Psychology for Silicon Valley: Mimetic Theory (Part 2)

Author

Laksh Raghavan
June 30, 2024

We discussed an important concept from Psychology - Mimetic Theory in Part 1 and how an entrepreneur can leverage it as a lens with which they can look at their business idea and also their employees.

In Part 2, we will explore how these insights can be leveraged by managers or executives/leaders to deal with the internal dynamics of their organization.

Table of Contents

Learning from the late Charlie Munger

Today's post is dedicated to Charlie Munger, who passed away late last year (Nov 28, 2023). Munger took a multidisciplinary approach when it came to understanding businesses outside in (for investment purposes).

Similarly, the Cyb3rSyn Newsletter takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding businesses - as an insider and provides leaders a fundamentally new way to think about the business to dissolve their “problems” and deliver effective outcomes.

Munger drove home to me that a multidisciplinary approach is required if maturity is to be effective.

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"If A is narrow professional doctrine and B consists of the big, extra-useful concepts from other disciplines, then clearly the professional possessing A plus B will usually be better off than the poor possessor of A alone. How could it be otherwise?"

- Charlie Munger

But, where do we start? Here is the fundamental organizing ethos as put forward by Munger:

1. You must both rank and use disciplines in order of fundamentalness.
2. You must, like it or not, master to tested fluency and routinely use the truly essential parts of all four constituents of the fundamental four-discipline combination (math, physics, chemistry, and engineering), with particularly intense attention given to disciplines more fundamental than your own.
3. You may never practice either cross-disciplinary absorption without attribution or departure from a principle of economy that forbids explaining in any other way anything readily explainable from more fundamental material in your own or any other discipline.
4. But when the step 3 approach doesn’t produce much new and useful insight, you should hypothesize and test to establishment new principles, ordinarily by using methods similar to those that created successful old principles. But you may not use any new principle inconsistent with an old one unless you can now prove that the old principle is not true.

- Charlie Munger

The best part is, you don't need years of study or expertise in every field to boost your effectiveness. Most areas have a handful of key principles that, once integrated into your thinking, can make a significant difference.

Even adopting straightforward insights from just one other field, such as psychology, can greatly enhance your leadership approach.

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This simple idea may appear too obvious to be useful, but there is an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere: 1) Take a simple, basic idea and 2) take it very seriously.

- Charlie Munger

The Cyb3rSyn Newsletter has a deliberate preference to more fundamental ideas and attempt to convey different ideas each week from various disciplines with the help of storytelling.

Let's begin with the real-world story of Captain Cook, which Munger referenced in one of his talks...

The leadership of Captain Cook

Scurvy was a deadly disease that affected many sailors during long voyages, causing symptoms such as bleeding gums, rotten teeth, etc. Captain James Cook (1728 - 1779) was one of the first explorers who managed to prevent scurvy among his crew by using a combination of methods, but mostly importantly by understanding psychology and fundamental human nature.

Back then, sailors cared about scurvy but didn't know about Vitamin C. Captain Cook, noticed that the Dutch ships had less scurvy than English ships on long voyages. He look for what the Dutch were doing differently and learned that they ate sauerkraut (which, as it turns out, has trace amounts of Vitamin C).

Cook faced the challenge of convincing his crew to eat the sauerkraut, which while was popular among the Dutch sailors was not very appetizing or popular among the English. Also, Cook didn't want to tell them that he was doing it in the hope it would prevent scurvy - because they might mutiny and take over the ship if they thought that he was taking them on a voyage so long that scurvy was likely.

He used a clever psychological trick to make them want it instead: he ordered that the sauerkraut be served only to himself and the officers, and forbade the common sailors from having any. This made the sauerkraut seem like a rare and valuable delicacy and soon the sailors were begging for a share of it. Cook then pretended to relent and allowed them to have some with some restrictions and then eventually allowed it with no restrictions, thus ensuring that they consumed enough of the food.

This is how Captain Cook used his understanding of the fundamental nature of human desire to prevent scurvy among his crew and complete his voyages with minimal casualties. As the saying goes, “You can't herd the cats, but you can move the milk".

A good leader understands the power of incentives and the psychological forces and desires at play not only internally with employees (as in the story above) but also externally with their customers. Complex systems require oblique interventions!

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If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Now, let’s dive into more stories and the implications of mimesis for managers/leaders of an organization…

How can I use it as a leader of an organization?

Great leaders are known to have tacit knowledge about the psychology and emotional disposition of their people. They “read the room” and use it wisely to create new models & continuously ride the dynamics of their organization.

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