The Peak of Mount Stupid - The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Hey CS psychos, Rachel Provan here.  And in today's episode, I'm going to share about the Dunning Kruger effect, what it is and why it's such a pain in the ass for those of us in CS. And of course, some ways to combat it. That's all coming up next, right here on psychology of customer success. Stay tuned. 

 

 Humans don't think or behave like computers. You can't just run a command and get them to do what you want them to do. So why are you still basing your CS strategy based solely on logic?  I'm Rachel Provan, CS Leadership Coach, award-winning CS Strategist, and Certified Psych Nerd.  I teach CS leaders how to build and scale world class CS departments using a combination of strategy, leadership, and mindset, using my secret weapon, psychology.

Come join me every Wednesday for Psychology of Customer Success, where we'll dive into why people do the things they do, what motivates them, and the effect that has on your CS strategy, team dynamics, and executive presence.  We'll dig into subjects like the helper personality, how thought errors like, it's just easier if I do it, keep your department stuck in reactive mode, and how cognitive bias can really screw up your customer journey.

Plus much more. Make sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and make sure to share it with your CS bestie. Talk soon, and here's to your success.

 Okay, welcome back. This is episode number eight, and today we're talking about the Dunning Kruger effect.  And when I say that, what the heck am I talking about? So the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited knowledge or experience in something overestimate their abilities. 

And just as a refresh, cognitive bias is just when your brain makes shortcuts. Which all of our brains do. It's when your brain makes shortcuts so that you can make sense of the world, but sometimes there are errors there, when it, when you make shortcuts, sometimes you're not going to get the result you want. Basically Dunning-Kruger is initially someone thinks they can do something because they don't know what they don't know. So this was created or, first talked about by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. And it's due to a catch 22 in thinking where people are unable to assess their own skills and knowledge objectively. So if you've ever thought to yourself, How hard could this be? 

I'll just YouTube. It. Then you have probably experienced the Dunning-Kruger effect. What's really funny is I was trying to think of some instances of this for myself , to share in this episode. And I know I've done it many times. I just can't remember them off the top of my head. 

And I'm curious if that happens to other people too. And if that's, something that the brain does to protect us,  And keep us thinking that we're smart. But anyway I'm curious if other people experienced this. I will talk about something a little bit later, but just curious about you.   The Dunning-Kruger effect is a little harsh in its description. It shows a curve. And in the beginning of that curve,  when you don't know a lot, you're very confident and they call that the peak of Mount stupid. Now. I don't think a lot of people like to think of themselves as ever being at the peak of Mount stupid, but it's certainly gets your attention. So the idea is you start at the peak of Mount stupid. 

You fall into the valley of despair where you realize, oh my God, there's so much more to this than I thought, like I'm never going to get it. And you get very depressed. And then if you figure out. That it's worth actually learning. You go up through the,, what they call  the slope of enlightenment  where you're learning. 

And then you get to the plateau of sustainability where you actually do know what you're talking about.  So again, I think that the peak of Mount stupid is a little harsh and it makes everyone feel like that doesn't apply to me. I don't do that. But if we phrase it as the more, you know, the more you realize you don't know. And that's, what's funny because that's where imposter syndrome tends to start to come in. 

When you actually know something. But realize that you don't know everything. And it's pretty common not to know everything, but you probably know more than the rest of the people in the room. And in the next episode, I'm actually going to go over imposter syndrome because I know it's a huge problem in the CS community. 

I think just due to our personality types, we don't tend to be overconfident. We tend to suffer From imposter syndrome, but that doesn't mean that you aren't dealing with other people who are experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect. So being able to recognize it and then. I approach it with compassion, know where people are . On this scale, I find is really helpful.  And look. I'm not saying we're immune, literally everyone experiences this. 

