Anticipating the Unimaginable

They say that hindsight is always 20/20, but I am still baffled about the reasons why we didn’t see the Great Recession coming. The only plausible explanation I can find is that we see only what we expect and want to see.

We all knew that the growth of the Internet and a global economy could only mean bigger market sizes and economic growth for infinity. We all knew that running our companies primarily to make profits and enhance shareholder value (not customer satisfaction) was the best way to do it. We all knew that America’s leadership in innovation would last forever. And we all knew that our overheated, overleveraged economy would last forever, and that the stock market would continue to set daily records, right?

Well, there’s just one problem: We have become masters at rearranging facts until they fit our own version of reality. We are lousy at thinking about the unimaginable, asking the “what if?” questions, and facing the harshness of reality. It’s a lot easier to envision the future we expect or want to see, and then believe that that’s “reality.”

We now know that a global economy means greater competition and consumer demand for lower prices and better quality; that tricky, risky financial products created by Wall Street lined its pockets with billions of dollars, but contributed to the collapse of our economy; that the insatiable greed of corporations for achieving quarterly profits while ignoring the wants and needs of customers sacrificed the long-term value of their organizations; and that America’s lack of focus and laziness has dimmed our drive for innovation.

But we just don’t want to think about the unthinkable, do we?

Blind to Icebergs

This is not a new phenomenon. If we took some lessons from history, we’d see that we don’t always learn from our past mistakes. For instance, there’s the classic case study of seeing only what you expect to see: the sinking of the Titanic.

You know, of course, that the Titanic was a luxury passenger liner that sank in the frigid Atlantic waters on April 14, 1912, after striking an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers and crew. Before that fateful night, many clues that could have warned of potential disaster were ignored because the mindset of the Titanic’s designers, builders, crew, and passengers was not on avoiding disaster, but on building, sailing, and riding in the world’s newest luxury ship.