The Hedgehog and the Fox

The King of Kings

Perched on a dais of white stone, Xerxes, the great Persian king wept. He had just done the impossible. He had turned water into land. He had bridged the Hellespont*and stood and watched as his army of a million men** and their pack animals crossed over from Asia into Europe.

As he wept his uncle and advisor Artabanus asks why. Xerxes replies that he was musing on how short human life is and was overcome by sorrow for all those multitudes out there not one would be alive in a hundred years time. He then asks his uncle point blank if Artabanus agrees with his current course of action — a second invasion of Greece in just over a decade (after the defeat of Darius, Xerxes’ father by the Greeks at the battle of Marathon). “I am still full, nay, overfull of fear” Artabanus replies. The enemies he warns Xerxes would not just be the prowess of the Greek army but also as Artabanus puts it, “two greatest things in existence are both of them your greatest enemies: Earth and Water” The Land and Sea. Nowhere along the Greek peninsulas was there a harbour big enough to shelter Xerxes’ enormous fleet during a storm. And the march around the Aegean would traverse territories incapable of feeding so large an army. The army would have to fight starvation and exhaustion before fighting a single soldier. He concludes his caution with “the best kind of man is one who as he draws up his plans is in a state of high alarm at the thought of everything that might go wrong with them, but who also, when it comes to putting them into action, behaves with the utmost resolution. In the beginning it is rare to glimpse the end completely”.

Xerxes scoffs and retorts “If you were to take account of everything you would never do anything. Rewards in life, by and large, go to those who are willing to act rather than those who mull everything over and prevaricate. Had my predecessors shared your attitude, the great Persian empire would not exist. Great achievements are never secured save by taking great risks”

And with that Xerxes dispatched Artabanus to Susa to rule in his stead and led his army across the Hellespont into Greece.

Two Modes

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”

Archilochus

Twenty five hundred years later, in 1939, Isaiah Berlin, an Oxford tutor at the time, came across the line from Archilochus for the first time. The passage from the ancient Greek poet only survives as a fragment so the full context of the line is lost. But the line stuck with Berlin, and using it as a foundation extrapolated his thinking in an essay called ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’. Berlin used the distinction in the line to categorise thinkers and leaders into two groups: The hedgehogs, who see the world through the lens of a single defining idea and the foxes who draw on a wide range of experiences and are more adaptable to different situations. As Berlin explains “ the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers and maybe human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those who on one side relate everything to a central vision..a single universal organising principle in terms of which all they are and say has significance — and on the other side those who pursue many ends, often correlated and even contradictory, connected if all in some defacto way…”

Xerxes was a hedgehog, his uncle Artabanus was a fox. Xerxes’ central vision was conquering Greece and he would do what it took to accomplish that. Artabanus’ on the other hand worried about everything that could go wrong. He respects the landscape, the environment. Xerxes reshapes environments; he bridged the Hellespont, he cut a canal through the Athos peninsula so that his ships could pass through. The shortsighted Artabanus gets so tangled up in what could happen that complexity and inertia become the enemy. For the uber-ambitious farsighted Xerxes focused on a singular goal, a simplicity borne of arrogance was his undoing.

This essay is about two modes of thinking..not necessarily a right way or a wrong way. Artabanus was right to be concerned and Xerxes in a sense was right not to get bogged down in the details. But more than that, this essay is about figuring out a grand strategy, as historian and author John Lewis Gaddis describes it as the alignment of potentially unlimited aspirations with limited capabilities. Ends are infinite, means can never be. There is a balance to be struck between your current location and your intended destination. It is also about how as leaders we should navigate the intricacies of personal ambition, intuition, the patterns of history and make tough choices.

Uncommon Common Sense

Between 2003 and 2004, political psychologist Philip E. Tetlock collected 27,451 predictions on world politics between 1985 and 2003 from 284 ‘experts’ in universities, governments and think tanks. He collated the findings in his book Expert Political Judgement. A critical question he put into his survey was whether the ‘experts’ self-identified as ‘foxes’ or ‘hedgehogs’ as per Berlin’s definition. Here is how he summed up the results:

“Who the experts were — professional background, status and so on — made scarcely an iota of difference. Nor what the experts thought — whether they were liberals or conservatives, realists or institutionalists, optimists or pessimists. But how the experts thought, their way of reasoning did matter”

I.e did they identify as foxes or hedgehogs. The results were stark. Foxes were the more proficient predictors than hedgehogs, whose predictions resembled those of a dart throwing chimpanzee (his words)

Foxes did not rely on a singular view for their predictions, instead they were able to stitch together diverse sources of information and not rely on “deduction derived from ‘ ‘grand schemes’”. They understood that the amorphous subject of politics could not be “the object of a clockwork science”. Their predictions depended not so much on ego but a “self-depreciating style of thinking that elevated no thought above criticism”. But like Artabanus, they were too inclined to qualify their claims. They could rarely hold an audience’s attention. They were shunned by talk show hosts and policy makers were too busy to listen to them.

The hedgehogs on the other hand were aggressive in their big explanations and ignored criticism. They displayed a ‘bristly impatience with those who do not get it’. They became ‘prisoners of their own preconceptions’, got trapped in cycles of self congratulation — but had the right sound bites to play well with TV pundits and policy advisors.

