Part III

For those us who have children, you might be interested in the following example, set in an educational context.

Let's say little Johnny has been taught a new and effective way to learn certain content he was taught in school. However, because little Johnny has been so used to 'memorizing' the content, rather than 'understanding' the content and let's just say that 'memorizing' has served him well in the past in terms of test scores.

Now, given that he's been so used to (path of least resistance) 'memorizing' and that this technique has brought about good results (positive emotions due to parents' acknowledgements or his class mates now look up to him); what are the chances little Johnny will take up this new and effective technique?

Well, certain things must happen. For a start, this new technique ought to be more fun and exciting (positive emotions). It must allow him to do even better during tests (better outcome which reinforce the positive emotions). It must give him more confidence (further reinforcement of the positive emotions). Besides, it must be 'easy' to apply or else he'll go with the path of least resistance and fall back to the old style (if in doubt, try brushing your teeth from this moment on using your other hand - meaning if you've always used your right hand, now use your left - unless of course you are ambidextrous, then it would be easy). And unless parental support is there to help little Johnny adopts this new method, it is very likely he will revert to his previously known technique, where he is comfortable, good at, and even brings about good results.

So, as one can see from the above, there are a whole host of factors that need to be in place to help the child learn better. And besides, bearing in mind that as Maslow said, "he that is good with the hammer tends to think everything is a nail". Hence, anyone who's been in the corporate world these days would readily recognise that we'll need more than one strategy to succeed, or in my words, to win. We simply cannot rely on just one strategy that might have worked well in the past to continue to perform just as well.

To paraphrase Einstein, to tackle new level of challenges, we'd need a different level of thinking. Put it differently, with the current level of thinking, we cannot hope to solve a more challenging level of problem. So, to get little Johnny to adopt the 'new' technique would require so many factors to be in placed, can you imagine the multitude of factors that must be in place for us, adults, to adopt a 'new' strategy?

Of course, this is further complicated by the structure of the systems in which we operate in (supporting environment), the number of times (or even years or decades) that using the 'old' technique had brought about good or even promising results (experience), how that made us feel about ourselves or how others saw, felt, or thought about us (positive emotions), and of course how we have become 'programmed' to think or execute in a particular manner (path of least resistance).