And it tends to be really obvious when other people are having the Dunning-Kruger effect. But of course not ourselves. So what was interesting to me? Is that there's even a tech version of this called the Gartner hype cycle.  It has almost the exact same curve, but they don't give any credit to Dunning and Kruger. Which is interesting. 

It even uses the slope of enlightenment. In its description. But since we work in tech, I thought this was very interesting because it can also help you understand where your product is in this whole life cycle.  As well as where the people that you're talking to are in this life cycle so phase one of the Gartner hype cycle is considered the technology trigger. 

And that's the stage where it's an emerging technology, it's first introduced to the public. It can come from emerging markets, research labs think tanks, and there's usually a lot of hype around it and all it might be able to do anyone thinking of AI here.  There might be prototypes, but there's not an actual functional product or market studies. 

So it goes into kind of a proof of concept demonstrations.  So the peak of inflated expectations is phase two. Where there's a lot of industry buzz and excitement and really unrealistic expectations. So I think a lot of people go through this with CS tools where. It seems really exciting to get one. 

It seems like it's going to solve all your problems and . That nothing would be a problem anymore. If you just had a CS tool and their advertising can certainly make it look like this. This is going to automate my customer journey. It's going to reach out to my customers when I need it to, I'll just be able to sit back and do the really strategic work and yes, you can get there, but there's a heck of a lot more to it, unfortunately. 

, but if it was that easy, we probably wouldn't have a job. Once you realize, oh, this isn't going to solve every problem I ever had. That's when you , reach phase three of this model, which is the trough of disillusionment.  As reality sets in people see the limitations or tech issues and the initial enthusiasm feels like it was misplaced. And it leads to a decrease in enthusiasm as people question its viability and its potential applications. 

And this can also be an all or nothing fallacy. Or thought distortion, if something can do absolutely everything, it's useless. And I see this happen with CS tools to where we tried to install it, but we had problems with data or we installed it and it didn't immediately solve our problems with churn. 

That's because you have to tell it what to do. It can't immediately know and do everything for you.  And it's still worthwhile doing. It's just going to take longer than you thought and take more effort. From there. You moved to the slope of enlightenment. And at this stage, There are more realistic expectations about the products, capabilities, limitations, and potential use cases. 

So we can use this product for X, Y, and Z, and we can use it to automate some, communications. We can use it to monitor usage and see how that ties to renewal. And we can see what activities our CSMs are doing so that they can say, all right, here's what I'm doing. Here's what's working. 

Here's maybe what I can try differently. And those are all excellent use cases. It's just not CSM in a box. So people are becoming more knowledgeable about what it can accomplish and it allows for more effective implementation and all sorts of scenarios.  When you're realistic about what something can do, you're probably going to use it better and have better results. And finally the phase five, the plateau of productivity. 

This is the final phase where the product reaches maturity and widespread adoption and usage. And at this point, people are familiar with it. They know what it does. They understand how to use it effectively. And that ends up leading to more productivity and it tends to increase sales because it's a known thing. 

People know this works, it gets the job done. So  other places that you can see this in customer success. So when I first learned about the Dunning Kruger effect, the immediate thing that I thought of was onboarding. Because customers come in, they bought the shiny new thing. They're so excited about what it's going to be able to do for them. 

And we get them there and we try to get them a success plan and start to. Implement it and teach them how to use it. And all of a sudden it's Oh, this is going to take work.  But I have other things to do. This was supposed to solve my problems. Not create more work for me.  And again even like with the the gym analogy I've used over and over in the past, you can know that some effort is going to be required on your part. But there's a difference between knowing that and actually having the motivation to execute it. So it's a really tricky time. 

The other way that I see this happen with onboarding in a more mature organization. It, and you really have to watch out for this is in product walkthroughs, right? Like an automated onboarding. Now I love these.  The one thing that you have to be careful of is if you have a product walkthrough leg, Click here, do this next. 

