When we are confronted with a challenging situation, our first instinct is to just make it go away as quickly as possible. The tendency is to look for the quickest and simplest solution, but this may not always be the best idea.
Our greatest successes usually come when we can move to what Shane Parrish calls ‘Second-Order Thinking’ – the ability to dig a bit deeper, and consider the broader implications and longer-term consequences of our decisions.
There was a brilliant article in The Atlantic this week that highlights this. Alex Wagner contrasts the difference in how Starbucks and ABC dealt with their recent racism issues.
[These links have more info about what Roseanne tweeted and what happened at Starbucks].
Thankfully, few of us have to deal with problems on quite this scale – but there are some important lessons to be learned. The quickest solution often doesn’t get to the heart of the problem.
