The Dangers of Being Right (a lot)

[IKE]

Many persons withing FIRST are quite strong academically. This can be demonstrated by an abundance of top rated schools, high percentages going on to further education, and numerous other examples. A large part of this is the persons pursuit of knowledge and/or being able to score high on tests and thus provide the "right" answers to the challenges we see. I would imagine that if you were to do a statistical analysis, many FIRST persons and those on CD would be above average in most academic metrics. These persons are often "right" when asked questions that have a right answer.

So you might be thinking, "Congratulations captain obvious. We already know this." Well, there is a huge risk with being "right" a lot. The risk is that you build a general confidence (or paradigm) where you think you are always "right". This attitude can be very dangerous and off-putting. It is most notably showcased in philosophical debates wherre there is not "a" right answer, but possibly many depending on small details of your goals and targets.

I bring this up because FIRST is intentionally vague in a few key areas that often bring forth much debate (as it should). I won't reharsh these areas at length as there are basic threads that sprout up every year (roles of a mentor, COTS, GP, competitiveness...). These tend to be philosophical areas with many "right" answers (and many wrong ones too) I personally think that is one of the greatest things about FIRST is the choose your own adventure aspect of it.

Back to the meat of this thread. To those of you that are often right (+90% of the time). Be careful! It is a heavy burden. Not only can this blind you to others opinions, but it can also blind others to your knowledge base. This I will call the assumed expert position. Others may come to you for your ideas rather than trying to form ideas of their own. Others may assume you are always (huge difference between always and often), and in turn endanger themselves when you give an innaccurate piece of advise (i.e. someone coming to me for grammar advice or IKE said you can join different metals, so that is why I tried to weld aluminum to steel).

So how to handle it. (I am inserting my opinion here) Be open to others opinions. Even if they are wrong, they may spark some greater solutions. Understand the difference between philosophical and technical questions (how should we organize our team vs. will this motor lift this arm in 2 seconds). Let Philosophical be that, and help state teh pros and cons of those positions. Technical questions can usually be answered in 1 of three ways. Feasible (or within the rules), Not feasible (breaking the rules), and Feasible, but I would advise a "better" way (gray interpretation that may rely on an equally gray interpretation from inspectors). State your confidence level on things you may be uncertain about (I think this weld looks good, but I am not a welding expert).

Anyway, feel free to use this thread to showcase examples, debate, or tell me I am full of it and you are right 110% of the time...

P.S. This was one of my Favorite Interview answers given to me by a college student when asked, "What is your greatest weakness?" he followed up with, "I am almost always right" which I followed up with my typical response, "How has this proven to be a weakness?" I use that to seperate the B.S from those with actual insight. If you ever plan to use the "I'm a perfectionist, or I am too hard a worker" be prepared to get grilled if they are an expereinced interviewer. Those can be real faults, but most interviewees use them as reverse compliments to themselves, and thus fail my interview process (by fail I mean I find a better candidate, so everybody but 1 ends up failing).

[Don Wright]

Thanks for the nice write-up. I think this is an interesting point that is not only often overlooked, but not even considered.

I also would like to add a small part to this "insight"...

Always being right also makes it difficult later on in your career. Especially when you enter discussions or during audits. When we have this mindset from school that there is a "right" answer, and it is best to get the right answer (and to put on top of it the above notion that you have been "right" a lot in your life), then it is often difficult to open yourself to critique and criticism at times when it is necessary to do so.

I often see very smart people completely close up or get defensive when they are being audited (for ISO certification, for example) or when there is a design review and their design is being examined.

It takes a lot for an intelligent person, who has been "right" most of their life, to open their minds and accept others input or opinion about how they aren't "right"...even thought that maybe they are... But, by closing themselves off so quickly, you lose a lot of valuable input that will ultimately make their idea/design/whatever better in the end.

[DonRotolo]

Excellent post.

It is important to be able to recognize the difference between a black and white situation, and a grey one.

Black & white has a right answer. 2+2=?
Grey doesn't. Red is the best color to mark danger.

Many engineering types have a hard time with grey questions, as they run contrary to our training, which tells us there is always an optimum answer.

If you want to be a know-it-all, then either really know it, or do the research to make sure you're right before answering. Being right a lot can make you overconfident. Again, beware.

I wish I had known this when I started my career. It took 15 painful years to figure this out. I'm OK now...

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

Excellent post.


Black & white has a right answer. 2+2=?

5?

The "Red" to signify danger always cracked me up. We were trying to optimize an FEA design so that there was equal stress distribution throughout the part (no-over designed regions). We did a really good job distributing the stress, but on an FEA plot this appears to be more red, not less (even though the scale was lower). I showed this to management very proud of my accomplishment only to get it rejected as "too much red". I rescaled the plots and then everyone was happy....