This will do that. You have to be able to be sure that customers can close it and then access it again. Because I don't know about you, but I do this all the time. I get a product walk through and it says something so obvious. Click here to log in. It's okay. I think I got it. I've been using a computer since I was 14, 16, something like that. I know how to log in. 

Good. So I close it. Or maybe it says, press here to. To start a document, something really easy. So I just say yeah, yeah, I don't need this. I just want to get to doing what I want to do. And I closed the tutorial. . And then, maybe two minutes later. I am playing around and I can't figure out how to do what I want to do.  And I think where's that tutorial again? 

Where was that? And I can't get it back. And a lot of systems with what you can do, tutorials. We are set up like this. I'm sure there are ways around it. I've seen products where you can bring it back, just make sure there's some little link they can press to, to bring back the tutorial when they realize that they're in the middle of the Dunning-Kruger effect, because otherwise what happens is. What they say is this thing isn't intuitive at all this didn't do what I thought it was going to do. 

It's useless. So another way that this can. Cause us to bump our heads a little bit in CS.  Is if you're working at a startup. If they've never had CS before. A lot of times they'll hire a founding CSM. And this is a way to save money by not hiring an experienced CS leader. And sometimes , they're not even hiring. Like a new CS leader to actually lead the department. 

They're just hiring a CSM. And often giving them to sales or ops or support, it really not using it the way it's meant to be. And, I say this all the time, just because you call something customer success. Isn't going to get you the effects that you want, unless you're actually practicing. Customer success and doing all the things that are involved in that. Sometimes, they'll hire someone who hasn't built a CS department before they'll actually call it, ahead of CS or something. But if they haven't built a department before. That is a very different thing than talking to customers and getting them to their desired outcome. It's systems thinking. It's big picture versus being in the weeds. 

And as I've said before, if you're doing both. It's almost impossible to do it. Well. , I don't like to say never, but again, don't Dunning-Kruger yourself and thank God I can do it. I can handle it. And the other issue there is  the company doesn't realize how complicated it's going to be in. 

What's going to be involved. But if you have a new leader, they also don't know what's going to be involved. So a lot of times I'll see people having interviews. And, a founding CEO will say, okay what we want is, 97% renewal and, an NRR of 115 within the first six months to a year. And, the person who's being a first time leader of CS, especially if they've worked somewhere where that kind of thing is the norm, because it's a more mature organization.  They'll probably say, yeah, sure. 

Of course I can do that. And when they actually start. And actually try and do it themselves. They realize they're in.  Deep something.  They realize they're in trouble. . 

, and this is something where I remember this applying to me. In being a new leader, being promoted up from being a CSM, which I did very well. I got great results, so they made me a manager. I was so excited. I was so sure that I would be great at it because I was good with people. 

I cared about them. I was going to be the best boss ever. I knew about CS, because look, what a good job I did. I'm just going to show everyone how I did it and they'll do the same thing. Boom, success. And if you've managed it all, you've probably figured out that that doesn't work. And it doesn't work.  Hard.  Like I hit my head hard on that one. 

People don't necessarily succeed at things the way you do. And caring about people is not the same thing as leading them. And giving them the clarity and boundaries they need. To succeed.  With all of these things.  That initial realization that you actually don't know what you're doing. It feels terrible. And. The thing that you actually have to realize, I think what makes or breaks this. As to whether you even proceed with what's next, whether it be a technology or leadership, or, trying to get your hair, the right color and realizing you can't do that yourself is.  Is this result worth it? 

So with a lot of this, I just don't think it's very kind to people. And given the fact that every single person goes through this. I don't think it's a particularly useful way to look at things in terms of, . The peak of stupidity or whatever. I prefer to think of this as the four stages of competence. So the first stage is, and I know I'm giving you a lot of stages, but to me it's really interesting how all these different elements of psychology technology learning all tend to follow a very similar model.  And a lot of them don't acknowledge any of the others in these studies. So the four stages of competence, unfortunately, I couldn't really find consistent attribution, like who originally came up with it. 

