Bozo Sapiens by Michael and Ellen Kaplan

Husband and wife authors Michael and Ellen Kaplan wade into the familiar topic of human mental inadequacies with a well researched, uncomfortable, and sometimes tragic book, Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human.

The book is full of wisdom and bears a repeat read. I dog-eared many pages while reading the text. Sample quote: "Marxist historical theory is a usefully simple heuristic if your purpose is to start a dorm-room argument, gain tenure at a minor college, or establish a peasant insurgency." The authors state history is much more interesting if we seek to understand the biographies of the people, the many waves of changes, and the unanswerable questions.

A good approach to make sure thinking is well thought out is to forcefully argue for the opposite position. It is easy for all of us to be confident that we've received wisdom that is unassailable and ignore the rest of the inconvenient evidence. To illustrate the dangers of "motivated reasoning," the authors relayed the WWI story of a dying French general who spent 4 months planning a bold charge into the teeth of a well fortified German position.  The Germans got wind of the plan and they were well prepared with machine guns and ammunition. The French knew this but ignored the information. By the time the attack was finished, 1/6th of the French Army was dead.

In order for some really bad things to happen "the holes in the slices of Swiss cheese need to line up." Most of us are only aware of one slice and do not know of the existence of the other slices. We should not take comfort that an event is rare. It only takes ten days for a 1 in a million failure to happen in a company with a 100,000 people. It's why holding on to the handrail going up and down stairs is a good idea. Given enough attempts eventually a step will be missed and an injury will result.

You can also visit Michael Kaplan at his Bozo Sapiens Blog where you will find a daily calendar with historical examples of bozo sapiens in action. 

Biz Buzz with Gary Brown - Three lessons from Bozo Sapiens - 3 min.