This is how Teltlock concluded his findings:

“Self critical thinkers are better at figuring out the contradictory dynamics of evolving situations, more circumspect about their forecasting prowess, more accurate in recalling mistakes, less prone to rationalise those mistakes, more likely to update their beliefs in a timely fashion, and as a cumulative result of these advantages — better positioned to affix realistic probabilities in the next round of events”

So foxes do it better? If they don’t get stuck

Xerxes crossed the Hellespont confident that his army would conquer Greece. He did not heed Artabanus’ warnings. As his army advanced, according to Herodotus, they drank rivers dry. Food was scarce and they didn’t plan for lions attacking their supplies. But more importantly Xerxes underestimated the Greeks. What they lacked in numbers they made up in strategy and fighting prowess. Xerxes was surprised at the battle of Thermopylae by the Spartans, where 300 (yes those 300) held his army for two days. The turning point for the Greeks came at the battle of Salamis, where Xerxes’ significant navy was outdone by the Athenians. He failed to understand the Greek mindset. He scoffed when he heard of the Olympic games, and that the Greeks went through all the effort of winning for a simple wreath..rather than gold. Xerxes’ vast empire sprawled from the Aegean to India, he knew nothing of scarcity. The Greeks occupied a rugged peninsula, made up of independent city states, knew only scarcity. These city states also had to protect themselves from each other. There were alliances, rivalries, shifting loyalties..and so a hothouse for strategic thinking. And scarcity required specialisation. The Spartans became specialist warriors on land, while the Athenians took to the sea.

We as humans have a need for certainty. We are also driven by a vision. The combination of this need for certainty and using that to propel a vision can be noble, but also highly dangerous. Big ideas in the hands of the wrong leader, leaders who have reached the top, like Xerxes or Tetlock’s hedgehogs tend to become prisoners of their own perceived greatness, and so can be dangerous. But as Kissinger has written, the intellectual capital that leaders accumulate prior to reaching the top is all they will draw on while at the top. There is very little time to learn anything new. Kissinger has also written that leaders think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first between the past and the future; the second between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. Their first challenge is analysis, which begins with a realistic assessment of their society based on its history, mores and capacities. Then they must balance what they know which is drawn from the past with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently conjectural and uncertain. However translating that intuition into action requires a recognition of the specific differences that each situation entails and an egoless discernment of meeting ends and means. Ends only exist in imagination whereas means are stubbornly finite. Ends and means need to connect if the vision is to be realised.

Xerxes lived only in the present, he cut himself off from the past and his intuition about the future rested only on his aspirations and vast resources.

Lincoln: The Fox in Hedgehog’s Clothing

“A first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Abraham Lincoln had a single hedgehogian vision: The abolition of slavery. He went about accomplishing that in a canny, foxlike and at the time controversial way. He was willing to compromise. When he first got elected president, he promised the south that slavery would not be touched where it already existed, only that it would not expand to new territories. His hope was that if contained, it would eventually die out. The south did not accept this and went to war. Towards the end of the war Lincoln realised that slavery had to be abolished and he had to make good on the claim in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. A noble pursuit but to do that he had to move the 13th amendment through a divided congress, and resort to all sorts of foxlike behaviour ie bribes, flattery, back room deals etc.

In the 2012 film Lincoln by Steven Spielberg, when Thaddeus Stevens (played by Tommy Lee Jones) asks Lincoln how he could reconcile such a noble aim with such dirty deeds, Lincoln responds with a recollection of what his youthful years as a surveyor taught him:

“A compass will point you true north from where you’re standing, but its got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you will encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp..then what is the use of knowing true north”

Lincoln knew when to be a hedgehog (consulting the compass) and when to be a fox (skirting the swamp)

The real Lincoln as far as we know ever said any of this. However Tony Kushners’ screenplay captured the essence of the real Lincoln. His strong vision, his ability to compromise and Fitzgerald’s linkage of intelligence, opposing ideas and the ability to function. Most importantly the ability to keep long term aspirations and immediate necessities in mind at the same time.

Conclusion

In 1953, an American exchange student asked Winston Churchill how one might prepare to meet the challenges of leadership. “Study history. Study history”, was his emphatic reply, “In history lie all the secrets of statecraft”

However, while a grasp of history is essential, it is not sufficient. History teaches by analogy, through the ability to pattern match, the ability to recognize comparable situations and act accordingly. But lessons from history will not teach how to adapt to unique situations. Had Xerxes thought along the lines of the aforementioned axes by Kissinger he would have seen that it would take a lot more than a massive army to conquer Greece. However there would have been risks by blindly following the fox-like Artabanus. Leaders cannot let uncertainties paralyse them. They have to have a penetrating sense of reality combined with a powerful vision.

They need to combine in a single mind, the hedgehogs grand idea and the fox’s sensitivity to surroundings..while retaining the ability to function.

References:

• This essay borrows heavily from chapter 1 of On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis
• Leadership: Six Studies in world strategy by Henry Kissinger
• Herodotus: The Histories Translated by Tom Holland
• Expert Political Judgement by Philip Tetlock

Rahul Soans is the founder of the Disruptive Business Network. For similar posts or for episodes of the ‘On Meaningful Work’ Podcast please click the link and subscribe.