guy's mind

In the pool with a flannel suit


Do you like to wear three piece, grey flannel suits and a tie? I do not. I even do not know anybody who claims to love to wear them. But I know many who wear them, and many who want others to wear them. But, why is this?

Imagine the situation of a middle manager who is about to hire a new employee: He wants somebody who takes a lot of work from him and who does not cause a any trouble.

A creative worker thinks for himself, critizies, has new ideas, tries many things and is inattentive to details because he needs his time for important issues, not the the red tape. He is every supervisor's of the middle management nightmare when he offends people, bothers them with new ideas, and loses one or the other form. This is why this kind of people hardly have a chance to be hired. A supervisor certainly prefers a harmless, uncreative worker.

A harmless, uncreative worker is gray. You will recognize him by his gray suit, a gray shirt, and a time. Fortunately, these prominent features have one important characteristic: they are unsafe for counterfeit. Therefore, a colored worker can easily pass for a gray worker: by wearing a gray suit, a gray shirt, and a tie. And that is what they do. We now understand why all business people walk around so gray.

In game theory, this is called a "pooling equilibrium in a signalizing game". A signalizing game is a game in which a player knows more about himself than his opponent. He can send a signal from which the opponent may learn something from his secret knowledge. While sometimes the signal does include information about the secret knowledge, in other games the players hide in a "pool" wheareas they camouflage so well that the signal does not contain any information. This is exactly what suit wearers do: They hinde behind uncreativeness. Even if they are in fact creative they can easily camouflage by sending the gray signal.



In short, the message of the gray suit and tie is: "I am truly small and gray. I will well-behavedly do my work and will not protest. Even if in fact I were not gray I am at least willing to redeem my feeling of self-worth inasmuch as to behave as gray as you are just experiencing me. You will definitely want to hire such a well-behaved human being!"

At this point, we know why all business people are gray and wear a tie. (By the way, we also know why the fairly successful and the fairly unsuccessul do not.) What we do not know yet, however, is why everybody is walking around gray, but constantly insists not to want to.

The answer is quite easy: Nobody likes to admit to really be uncreative and gray. In their private life, they prefer to appear colored and creative even if they in fact are not. Fortunately, this is no problem at all since they can argue as follows: "Of course I do not like ties, but my business colleagues who are all so awfully gray and uncreative want me to wear a tie. I do in order not to be at risk. In order not to run a risk of any kind, I will have my team do it as well."

Since everybody has to camouflage in gray, ad libitum each can claim to be truly gray or colored. The best part is that everybody may now feel colored on the inside while being allowed to appear gray because if those who are colored and creative do it this way. Thanks to the pooling equilibrium!

At this stage, I am interested in a rather empirical question: What is the true proportion of gray and colored? Perhaps there is a bone-crushing majority of colored, and nobody realizes it?


(The antecedent remarks are based on game theory, a branch of applied mathematics that is often used in the context of economics. The writing of my article was greatly inspired by Prof. Dr. Christian Rieck, a german professor who specializes in game theory. Visit his website at www.spieltheorie.de)