Effectiveness | Bluffing - Part 2

Effective people can bluff their way out of many demanding situations of life. Faced with the unknown, the unexpected, the unseen, the unheard of, they bluff. Instead of waiting for more evidence, more certainty, more security, they bluff. They try to make a good decision on insufficient data. Thus they prove effective even in murky, fluid situations.

I've talked about such honorable, honest bluffing before. I will do many more posts on bluffing since this is an essential, important skill.

Here comes an honor roll of famous bluffers.

1. Upstarts defines an entrepreneur as someone who has figured out a way to be all right in the end despite making many mistakes along the way.

2. The Humble Hound article remarks, " good leaders realize that every move is a potential partial failure to be corrected by a next move ... "

3. Deng Xiaopeng is famous for ad hoc arrangements and for "groping stones across the river."

4. Richard Branson even titles one his books "Screw It."

Welcome the Mistakes

We'll make mistakes. Even now we may be making some mistakes. That shouldn't scare us for the following reasons.

Mistakes are our old friends. Future mistakes are no different from our old ones. When we made some mistakes in the past, how did we recover? Luck, other people's mercy, God's invisible hand may have played a role.

If you recovered because of such things, then count these mistakes out. We want those mistakes from which you recovered because you had designed the mistakes in such a way that you could recover from them conveniently. It will pay high dividends to study how you designed such mistakes.

The answer is ludicrously simple. Let's listen to Sir Richard again: "Don't bet the farm." He means that if the bet equals the value of your whole firm, you should just walk away from the table. As long as you don't bet the farm, you'll be all right with whatever bluffing you want to do.

Actually you'll realize that Sir Richard has structured his business in such a way that he can bet any frim in his dukedom. I'm referring to his "atomized" corporate structure. Under one group or company, there are many companies. Let call them sub-companies. When Sir Richard wants to do deals, he can give you whatever share you want of any relevant sub-company.

The same concept goes under such terms as "portfolio," "staged bets," "phased bets," "reserves," "pots" and so on.

Therefore, the bottom line is : Bluff and keep your bets safely small.

Effectiveness | Effective Bluffing

Effective people can bluff their way out of many a tight spot. Here I don't mean, by 'bluffing', cheating, lying, or even pretending. I mean only guessing, intuition, instincts, hunches etc. Faced with the unknown, the unexpected, the unseen/unheard of, we must bluff and know that we are bluffing when we are bluffing. It takes humility, honesty and self-awareness to bluff in an honorable manner. And it's effective.

Treat an Examination as an Interview

We all have bluffed in one way or another in our school days, and we usually do so in paper-based exams, assuming "What can the examiner do if I bluffed in a dishonest way?"

It is a wrong assumption because the examiner does interact with our answer as if in a dialog. For example: The question goes: "Discuss the epistemology of Kierkegaard"
Your answer goes: "I have read a good deal about this topic. But right now, I have forgotten all about what I have read."

Then the examiner' thoughts will go like: "Lying. If you have read a lot, you should at least remember something." or "Maybe true. We all forget. But zero recall must be rewarded with zero score/grade."

We should preempt such responses by treating any examination as an interview, where we expect follow-up questions that will probe and poke through our facade of insincerity and corner us into admission of our dishonesty, cowardice and above all else being stupid enough to bluff. Does that remind you of the final scenes of the Detective Colombo episodes?

Honorable Bluffing in Interviews

Here I will give a number of possible responses to that question asked in an interview. I won't grade/order them in any way. I won't even classify them.

Question goes: "Can you talk about the epistemology of Kierkegaard"

Answers:
1. "I have read a good deal about this topic. But right now, I have forgotten all about what I have read."

2. "I know a good deal about epistemological views of Nietzsche but not Kierkegaard's."

3. "I know a good deal about epistemological views of many existentialists but not Kierkegaard's."

4. "I understand epistemology as ...
An epistemological framework needs to cover ...
Existentialists/Scandinavian/European/Western/ the 18th century philosophers usually regards epistemology as ...
Kierkegaard generally think that...
Kierkegaard remarked in one of his essays that knowing is ...
But I can't relate epistemology to Kierkegaard in particular."

5. "Kierkegaard has said very little about epistemology."

6. "Whatever Kierkegaard has said about epistemology. is flawed."

7. "Kierkegaard doesn't consider epistemology very important or relevant."

8. "Kierkegaard isn't an important philosopher for epistemology."
And so on.

Exercises

1. If you are a programmer, think how you would prevent "double submits" in Django, Turbo Gears, Pylons, CherryPy, Ruby on Rails, Merb, Struts, JSF, Webworks, Tapsetry, Spring, plain J2EE, codeigniter, PHPCake, Symfony, etc.

2. SAT: What is the average (arithmetic mean) of all the multiples of ten from 10 to 190 inclusive? or Amy has to visit towns B and C in any order. The roads connecting these towns with her home are shown on the diagram. How many different routes can she take starting from A and returning to A, going through both B and C (but not more than once through each) and not travelling any road twice on the same trip? or

3. LSAT: As any economist knows, healthy people pose less of an economic burden to society than unhealthy people. Not surprisingly, then, every dollar our state government spends on prenatal care for undocumented immigrants will save taxpayers of this state three dollars.

Which of the following, if true, would best explain why the statistics cited above are not surprising?

4. GMAT: If there are 16 ounces in 1 pound, the ratio of 6 ounces to 3¾ pounds is ....

Conclusion

Be honest at all times.
Then, bluff to your heart's content without worrying about the consequences.

1. What do you know to be true? Just trust your own experience. Don't believe even your God, Gods, or gods. Trust only what your previous tests have shown you.


2. How does that relate to this question/experiment/test? Use that, show that.