It's attributed to a few different people, but mainly it came up in the sixties. At NYU. Woo. I went there. I'll be paying for it for the rest of my life. Anyway. So it starts with unconscious incompetence. So the person doesn't understand. Or know how to do something and they don't necessarily recognize that because.  They don't know what's involved. They might think that the skill is useless and they have to recognize that they don't know. And that it's worth knowing in order to progress to the next stage.  And stage two is   conscious incompetence. If you ever hear, like the first stage is admitting you have a problem. That's basically where we are here. 

So they realize they don't know. How to do something. They don't understand, they recognize the deficit, but they also recognize the value of learning it.  And.  Annoyingly, the making of mistakes is often going to be integral here to actually learning and moving to the next stage. There's just no way you're going to do everything perfectly and wallah you've mastered it. So again, when we've talked about growth mindset, Things like that. 

A mistake is not the end of the world. It's literally how you learn. It's how you get better. It's not a failure. It's a learning process.  The next stage is conscious competence where the person understands or knows how to do something, but it takes a lot of work. They may need to break it down into small steps and there's really heavy, conscious involvement. 

They have to concentrate really hard while they're executing that new skill.  And.  Given that it requires  a lot of concentration to demonstrate it. If that concentration is broken, like something happens. They're going to have trouble picking up where they left off. It just, it's a process where it takes a lot of effort, a lot of concentration and something that's difficult. 

, , It requires motivation. And motivation is in limited supply and everyone's brain. So really trying to remember why you're doing this, what the benefit is. And having a consistent practice. Can be very helpful. Knowing I'm going to do this, every day while I have my morning coffee, I'm going to practice this skill, or I'm going to practice this 20 minutes before I go to bed. Just having something you can anchor it with, makes it more likely for you to actually do it rather than waiting to be motivated, or when you have the time.  And the final stage is unconscious competence and that's where it's become second nature and it can be performed easily. It can be performed while executing another task. 

I'm big on this with knitting. I can knit. While watching a TV show, I don't even have to look at it and people look at me like I'm nuts. I can do it with my eyes closed. But that's something that I spent years practicing. And the initial stages of it were. I was eight. I don't remember it very well, but when I watch new people learning it, it's very tricky. But you do get a muscle memory of it. Yeah, it can be performed while executing another task. And you may be able to teach it to others depending on how, and when it was learned. Now another area to be careful of Dunning-Kruger Wises, just because you know, something, it doesn't mean you're necessarily a good teacher. It's helpful to know how to break things down for people in small chunks. And not try and just show them the whole thing and expect them to understand it right away. So I tend to think that's debatable, but , if you can teach someone and teach them well, yeah, you definitely know what you're doing and that's why in medical school, they have a lot of people. Do you have a process called a C one D. Do one, teach one. So they see a procedure performed, they do it themselves, and then they have to show someone else how to do it.  Did they do it perfectly? 

No. And that's a little scary since they're doing that on us. Her body's. But it isn't a very effective way of learning fast. So I do want to talk about one other thing with this, which is the sort of the flip side of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is when you're on that other side, when you're on that unconscious competence side.  You it's easy to think that other people have the same understanding that you do. And in CS we tend to use a lot of jargon. 

I remember talking to my mom once about it and I don't remember what I was saying. Something about NRR, grr, C-SAT NPS, and she's like, Rachel. I'm going to need you to use some vowels and.  It's true. We have all this jargon, all these things that we talk about that are our language. We understand it. 

But if we try and talk to the customer, That way. Or even with our own product, we're so used to it. That.  It seems intuitive to us because we've been using it for so long, but that doesn't mean it's intuitive to a customer.  And again, this is something that happens with the brain. It's something called heuristics, which are mental shortcuts, and they can keep you from explaining things clearly because you no longer process those things that you skip over. So you don't know to add them to that person.  And this happens a lot with CS, not only in explaining product to our customers, but in assuming that the C-suite sees the value of CS and what will happen if it's not done right.  I see this a lot in new leaders.  Explaining initiatives that they want to do with with CS and not understanding why other people don't immediately buy into it. And I let them know. 

