Wearing Shorts, the Reeves Paradigm and Cucumber Syndrome

In business (and life) self-confidence is essential. Making us more likely to take on opportunities free from the fear and anxiety of self-doubt, simultaneously building self-motivation and resilience. But, when this overconfidence in our ability and resulting judgements are greater than the objective accuracy of those judgements, it can become a real problem. Leading us to make bad decisions, strategic mistakes and destroy previously good working relationships.

With so much under researched information freely available today across the internet and social media, a lot of which is little more than opinion produced by under qualified influencers, it is easy for us to gain a thin veneer of knowledge but little depth of understanding. Something which can lead us to believe we have now become an ‘expert’ on any given subject.

However, knowing a little about everything, but not enough to be useful can be dangerous in business. Leading some to turn away from the guidance and support of subject experts that possess the real depth of knowledge and experience that is required to consistently make the right decisions.

This cognitive bias is often referred to as The Dunning-Kruger effect, first explained by Justin Kruger and David Dunning in 1999. Where inaccurate self-assessment can lead to bad decisions but also inhibit people from realising their shortcomings and opportunity to improve themselves.

Past experiences can add to this. Just because something worked well in the past, does not guarantee that it will going forward, especially if the principle it was founded on, or socio-economic conditions have changed. Often referred to as ‘miscalibration’ this can again lead to making unjustifiable decisions based on personal predictions rather than current empirical evidence and best practice models.

The Reeves Paradigm, conceived by the American advertising executive and pioneer of television advertising Rosser Reeves adds to this, where he asked us to consider this simple statement: “when it is sunny, I wear shorts – therefore if I wear shorts it will be sunny”. Think about it.

A real-world example of what can happen when overconfidence and miscalibration combine is illustrated in ‘Cucumber Syndrome’. Identified by a certain franchised hamburger fast-food outlet. What the chain found was that when they first opened a new outlet the franchisee was heavily dependent on the company’s experts to help them introduce the business model, recruit, establish the outlet, build sales and revenues. Listening intently at regular meetings with company experts and adhering to the procedures set out, in every detail.

With experience building and revenues increasing there would then come a time when the franchisees confidence grew to a point where they believed they knew as much, maybe more than the company and its experts. One of the frequent warning signs of this developing overconfidence would be when the franchisee asked the question “why don’t we put cucumber instead of gherkins in the burgers.” A warning sign to the company to keep an even closer eye on the franchisee to prevent them deviating from their proven model that may otherwise result in cucumber in the burgers, changes to packaging, signage, advertising, recruitment and more.

This overconfidence is something we need to be aware of in ourselves and certainly something many in business, especially professional advisers will have experienced from their clients, but can be avoided if we remain more self-conscious and look out for the warning signs.

Photography courtesy of Teksomolika on Freepik