Trust and the Simplicity Transfer.
People don't like details.
If you want people to deny the moon landing, explain how it was done.
Everybody's mind - including yours - flips out at some threshold of complexity and reaches for a simpler explanation. At this point, you really want to trust, not ask for more detail or explanation.
…let me explain.
Complexity overload
Complexity creates stress, which has people’s minds running away seeking sanctuary, yet we often can’t help ourselves and try to explain more detail to them, which makes it worse.
Why people deny the moon landing
The Apollo mission moon landing was insanely complex. So complex that not a single person actually knew how they did it. Not even those working on the project knew the entirety of the mission - each only knew their part.
People either had in-depth knowledge of their particular area, say the propulsion system but not food or air, or they had a generalist knowledge and relied on the expertise of the specialists. They all trusted that other divisions knew what they were doing.
John C Houbolt
Imagine being one of the astronauts! You’d be trusting everyone with your life and to procedures that you can't understand. What god-like levels of trust!
We mere mortals know that they got up there, but have no idea how and we’re happy to not know the details. If we tried to grasp the lot, we’d curl into a ball of anxiety.
Some, though, find another solution:
The simplicity transfer
You understand a BMX. It’s just a wheel attached to another wheel by a chain. Turn one, the other turns, you go forward. Lean left, you go left.
Add brakes – a cable pulls on some clamps which bite the wheel, you slow down. Okay, most are still on board.
Add gears. Whoa – slow down there fella, what are these?
No wait - don’t explain. I just want to tune out and say 'It just goes, okay?'
Add more complexity: lightweight materials, power-to-weight ratios, aerodynamics and physiology. A few will slowly grasp more of it and become fans of the Tour De France, but the rest of us chunk the information away and trust that it works.
By the time you get up to Formula 1 car racing, it may as well be some form of witchcraft, and our mind runs for the hills.
The magic box
The magic box. Here making tubas.
Ask kids to design a potato peeling machine, and they may draw elaborate ramps to get the potatoes into the machine, but the machine itself is often just a box labelled ‘In here the potatoes are peeled.’ Magic boxes.
The magic box of business leadership
Hopefully leaders would have a mind open to questions, but also trust in each other department leader. They know what they are doing.
Instead, however, a boss will often attempts to add complexity in the form of requesting further details from the departments, until that CEO hits his own limit and slips into the Simplicity Transfer, makes a decision on one often irrelevant criteria, and eases his mind with a pat on the back and a whisky.
Trust knowing less information from the people around you, to save yourself from fleeing off into mental escapism. Trust your departments!
Trust the process, trust not knowing, trust your crew.