You have to explain what the result is going to be. Yes, it makes sense to us that if we get the customer, the result they want. They're going to renew, they're going to buy more. They're going to tell other people, and , they're going to keep renewing, keep buying. But if you don't explain that and that it's not something that happens automatically.  Other people aren't necessarily going to get that. Because they don't have exposure to people not getting it. That's something that you have to explain very delicately sometimes, because again, you don't want to call anyone's baby ugly. But.  You have to paint it as customers. 

Don't always do things correctly, even if it could be the most intuitive software in the world. And they would still find a way to screw things up because those people that's sometimes what we do. So just try and remember to include every step if someone's like. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Or, sorry, not include every step. Because you don't want to bore people, but just state the obvious. . 

It's always okay. To state the obvious. And you're much less likely to  get buy in for what you're trying to do. If we do this, this will happen. It's not a foregone conclusion for anyone else, but you.  So finally, I just want to talk a little bit about how to counteract the Dunning Kruger effect as best as possible. The first one is measuring your results and something that we do when we measure our results is we love to add context and we'd love to add context as to why something is not our fault. 

If we're not getting good results.  And we do that, but we don't necessarily change anything because  we blame things that are beyond our control.  And look, I'm not going to say that everything is controllable. Everything is your fault, but it's always worth saying. What can I control here? What could I change? 

What else could be causing this other than these outside influences? So it's measuring your results without adding context, which doesn't feel good, but it's worth doing.  Developing a growth mindset. Like we've talked about understanding that you get better slowly by learning, by making mistakes and that it's not always going to be easy. 

And that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you or your abilities. It just means. You're learning.  

Another thing is accepting constructive criticism. Which is hard. You know it as we've talked about a little bit, , . It triggers, fight or flight when we get criticism at work, because it feels like it threatens our survival. It threatens how we put food on our table. 

How we take care of our families are placed to sleep. Those are all really the bottom of the hierarchy of needs. Am I safe? Can I get food, water, air. And shelter. So even though that's not immediately threatened our brain interprets that  as so, so it's going to take work to accept that kind of. Constructive criticism. 

And it's okay if your brain immediately freaks out. It's just a matter of taking some time with it.  Feeling your feelings and then saying, okay, but is there anything to this? Is it possible? This person is just trying to help me and.  What if I do an experiment, what if I try their suggestion? Because most of the time, that really is what it is. 

They're not trying to make you feel bad. They're not trying to one up you they're trying to help. Because you cannot possibly have. An objective view of yourself. Nobody does. It's not possible.  Beyond that. Seeking continuous improvement. Never saying I'm done. I'm the best there is at this. There's nothing more for me to learn.  That completely shuts you down from any kind of innovation. 

It's one of the worst things that you can do for your skills, your abilities, your chance to make things better.  And finally, especially as a leader, You need to encourage an environment that values humility. You know where you can say, I don't know. Where you can ask a question and understand that you're not going to be made fun of for it. Where there's just zero shaming of people. 

Also, adding the elements of being collaborative. Which again requires that psychological safety of it's okay. To not know things here, we're working together and putting all our brains together so that we're more effective.  

That's really what I've got for you today. Thanks so much for joining us if you want to take the next step in your leadership, CS strategy and mindset, make sure you're on the wait list for the next round of CS leadership academy, which is coming up really  📍 soon, where I walk you through these processes. 

 Step-by-step. If you want to send me a message, if you want me to talk about something on the podcast, please let me know, hit me up on LinkedIn. Or we now have a very exciting webpage that psychology of customer success.com. So until next time, get some rest, take care of yourself and make sure to share this with your CS bestie.  Talk soon and here's to your success.