I love this story from research psychologist Gary Klein (via Edge interview):

A friend of mine, Doug Harrington, Senior, a number of years ago was a Navy pilot. He was a good Navy pilot, and being able to fly a jet plane is a tough job, but he not only could fly, I mean, the Navy pilots, they not only fly, but they have to be able to take off and land on an aircraft carrier, so they have to land on a ship, and the ship is bobbing up and down, and moving around, and the waves are buffeting it. It’s not like a rowboat, but there’s still some movement there, and you’ve got to land on this moving platform. Doug could do that, he was great at it. He was an instructor, and he flew F-4s. As an instructor he would teach younger pilots to land F-4s on aircraft carriers, and to fly.

Then came a point in his career when it was time for him to move to a more sophisticated, more advanced airplane, an A-6. So he learned how to fly an A-6. No problem, because he’s a very skilled pilot. Now came the day when he had to do his aircraft carrier landings with his A-6. And he comes around, he’s lined up to do his first landing, he’s all set, and because these are so difficult, he doesn’t just do the landing by himself. There is a landing signal officer on the aircraft carrier who is watching him, vectoring all the pilots, telling them what to do, and if the LSOs don’t like what they see, they wave the pilot off. And so Doug is listening to the landing signal officer, he’s coming in to make his landing, and the landing signal officer is telling him

“Come right, come right”.

But Doug is perfectly lined up. So he does what any good Navy pilot would do under those circumstances. He ignores the landing signal officer because he knows that he’s got himself lined up. And the LSO, the landing signal officer keeps saying, “Come right”, and Doug doesn’t really do it, and then the landing signal officer waves him off, which is weird, because he was perfectly lined up.

So now he has to go around for another try. And again, he’s perfectly lined up, and the LSO is saying, “Come right”, and this time he figures, “I better do it”, so he comes right a little bit more, a little bit, and a little bit, not enough, he gets waved off again. Now he has to come around another go-around and he figures, “I’m going to run out of fuel before he runs out of patience, so I better listen to him.”

He tries to follow what the instructions are, and he manages to get the landing done, but he was supposed to do six landings that day, another four landings that night. He messes up all the six landings. He makes them, but they’re not good landings, and at the end of the day he’s told, “Doug, you just didn’t do a very good job today. You’re not going to do nighttime landings, that’s too risky. You have to repeat your daytime landings tomorrow, and then we’ll let you do the nighttime landings. But if you don’t do a good enough job tomorrow, that’s it. That’s the end of your flying career in the Navy.” Doug goes into shock because everything was working well when he woke up that morning, and now his flying career may be over, and he doesn’t know what happened.

His friends on the ship are there for him, and they come over to him, they’re there, and they’re telling him really useful things like, “Doug, you’ve really got to bear down tomorrow.” Or, “Doug, this is important.” In other words, useless advice, and they’re just making him more anxious, they’re driving him crazy.

At night he’s ready to go to sleep, he’s hoping it would be a bad dream, he’ll wake up and somehow everything will work tomorrow, but he is just dazed. There’s a knock on the door of his cabin and he says, “Go away”, because he doesn’t want to talk to anybody. It’s the landing signal officer who was atypically trying to help Doug. Not that they wouldn’t be helpful, but it’s not their job. Their job is to just help them land, he’s not supposed to be a trainer, but he’s also very troubled.

So he knocks on the door, and Doug finally lets him in, and says,

“I don’t want you to tell me anything. People have been telling me things, it’s not useful.”

And the landing signal officer says,

“I’m not here to tell you anything Doug, I just want to talk to you, I just want to ask you something.”

“Okay, what do you want to know?”

“I know you’re a great pilot. Obviously you had trouble today. Tell me what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m doing what I always do, I line up the nose of the plane on a center line of the landing strip there, and I’ve got it perfectly lined up, and you keep telling me “Come right, come right”.”

“So you’re flying an A-6. What did you fly before that?”

“An F-4, that’s what I’ve been flying for years.”

“In an F-4 it was either you or you sitting behind a student. In an A-6, you’re side by side, so it’s not exactly the same.”

“It’s a foot and a half, it’s not a big difference, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Maybe two feet. It’s not going to make a difference.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, I just line up the nose of the plane over the center line of the runway.”

So the LSO says, “Let’s try something”

And if you have a chance, I’d like you to try it as I’m doing this interview, if you don’t mind.

He said, “Extend your arm straight out, put your thumb up. That’s the nose of your airplane. Close one eye and align your thumb with a vertical line, some place in the room. You’ve got your nose of the airplane lined up at the center line. Now, move your head a foot and a half over”, like Doug was moved over, because now he’s flying an A-6. “And pull your thumb back over to that center line.

And you see what happens. It changes the whole alignment of the airplane because you’re not on the center line, and it’s only a foot and a half, but there’s a parallax effect here that Doug wasn’t thinking about. And Doug does this little demonstration, and as soon as he does it, he says,

“Ah. I’m an idiot. Obviously that’s the problem.”

The next day he did his six landings during the day, and he had no trouble with them, and the four landings at night, and he went on with his career.

- via Insight: A Conversation with Gary Klein

So what exactly happened there?

Something like this:

• Doug, a deeply experienced Navy pilot, had a “mental model” for how to fly and land fighter jets. This model was well tested and had worked for years.

• Switching to a new type of fighter, Doug’s old model failed him. A small but important shift in general conditions — his physical location relative to the sight line of the plane — had changed.

• This frustrating change was enough to throw off Doug’s model, hamper his ability to land — and even jeopardize his entire flying career.

• Whereas friendly pep talks and attempts at encouragement failed, a thoughtful LSO (landing signal officer) was able to give Doug an “a-ha!” moment via visual example — at which point the model was instantly adjusted and corrected.

Trading lesson: When stuck in a rut or feeling out of touch with the market, sometimes it isn’t about encouragement, or digging deeper, or trying harder. Sometimes it’s about finding the flaw in the model — and fixing it.

We all use mental models to handle multi-step procedures and simplify complex scenarios.

As mentioned in the book Decision Traps, “Everyone, from the greatest genius to the most ordinary clerk, has to adopt mental frameworks [i.e. mental models] that simplify and structure the information encountered in the world.”

This is especially true for any type of discretionary trading process, where the trader is constantly assessing and reassessing market conditions.

If the market keeps behaving in ways that don’t make sense to you, or doing things you failed to anticipate, it can be like the LSO officer saying “come right, come right!” when you thought you were on target. If your model is the problem, you will keep getting waved off in frustration.

The good news being, with careful observation and contemplation, the fix may be closer than you think.

And if you don’t have the good fortune of a wise LSO on hand to challenge your basic processes and assumptions, go ahead and do it yourself.

JS

p.s. Like this article? For more, visit our Knowledge Center!

p.p.s. If you haven't already, check out the Mercenary Live Feed!


Similar articles you might like:

• Who's Driving the Bus? (Reflections on Cognitive Bias)

• Can Excess Focus Degrade Performance?

• The Quiet Eye

• Better Decision Making Under Stress

• Panic is for Suckers

• Adjusting Your Mental Model

• On the Art of Learning

• Mental Conditioning and SEAL Team Six

• The Trader's Mindset: Always Be Climbing

• Upgrade Your Cognitive Toolkit

• Improving Your Decision Making Skills

• Knowledge Work Athletics and Getting Things Done

• A Simple Yet Effective Way To Immediately Raise Your Game