Avoiding the Stupidity of Quick and Dirty Thinking

• A quick solution appeals to our sense of immediate gratification. But, with few exceptions, quick and dirty thinking creates a false sense of truth and can be outright dangerous, especially when a Tectonic Decision is at hand.

• Quick and Dirty Thinking is one of the Seven Deadly Stupidities.

Remember those kids who were the smartest in the class as you grew up? Well, they still think they are the smartest and one of their tricks is heuristics.

Hey, I found a shortcut or rule of thumb those ordinary thinkers couldn’t figure out.

This only metastasizes the heuristic problem into something worse. Those smart people are now in positions like Bossman or the OceanGate investors and want fast answers and results.

I don’t care that three of the first six customers liked the product enhancement, it does not justify the multi-million-dollar investment to roll it out to the other 1,000 customers.

Don’t fall into the trap of going through the motions in a high-stakes interview. Make yourself interesting. Avoid standard questions that every interviewee will ask. Do your homework well in advance. Know everything about the people you will be seeing and spend the time to learn the industry.

Being a boring and predictable interviewee who takes no chances with answers is a straight line into a stupidity trap.

Knowledge is power. Before going into an interview, get some knowledge, get some power, calculate your approach, and avoid stupidity. 

As a college student looking for my first job after my upcoming graduation, I researched the company I wanted to work for, talked to current and former employees and industry competitors, and found out everything I could about the business. I went through several days of brutal interviews and a battery of exams administered by an outside psychological testing company. I was asked to come into the office for a meeting with the big guys. I could not have been more excited.

The meeting started out well. “We like you and want to offer you the job.” The compensation was more than I could have imagined, and the company’s brand was stellar. I was on my way.

As we were wrapping up (I tried not to talk once they said, “you’re hired,”), there were some closing comments.

“We want to discuss a few things with you.” Wow, were they going to make me a vice president or something right away?

The big guys proceeded to tell me that for my first year or two, I would not be working on any cool stuff, just following people, helping them, and learning on the job. In other words, I was going to be getting coffee for meetings and not participating in any high-level strategy discussions.

I was crushed and, a week later, turned down the formal job offer. It’s unfortunate that the last data point collected in my anti-quick-and-dirty-approach led to my decision: the job was not a fit. I did not realize it then, but this was one of my first Tectonic Decisions.

On a larger scale, don’t become a trailblazer in an industry that puts people’s lives at risk. OceanGate’s refusal to get Titan classed or even run through basic materials testing is a cautionary tale. If you want to break new ground, quick and dirty does not work in an industry with a rigid safety framework and where lives are at risk.

Be like weight-loss champ Bradford and four-minute-miler Bannister and less like the hundreds of thousands of people who lined up for their Sensa refunds. Creating real solutions to problems is much different than getting the quick fix.