Naiveté in Leadership Capacity: The Necker Cube

One of the greatest challenges of leadership today is making decisions in a world of enormous uncertainty and ambiguity. Knowing and accepting the workings of the mind can help guard against the arrogance and false sense of infallibility in leaders. Naïve realism is the simplistic belief that we perceive the world exactly as it is. In fact, what we perceive, even hard physical data, is open to interpretation. Every leader faces the possibility of being deluded by what they assume is true. The depth and preponderance of this illusion in human experience is a central insight of Buddhism. Knowledge of the neural networks that manage visual and other sources of perception back up this concern, confirming for us that in fact the brain can hold two equally possible and rapidly fluctuating interpretations of exactly the same visual data. While ambivalence is often seen as an indication of leadership weakness, it may have validity in the reality of neuroscience.

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A simple, well known example that illustrates the possibility of such naiveté is the Necker Cube, first created by Louis Albert Necker, a Swiss crystallographer, in the 1830’s. The cube is ambiguous, in as much as it does not distinguish which lines in a three dimensional cube are in front or in back, and thereby fail to provide conclusive evidence of the perceptual distance and positioning of the lines. Typically we only see one interpretation. Once we are aware of multiple interpretations, we still do not see both perceptual realities simultaneously, but we are capable of shifting back and forth between them.

The real problem is created if we assume that there is only one possible interpretation and either refuse to see others, or do not pause to search for alternative “realities”. The potential for holding onto illusions is not only an individual risk, but a shared, collective one. This came to light in the financial crisis of 2008 when so many of the brightest financial and political leaders of our decade failed to see the evolving collapse of the mortgage backed securities fueled by over extension of credit.

The challenge of making decisions in complex ambiguity is that most often there is no clear right or wrong solution, and very possible only two or more right answers. In situations as this, leaders are forced to choose between two right answers with potentially differing but ambiguous values. Often there is a desire to obtain more data, thinking that lack of clarity is the failure of insufficient information. There is no right or wrong way to interpret the Necker Cube, but rather two correct ways. It is not a matter of needing more research, more data – the data is complete and ambiguous at the same time. Both solutions are equally valid, or equally delusional.