift. That’s why I keep preaching the hedgehog concept of purpose-based motivation. That’s why you keep reading about it in this column. And if you’re in the audience at some meeting where I’m speaking, you’ll hear about it again. It’s not complex. It’s simple — but it’s not easy.

Please e-mail comments to Jim Whitt at jim@whittenterprises.com.

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