Anchors, away.
(that is throw them away)Updated 4.14.25
Here: Archive of past poems, essays, and excerpts
When evaluating leadership, we must confront our biases, adjust for surprise, and learn to recover from our failures. Red lights flash for good reasons. Moses knew. Now that I have an upgraded heart, I know, too. We can only rely on ourselves.
I could be talking about the failures of Israel’s intelligence services on October 6th. Just as easily, I could be referring to those of my faith's leadership and their choices for the future. Or my own and the errors I observe in those closest to me. But there are life lessons in the tragic parable of October 6.
In the south of Israel, the domestic intelligence service Shin Bet and the IDF knew Hamas had intent and a plan but did not believe in their capability to execute. In the north, Israel believed Hezbollah had planned and was capable. The core reason for the discrepancy is a tandem of cognitive fallacies:
Anchor bias and confirmation bias.
Humans “anchor” our beliefs to early and often irrelevant information.
Then, we are more likely to believe new information that supports our beliefs than information that challenges them. Our brains like mental shortcuts because they help us deal with a complex world, and the brain economizes effort.
We can, but we do not constantly revisit our belief systems, particularly not when a predator stands feet away, and we must pick fight or flight.
So, for me, last June 7th, when a neighbor followed me in my lobby off the street on a Friday night just returning from my synagogue, pointed a plastic shotgun at my head while I was anchored to my Service Dog, pulled the trigger, and said, “Kill all the Jews, Hitler had it right,” I knew to stand and do nothing. Neither fight nor flight. Then, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a plastic toy revolver, and repeated his mantra. Neither flight nor fight.
Pretending I was a ghost was not fear but the lack of it. It was my bias.
I knew the cameras were recording it, and the front desk employee was watching. I knew I had a witness, and I knew the CFO/General Counsel of the non-profit that owns my building was a man of faith and a responsible ex-private equity executive. I knew he would report the incident to the NYPD.
I was mistaken. My bias caused my cognitive failure.
His two superiors, the CEO and the Head of Property Management, sequestered the videos and the incident report, and although I reported the incident to an NYPD Deputy Commissioner, I had no evidence of the hate crime. Despite numerous requests, the videos remain sequestered, and they declined to install an anti-semitism policy or core beliefs on the non-profit website, as I had asked before October 6.
And the perpetrator followed up with this:
In the last few months, the NYPD officer was promoted and then demoted for allegedly attacking the ex-NYPD commissioner, and last week, the non-profit's CFO/GC resigned to become the CFO of the Episcopal Church.
I had placed my faith mistakenly. I thought my concerns and my safety, even though I am the only Jew, would be taken seriously. I do not live in Pharaoh’s Egypt. I guess I can be accused of “weaponizing antisemitism” in my brief note to our two leading Mayoral candidates, Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani, who I have known since he was a little boy.
Again, my bias is that men and women of faith are reliable.
In the real world, we ignore essential, new information to stay in our mental comfort zones. We do not want to believe we have been wrong or that things have dramatically changed for the worse. Recognizing and correcting this bias is a core skill of the IDF and its domestic intelligence service. We must learn to see around corners for potential impending disasters. We must all recognize our own biases.
Nothing in life or national security is simple, and there are other reasons for the vast difference in how the IDF handled threats in the north and south. Nothing in life is simple, and there are reasons a non-profit, or NYPD, wants to shield itself from letting a resident be charged with a hate crime, though warned and presented with audiovisual evidence, and why an NYPD Deputy Commissioner does not want to get involved with a hate crime, as the NYPD transitioned to a Jewish Commissioner.
For example, Hezbollah may have been a slightly easier military target because they used fixed positions, military-style organization, and kept more infrastructure above ground. Hamas, on the other hand, sucked Israel into a three-dimensional war, spanning urban streets, high rises, and subterranean mazes, all surrounded by millions of human shields who could not escape Gaza’s confines.
