Are you a fox or a hedgehog? That is one of the questions Dominic Cummings appears to have been asking UK civil servants to consider when he recommended they read Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner’s book Super-Forecasters: The Art & Science of Prediction. Drawing on the findings of the Good Judgement Project (a US intelligence funded initiative started in 2011 by the psychologist Tetlock), Super-Forecasters seeks to set out some basic rules and guidance to help individuals, organisations and Governments better predict what is likely to happen next. Working alongside journalist Gardner, Tetlock has written an accessible guide to not just economic and political forecasting, but also to the skills required for clear-thinking in an increasingly complex world.
The fox and the hedgehog question was first posed by Isaiah Berlin in 1953. Berlin suggested that the fox knows many things, while the hedgehog knows one big thing. Tetlock and Gardner contend that hedgehog thinkers are more convincing and get more airtime because they have a rock-solid confidence in their belief. Unfortunately, however, hedgehog thinkers are also statistically more often than not wrong, in-part because they lack the self-reflection and instinctive uncertainty of the fox. As Robert McNamara, initial hedgehog-like advocate for the Vietnam War, admitted; “The foundations of our decision making were gravely flawed. Even the best and brightest need to be challenged.”
Alongside intellectual challenge Tetlock and Gardner call for clear, unambiguous language in decision making. The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion is given as an example of when misinterpretation led to disastrous outcomes. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff and intelligence community briefed President Kennedy that the plan had a ‘fair chance of success’. The officer who prepared the briefing later said that by ‘fair chance’ he had in mind odds of 3 to 1 against success. Following the failure of the invasion the intelligence analyst Sherman Kent proposed statistical definitions to describe possible outcomes, with 100% as certain, 93% as almost certain, 75% as probable and so on. It took the failure to discover WMDs in Iraq over 40 years later for Kent’s proposals to be adopted, but now they form part of US intelligence briefings.
Super-Forecasters also gives thought as to how teams and leadership styles need to adapt to best position themselves in the face of changing information and circumstances. As the authors put it “how can you maintain the decisiveness of leadership if you are keeping an open mind?” Primarily it is a question of making a clear distinction between deliberation and action, whilst maintaining a willingness to change. Tetlock and Gardner draw heavily on military thinking, quoting the Israeli Defence Forces’ slogan; “plans are merely a platform for change” and the Wehrmacht’s definition of good leadership; “The art of leadership consists of the timely recognition of circumstances and of the moment when a new decision is required.”
Tetlock and Gardner have a similarly robust view as to how teams should ideally operate. They recommend ‘constructive confrontation’ and ‘Active Open Mindedness’, which entails the avoidance of group think, respectful challenge, the humility to request help and confidence to admit ignorance. Underpinning this is the belief that ‘diversity trumps ability’. Uniform perspectives only produce more of the same, it is through a diversity of perspectives that teams excel. It is tempting to think Tetlock and Gardner’s book may have inspired behind Cumming’s infamous blog post, calling for “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” to apply for jobs within No 10.
Tetlock and Gardner draw their insights into a useful nine-side appendix at the end of Super-Forecasters, setting out Ten Commandments for Aspiring Superforcasters. Advice such as ‘break seemingly intractable problems into tractable sub-problems’ and ‘strike the right balance between inside and outside views’ provides a simple approach to analytical problems that could be used in many different contexts. Their parting shot returns to the overriding theme of Super-Forecasters though ‘Don’t treat commandments as commandments.” Keep an open mind and be the fox.
