Listen to the Suck with Curiosity

Listening to the Suck with Curiosity (LSC) is ”overcoming the urge to defend and dismiss when attacked and instead investigating failure with an open mind.”^[1] Effective leaders do not block out criticism or attacks and instead seek to investigate failure (“the suck”) so as to understand why it happened and how to resolve it. In Loonshots, Bahcall observes:

If you’ve poured your soul into a project, the temptation to dismiss bad outcomes is high. What you crave is reassurance that you’re on the right track. So you ignore or attack your challengers and turn for reassurance to your friends, mentors, mother.
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LSC means not only listening for the Suck and acknowledging receipt but also probing beneath the surface, with genuine curiosity, why something isn’t working, why people are not buying. It’s hard to hear that no one likes your baby. It’s even harder to keep asking why.
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LSC, for me, is a signal. When someone challenges the project you’ve invested years in, do you defend with anger or investigate with genuine curiosity? I find it’s when I question the least that I need to worry the most.^[2]

This is why going beyond thinking merely in terms of “events” or “patterns of behavior” to understand the systemic structure of a phenomenon is so powerful.

#antifragility #strategic-cartography #cognition #strategic