They believe I, too, am a fixed target. However, I am not. I am a ghost when I try to be, but invisibility can be challenging because I am usually tied to an 80 lb golden four-legged model.
Complicated now by the politics of the Netanyahu government, focused less on the rescue of the 59 remaining hostages, 24 of whom are alive, and more on the survival of the Prime Minister and his coalition, the Israeli intelligence services nevertheless have a more than complex process ahead of them: they must view themselves with brutal honesty and reevaluate how they operate in the clouded box canyon of fractious Israeli politics further complicated by the election of the 2025 World Zionist Congress pitting an even more fragmented people who defy the principle of “we are one.”
Decision makers in Israel, our microscopically divided leadership in the Diaspora, our mayoral candidates, and even our landlords and family members must find a way to welcome many of us who are “Dr. No,” that is, the people who are naysayers, people with the imagination to ideate and tell unlikely stories and then who can take apply analytic techniques more seriously.
Going through the motions is not enough: leaders at every level must be humble about their biases and open to new information from undervalued personnel like the young woman in Unit 8200 who reported the facts to her superiors and was overruled or disregarded or treated with disdain because she was telling a story that the brains of her superiors assessed was unlikely.
Was it the story? Or was it because of who she was, the messenger's gender and youth?
Further, when new information comes in, leaders must check their confirmation bias and carefully evaluate whether a salient new detail changes the picture. It's not the messenger; it’s the facts.
One of the best techniques to accomplish this is to ask," What if I am wrong….what is the downside?” Or, “I would change my mind if I saw…” and walk through the indications and warnings that could indicate a pending disaster.
I prefer the “What If” exercise, where you assume the worst and articulate and tell the story of how we got where we are. This can highlight the points along the path already lit and blinking red, with sunglasses off.
The exact process goes for the leadership of any organization, for-profit or non-profit. Suppose your mid-level officers protect their fiefs, masking their biases, paltering, or rarely lying by omission. In that case, you need a process, maybe even a “Red Team,” to tell you the truth without fear of reprisal, or the good ones will pick up, leave, and vote with their feet. Then, the floodgates descend.
These lessons are also vital for intelligence professionals and business leaders. Anyone operating with uncertainty in a complex environment should take heed:
your assumptions define your success.
A blind spot that is created is not easily ameliorated.
Then, hubris is complacency's best friend, a deep and abiding confidence that you know your weaknesses or opposition and are fully aware of your operating environment.
The fresh eyes of a junior partner or a senior leader willing to be proven wrong can do what that young woman in Unit 8200 tried to do: warn that core facts have changed and the time is now to react. One warning taken seriously can avert the next disaster. The same complacency applies to monitoring the weakness of your C-level staff. The next conflagration awaits if they are not open to the small voices.
When the lights are blinking red, it is best to remove your sunglasses. Moses knew that when he slayed the Egyptian overseer, people would gossip. The clock for departure was ticking, and Moses knew it.
The Gul, repeatedly told me, " The presenting problem is not the problem.”
In other words, the issue that appears to be the most pressing one often acts as a mask for a much deeper and far more threatening problem.
In the echo of our minds, some people believe they are infallible: anchor and confirmation bias, compounded by a sense of perfectionism, is a formula for disaster; that is why some people, like prime ministers, do not take responsibility.
"Indeed, the matter is known to me now," Moses says in Exodus 2:14.
Pesach can mean "a mouth that speaks." Over Passover, we must fix our speech and remember that King Solomon said, "Life and death are in the power of the tongue." Moses got it:
We underestimate how speech reveals ourselves.
God forgives our mistakes if we learn from them. What mindset does not fail? No failure is a failure. Dare greatly; only people who want to remain in their perfect childhood selves don't want to grow up.
My bias will always be that men and women of faith are reliable. However, I know now that they are just men and women, and I must rely only on myself. We must rely on only ourselves, not our clergy, and certainly not on the men and women in blue.
Shabbat Shalom! and Chag Pesach Sameach
Updated 4.14.25
©Philippe du Col, 2025