The kestrel.
She stands at the window. Sulking or fuming, some bruise to her prestige or some unseen or
unacknowledged slight. The details don’t matter.
She peers out through the raindrops running down the window, oblivious to everything
outside her head.
Then a kestrel appears, hanging in the air, just swaying, hovering, doing what kestrels do.
And just like that it’s gone. The brooding self and the hurt vanity simply vanish with it.
She can see clearly again.
This is how Iris Murdoch, one of the English language’s greatest novelists and philosophers, illustrates the problem we all have in trying to work out what is good, what is right, what is moral. And how to escape it. It’s the low-level hum of ego that’s getting in the way. Our borrowed cultural assumptions and rules of thumb that derive from who knows where.
To overcome this, to liberate yourself and your thinking, she says you need something outside of you and your ego to pull focus, to gain a rounder perspective on the world. You need unselfing.
Without this act of liberation, you will remain stuck behind that window, full of whatever feelings and thoughts are possessing you. You will not see things as they are.
You need a kestrel doing kestrel things, kestrelling away to give you perspective.
For those of us who want to understand human behaviour and describe it more tangibly and practically than a philosopher might, the kestrel metaphor applies equally well.
We, too, are caught up in ourselves, in our ways of thinking, in our cultural and other biases.
Yes, in our groupthink and other social cognitive quirks.
The Anglosphere and its offspring — marketing and market research, HR and innovation — all presume the individual is the engine of change. Many of them, despite the efforts of Kahneman and co, still imagine that human decision-making is (or should be) some sort of utility calculation; all presume that the locus of our study should be between the ears of individual humans.
That’s why we work so hard here on HERDspotting. The simple framework we use (developed with Professor Alex Bentley of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville) forces you to step outside of your assumptions: to ask what kind of behaviour is it that you’re dealing with? Is it genuinely shaped by independent thought or action or is it socially shaped? If so, is it habitual or considered? If socially shaped, is it primarily about popularity or is it rooted deeper in social norms and cultural traditions?
If you’ve been to one of our Masterclasses, you’ll know how useful this simple triage can be.
Similarly, on this HERDspotting Substack, we are constantly challenging the accepted wisdom of how different sorts of behaviour are shaped.
Spoilers: it’s almost always social (unless it’s the product of habits) and often best addressed through that lens. I’ve just completed the manuscript on this line of thinking — the latest in a series including HERD, I’ll Have What She’s Having, and Creative Superpowers — which will be out in the spring of next year.
Again, super kestrel.
So when you next find yourself thinking about a human-shaped problem — an issue with your manager, with your customers or vendors; a problem in marketing or compliance, in recruitment or health and safety — you can see beyond the window and out to where the kestrel hangs. Unselfing is what you need.
References
Iris Murdoch, “The Idea of Perfection” in The Sovereignty of Good, Routledge, 1970.
HERDspotting tips
Watch for those moments when you know you’re caught up in received wisdom — in assumptions about the people your business serves or the staff who make it happen. The fog isn’t ignorance. It’s familiarity.
Listen to the words we use that work like fuzzy felt — endlessly rearrangeable and eternally not quite meaningful. “Consumer insight.” “Employee engagement.” “Behaviour change.” When the language stops meaning anything specific, the window has fogged up again.
Reflect on what assumptions are baked into your discipline about the people you work with or serve. Not the ones you’d question if asked. The ones so deep you’d never think to. And challenge them.
