“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.” Emerson
Given all the deception and obvious dissembling by politicians, government officials and intellectual leaders, I’m beginning to get the notion from opinion writers that changing your mind is an immoral act. I’ve changed my mind over the years on a number of issues, so if you know me you just might think that I’m writing this blog to do some CYA work. That’s not at all the case. Fact of the matter if you check a number of my blogs, you’ll notice that I’ve made a number of significant career changes over the years around a number of issues: politics, relationships, religion. And I’m presently in my third or fourth career change, depending on how you count them. My thinking goes something like this: “I’ve climbed that mountain. How about something more challenging?” And I've always found such changes to be delightful. Building a new world can be just great fun and very meaningful.
So, I’ve always preferred George Bernard Shaw’s orientation rather than Emerson’s. Shaw is much more philosophical and thoughtful: “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
Consistency
In career development, it’s usually the little things that derail a manager or exec. Thus, I typically focus on granular career issues. For example. . .
Flip-flopping, contradiction and inconsistency, according to the well-known Wharton prof, can be virtuous. But admitting to it publicly is quite unusual. In the early 1980s, C. Peter McGrath, who was then President of the University of Minnesota, admitted to a change of mind publicly. It was so unusual that it made the front page of the Star Tribune. So much for inconsistency.
Grant’s article is especially insightful because he explains, using research-based flip-flopping as part of the evidence for his perspective on flip-flopping--as a sometime virtue. Historically, it’s been known that people will go to great lengths to avoid the dissonance and discomfort of personal contradictions.
If you have to make a tough choice between two similarly attractive jobs, you’ll feel some dissonance about getting stuck with the negative features of the job you picked and missing out on the positive aspects of the one you declined. That’s inconsistent with your decision — so you’ll start rationalizing your decision by convincing yourself that the job you turned down was not so desirable. Inconsistency, begone. And if you’ve joined a doomsday cult that predicts that the world will end in a flood, when your prophecy doesn’t come true, you won’t give up on the cult. Unable to bear a change in your beliefs, you’ll become even more committed and double down on your efforts to proselytize.
The handling of inconsistency is especially obvious in political decision making. As Grant writes, if you’re fiscally conservative (tax cut oriented) but socially liberal (pro-abortion), and want to vote for a candidate with decent chance of winning, your beliefs are inconsistent with the political parties. One way to deal with the problem is to change your abortion or tax policy beliefs. That’s good-by dissonance.
My personal perspective is that on accepting contradictions you might as well be more open about them. I’m one of those birds who's rarely bothered by inconsistencies. When it comes to politics, typically I go for the least worst. But even we celebrators of inconsistency can only deal with so much. Still, such openness can be highly constructive.
It strikes me that some vocations provide more freedom for inconsistency, while others are more limiting. Adam Grant suggests merely the possibility of inconsistency for himself. I’ve found that many of the older literati, like me, often don’t give a damn, enjoying the delightful freedom of their inconsistencies. Chameleonlike! Don’t take that too literally. For example, I can be inconsistent on business and church taboos, but very consistent in my approach to problem solving. More than most, I’m not usually bothered at all by holding inconsistent beliefs. I tend to be nearly as much "both/and" as "either/or." Like the artist, Marcel Duchamp, “I have forced myself to contradict myself, in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”