[Rick TYler]

From Broadcast News, one of my favorite movies:

Paul Moore: It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room.

Jane Craig: No. It's awful.

[EricVanWyk]

I started keeping an internal log of how often I publicly announce "Boy, I screwed that one up good!" after dealing with a "perfect" boss. Its been really helpful in re-calibrating, and I believe the attitude adjustment has made me more able to reconsider things.

[Bob Steele]

Be careful

Those that think they are the smartest people on the planet usually aren't

The more you understand... the more you learn...
the more you learn the more you understand that you really don't know much of anything.

As a teacher I can tell you that much of the time the kids that really think they are smart.... are NOT the ones I would hire....or trust in a quick decision.

There are ALL kinds of smart....
book smart
mechanical smart
emotional smart
politically smart... (not sure about this one though....)
street smart.

Recognize your strengths and your weaknesses .... because if you think you don't have any weaknesses you are wrong.

The world needs all sorts of people...
celebrate the diversity....

[GaryVoshol]

If everyone else in the world is an idiot, you may need to recalibrate your idiotness scale.

And I still gotta spread more rep before giving to Ike again.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

And I still gotta spread more rep before giving to Ike again.

Yeah, me too.

[Akash Rastogi]

Something my brother always says

"The more you know, the more you know you don't know s***t"

A little vulgar but it gets the point across.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

Those that think they are the smartest people on the planet usually aren't

One of our engineers teaches a class on systems engineering to local teams. He always asks the question "How many people are the smartest person on the planet".

The point being that you can always find someone smarter then you to review your work, unless you happen to be the 1 smartest person on the planet.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

One of our engineers teaches a class on systems engineering to local teams. He always asks the question "How many people are the smartest person on the planet".

The point being that you can always find someone smarter then you to review your work, unless you happen to be the 1 smartest person on the planet.

Very true, but 90% of drivers are above average drivers....

As far as checking your work goes (great point), here is an interesting example. If the average factory worker assembling a car is 99% effective (does his job right 99 times out of 100), and it takes 1000 people to put a car together, then there would be 10 problems/car. The industry average is around 1.2 issues/car (last I checked the IQS scores a couple years ago). That either means that everyone is 99.9% effective (some are), or ..... There are people checking their work. Like Joe said a second set of eyes is great!

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

One of our engineers teaches a class on systems engineering to local teams. He always asks the question "How many people are the smartest person on the planet".

I used to use a similar line with some of the research and technology groups with which I worked. I would ask them "how many of you are the smartest people in your field?" Invariably, about half the hands in the room would go up.

Until the day when one particularly bright bulb in the back of the room looked around at all the raised hands, and responded "I don't know about being the smartest person in my field, but I am dang sure I am the smartest person in this room!"

-dave



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[Kims Robot]

This is a great discussion, and I've been in a weird position with this for years. I think a lot of people at first glance/discussion will think that I always have to/want to "be right" or that I always "think I'm right", because to be honest, I tend to debate a lot. But Ive thought about this a lot in the last few years, because Ive never really felt like I was the smartest or felt like I was always right, so I was trying to figure out why I come across that way.

What I realized is that embedded deep in me is the drive to always reach higher, do better, and get others to reach their potentials. What that has caused for me with my FIRST team is that I am constantly pushing and challenging everyone on my team to do more, be better, live up to potentials they may not have realized they had. But often my way of doing it is challenging their ideas, asking questions, and forcing them to think harder, which I think sometimes comes across as me "thinking Im right" or "thinking that I have a better answer". When in reality, I likely dont know the answer, I might just have an instinct that a better answer is out there, and I want them to find it. So now I am trying to find more effective ways to make my intentions clear and hope that I dont get caught in the stereotype of "those that think they are always right" .

So that was my story, I find it really interesting that so many mentors have chimed in here. So many of us have learned the hard way, or had time to introspect. I know when I was in high school I would always say I was smart enough to know that I didnt know much of anything, but I think in reality I always felt like I knew so much more than the next guy/girl. I've learned since then that we all have our own areas of specialty, and we all must rely on eachother. Im certainly not a mechanical engineer, so I will rely on my mechE's for the detailed calculations, Im not a programmer, so I need to rely on the programming team to even make the robot drive left... etc!

But the definite best advice here is really learn to know your strengths and weaknesses. Use your strengths for everything they are, learn to develop what weaknesses you can, and make some really good friends who can fill in the weaknesses that just arent worth working on as you will be so much more productive focusing on what you are good at, but knowing what you dont know/arent good at... :-D

[JaneYoung]

Nice thread topic, Ike.

I'm going to think about it for a few days and read each of the posts a few times.

What I'm thinking about at the moment is narrow thinking. Is that one of the dangers of being right (a lot)? Also, to go with narrow thinking, is inflexibility. Would that also be one of the dangers?

This is a great thread for a pot of coffee and some donuts.