Introduction
Solving complex problems is incredibly hard. Building products or services, digital or physical, is challenging and highly rewarding. Even simple ideas are usually much more difficult to deliver than you think.
Solving complex problems in a simple way is the path to success and Equal Value Thinking is here to help.
It's all too easy to build something you believe in but customers don't actually want. Or maybe they do want it but in a slightly different shape, and your product isn't quite there. There is every chance the first iteration of the product is complicated, and designing and building simple things is a hard skill few have but all can learn.
There's a specific reason people build the wrong thing even after they've been told they are doing so. It isn't that they weren't told. It's that they were told in the completely wrong way. We don't listen to everything we are told.
Psychologists call this the false consensus effect - the tendency to assume other people think and want what we think and want. Nielsen Norman Group wrote about it: designers generalise from a sample size of one - themselves - and treat their own view as evidence of a wider opinion.
A study out of Tilburg University tested two different ways of correcting this bias.[1] One group was told when their assumption about someone else's perspective was wrong, with no explanation. The other group was shown what the other group had actually understood and why.
Only the group who were told why they were wrong reduced their longer-term bias. The group who were told they were wrong but not why barely changed.
To reduce bias we need to understand the other group's opinion, not just the opinion but the reasons for it.
All builders of products will feel they need to "Talk to your customers." "Get feedback." "Validate their idea." A customer's opinion doesn't change the view someone has of their product. The research says individuals need to understand, truly understand the reason behind the opinion.
That is challenging in its own right. If we take startups, most are based on a problem a founder can see or has directly faced. The wider industry tends to have different opinions.
Even if the foundational idea of the product is good enough to be a successful product, more problems quickly emerge, in particular the human ability to solve problems.
Humans are usually terrible at solving complex problems as individuals but can be exceptional at solving them in teams.[2] Groups reliably outperform individuals at solving difficult problems - not easy ones - and, critically, a team's problem-solving ability is not predicted by the average or peak intelligence of its members, but by how well they interact.[2][3]
Diversity often matters more than raw ability: groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers.[4]
Some of the most common problem-solving techniques work against how thinking actually works as well. Group brainstorming - probably the most widely taught method of creating ideas - has been shown for decades to suppress the very ideas it is meant to find. The primary cause is called production blocking: because only one person can speak at a time, everyone else is prevented from generating ideas while they listen, and our brains cannot do both at once.[5]
The effect is strong enough that people brainstorming as a group reliably produce fewer and lower-quality ideas than the same number of people working alone.[6]
Deliberate, on-demand problem solving fights our biology in a different way: insight tends to form through associative, unconscious thought that occurs after we stop thinking about a problem, not while we consciously think about it - which is why doing something else invariably improves problem-solving, with the benefit improving the more we struggled in the first instance.[7] Finding the answer in the shower or on the way to work is backed up by the neuroscience.
So we are significantly better at solving problems in diverse groups, yet the techniques we use and have been taught work against our own biology, and therefore hinder us. It would be ironic if it wasn't so costly.
Also, groupthink and a lack of psychological safety work against us when working in groups.
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the group to minimise conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation.
Psychological safety describes an environment in which you are confident enough to give your own opinion without being punished, judged or humiliated. This enables you and others to reduce the effect of groupthink.
The problem with groupthink is that most people are concerned with how they come across socially and how they interact socially. Being autistic is an advantage here, because autistic people are less concerned about the social aspect; it can free up a significant part of their brain to come up with new and creative ideas.
If you can create the environment for psychological safety, not only do autistic people benefit from that but neurotypical individuals also benefit because they're not worrying about how they come across socially either. That is what is the definition of a psychologically safe space.
It's worth noting a psychologically safe space is not about agreeing with each other; it's robust conversations, being able to give and receive criticism about the ideas, not the person. It's never personal.
All of these challenges lead to the most common reason startups fail: it's not competition or lack of funding but building something people do not want. Poor product-market fit is the leading cause of failure, at 43%.[8]
The question really then is, how do you create a psychologically safe space?
I created Equal Value Thinking (EVT) to solve this very problem. You're human; you have to work with how you function, not against it. All of us are capable of being highly creative, particularly when we work with others.
The answer is not to do more of the same but to be different; the old way of solving problems is quietly working against you. EVT may not guarantee success - I say "may" only because nothing in life is 100% guaranteed - but it vastly increases the likelihood of it happening.
I reverse-engineered how the autistic brain solves problems and it helps to explain why we find solving complex problems so hard as individuals and what we can do about it. None of it is our fault; it's not your fault, it's not my fault. It's biology, and it can be overcome.
Autistic people have been some of the greatest problem solvers the world has ever seen. EVT can show you how you and your company can be equally brilliant.
Why listen to me, you ask? Because I am a wonky-brained weirdo. I am autistic with ADHD and dyslexia - a fraction of 1% of the population. I've demonstrated the ability to solve highly complex problems most people can't solve alone; together, you can do what I am capable of doing alone. However, even I function better and create better ideas as part of a team; everyone does.
Breakthrough ideas usually start with one person. But it's just a starting point; it needs to be polished, refined, improved upon. For any of that to occur, people need to listen and understand your idea. Biology causes people to argue against your different idea, but if they are open, then their own creativity can turn your idea into a genius one.
As a software engineer, I designed and led a team that created a system for 10 million customers which could be supported by one person one day a week. It saved the company at least £2 million over four years, in staff costs alone.
How was that possible? It was EVT in action; before I even gave it a name, it had been my way of working for the best part of three decades. EVT shows you why listening is hard, why we struggle to solve problems and what to do about it.
[1] Damen, D., van Amelsvoort, M., van der Wijst, P., Pollmann, M., & Krahmer, E. (2021). Lifting the curse of knowing: How feedback improves perspective-taking. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(6), 1054-1069. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820987080
[2] Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Science, 330(6004), 686-688.
[3] Riedl, C., Kim, Y. J., Gupta, P., Malone, T. W., & Woolley, A. W. (2021). Quantifying collective intelligence in human groups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(21).
[4] Hong, L., & Page, S. E. (2004). Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(46), 16385-16389.
[5] Diehl, M., & Stroebe, W. (1987). Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: Toward the solution of a riddle. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(3), 497-509.
[6] Mullen, B., Johnson, C., & Salas, E. (1991). Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: A meta-analytic integration. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 12(1), 3-23.
[7] Sio, U. N., & Ormerod, T. C. (2009). Does incubation enhance problem solving? A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 94-120.
[8] CB Insights (2024). The Top 12 Reasons Startups Fail.