What is this chapter about?
Here we're moving on to the 2nd chapter of the book, it's called The Three Hardest Words in the English Language. It doesn't mean it literally, like the longest or the hardest words to pronounce, it's talking about the words that hardly come out of our mouths. Which are extremely simple: "I don't know." Humans hardly admit that they are incapable of something. We love to save faces and prove how good we are. No one likes to be thought lowly.
What is this section about?
The author gave an example of a consultant analyzing the underlying operation problems in a company. The consultant found out that the advertisement the company has been doing was a total waste of money. They advertised during black Friday and holidays, which is not a good sample to test for the efficiency of the ads since people already buy a lot during that time. They have also been putting advertisements in the newspaper only on Sundays, there isn't enough diversity to tell the effects. They did miss for some weeks in the past but they didn't even bother to look at the numbers. Even if the consultant told them their critical problem, they are all too afraid to mention it, they worry that their boss will fire them.
My thoughts on this story:
People follow tradition and do what previous decision-makers do. There is also a possibility that those people lack expertise and don't know what to do in this kind of situation. They don't want to admit that they don't know what would happen if they ran an experiment and made a change. The author encourages readers that if they think like a freak, think in another way, and admit they "don't know", they could solve problems that no one really looks into. I agree with the author, humans are afraid of the unknown, and we are all afraid of failing, but if we never step out of this comfort zone, we would just walk around in circles.
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