Pattern Matching Beats Narrative Reasoning
Why good bets can’t be easily explained in words.
Why does legibility bias persist across society, even when we are aware of it? One answer is: it soothes people. We are conditioned from kindergarten onwards to believe that there is a crisp, clear structure to the world. That there are crisp reasons why things happen. In the world of startups, that illusion is demolished if you stick at it long enough. But large organizations “cast the illusion” of legibility to soothe and create a sense of order among employees, while those in the inner circle of upper management face messy reality head-on.
Also in organizations, communication bandwidth means that you need crude, simple stories to get the ship headed in the right direction. Simple stories are a necessary evil in management. But big decisions at the top of an organization are not actually being made this way. Simple stories are a tool to motivate and direct people in approximately the right direction.
If someone has spent years at a large company, and has not been in the “inner circle” of management—it is easy to see how they might confuse the tool that is being used to motivate them with the process in which effective decisions are actually being made.
People misunderstand the utility of simple stories. They’re more of a management tool, a political tool, a motivation tool, and a marketing tool than a decision making tool.
