The trap of being "Right"

In 2021, a man in Massachusetts drove his car straight into Buffumville Lake. He told rescuers he was following his GPS. The device said the boat launch was a road, so he drove. Right into the water.

He's not alone. Three tourists in Australia followed their GPS across nine miles of open water toward an island. A driver in England followed his sat-nav up a narrow cliff path and nearly went over a hundred-foot drop. "It kept saying it was a road," he explained, "so I trusted it."

There's even a term for this now: Death by GPS.

These people weren't stupid. They were doing what felt safe: following a trusted system instead of trusting their own eyes. The map said go, so they went — past warning signs, past common sense, past the point where the road literally disappeared.

This is what ideology does. It's a GPS for your worldview. It gives you turn-by-turn directions so you never have to think about where you're actually going. And just like those drivers, the more you trust it, the less you notice when the road has ended and you're heading into the lake.
Today, we will explore how ideological thinking curbs your ability to lead in the face of rising uncertainty👇

Ideology is seductive because uncertainty is exhausting. When everything is shifting at once — technology, climate, markets, geopolitics — ideology offers a pre-packaged cure. A ready-made identity. A set of instant answers. A tribe for emotional safety. Certainty (even a fake one) feels good!

But this comfort is a trap. When you subscribe to an ideology, you aren't just adopting solutions. You are tethering your ego to them.

The sunk cost of changing your mind becomes astronomical. Admit a policy isn't working, and you don't just lose an argument — you risk losing your standing. Your tribe might call you a flip-flopper. Or worse, a traitor. So to avoid that social death, you stop looking at the reality of the problem and start defending the identity of the solution.

The real danger of ideological thinking is that it gets the order of operations backward.

A true problem-solver starts with reality — messy, complex, shifting — and adapts the solution to fit the facts. The ideologue starts with the solution and forces reality to fit it.

If your ideology says "The State is always the problem" or "The Market is always the problem," you go blind to the nuances of the specific situation in front of you. You stop being a leader and start being a follower of a ghost.

This is also why our public discourse has become so brittle.

Democracy is more than just voting. It is the collective practice of disagreement without violence.

It requires the flexibility to listen and the humility to be wrong. When we prioritize ideological purity over adaptive solutions, we lose the ability to collaborate. Every compromise becomes an existential threat instead of a necessary pivot.

Research in political psychology shows that ideological thinking isn't just about what we believe — it's about how our brains process information. Three mechanisms keep us stuck:

Need for Cognitive Closure - Our natural drive to eliminate ambiguity. Ideology provides "fast closure" — it gives us an answer so we can stop the stressful work of thinking.

Low Integrative Complexity - The inability to hold two competing truths at once. Ideology flattens the world into "us vs. them" and "right vs. wrong," stripping away the nuance required for high-level judgment, systems thinking, and practical wisdom.

Cognitive Rigidity - Over time, the mental muscles we use to switch strategies atrophy. We settle on an explanation early, then spend all our energy defending it instead of testing it.

Critics often ask: "If I abandon ideology, don't I become a populist? A person with no beliefs who just drifts with the wind?"

Not at all. There is a real difference between holding values and holding an ideology.

Ideology is a railroad track. A rigid, pre-set path of specific solutions — "We must always deregulate" or "We must always centralize." No deviation allowed, even if the bridge ahead has been washed out.

Values are a compass. They point you toward your North Star — Freedom, Justice, Sustainability, Human Dignity. A compass doesn't tell you which path to walk. It tells you whether you're heading in the right direction.

Anchoring yourself in values is a sign of strength, not weakness. It makes you adaptive. You can say: "My value is human flourishing. In this crisis, the best tool is Solution A. But if the data changes next year, I'll pivot to Solution B — because the value stays the same even when the method has to change."

To lead effectively in a fast-changing world, you need a high tolerance for the anxious space of uncertainty.

Our obsession with erasing uncertainty is what fuels authoritarian tendencies — at work and in society. We want a strongman or a rigid dogma to tell us the "Truth." But real freedom and real innovation only exist in the space where we acknowledge what we don't know. That's where we explore, experiment, learn, create.

It is risky to step off the railroad tracks. It is dangerous to tell your tribe the map might be wrong. But that space between threat and possibility is where leadership lives. Not in having all the answers — but in staying honest about the questions long enough to find better ones.

To uncover your own ideological traps, don't just ask yourself if you're "open-minded." Most of us lie to ourselves about that. Instead, try this three-step audit on a topic you feel strongly about — remote work, tax policy, climate strategy, whatever hits a nerve:

1. The Steelman Test. Can you explain the opposing view so well that someone who holds it would say, "Yes, that's exactly what I believe"? If you can't, you aren't fighting an idea. You're fighting a caricature.

2. The "Ugly Win" Question. Imagine your biggest political or professional rival proposes a solution to a problem you care about. It works. The problem is solved — but they get all the credit and their side looks great. Are you happy the problem is gone, or annoyed that they were the ones who solved it? If you feel a twinge of annoyance, you're in the trap. You care more about the GPS route than the destination.

3. The Kill Switch. What is one specific piece of data that, if proven true tomorrow, would make you completely abandon your current stance? If you can't name one, you aren't thinking. You're believing.

4. The Witness. This is the step that makes the other three honest. Take your Steelman from Step 1 and share it with someone who actually holds the opposing view. Ask them: "Did I get it right?" If they say, "No, that's not what I believe at all" — you just learned more in five minutes than years of solo reflection could teach you. Ideology survives in isolation. It rarely survives a real conversation.

Here's the thing about those GPS drivers. The ones who ended up in the lake weren't reckless. They were obedient. They did what the system told them to do. That's the real warning.

The people who stayed on solid ground were the ones who looked up. Who noticed the road turning to gravel. Who trusted what they could see over what they were told.

That's what leadership asks of you. Not to throw away every map. But to hold it loosely enough that when the terrain changes — and it will — you change with it. Eyes on the road. Hands on the wheel. Compass close. GPS optional.

The world doesn't need more people who are certain. It needs more people who are brave enough to stay curious — and honest enough to say, "I might be wrong, so let's find out."

That's not a weakness. That's freedom ✊

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