The reverse salient … refers to the sub-system that has strayed behind the advancing performance frontier of the system due to its lack of sufficient performance. In turn, the reverse salient hampers the progress or prevents the fulfillment of potential development of the collective system. … Because reverse salients limit system development, the further development of the system lies in the correction of the reverse salient, where correction is attained through incremental or radical innovations. [1]
The concept of reverse salients was discussed by Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School in a recent Twitter tweet. He defined a reverse salient as “the technology or process that is holding back development of the whole system … Solving the salient unlocks change.” As an example, Mollick notes that the development of adequate car batteries made electric cars viable.
The term reverse salient, originally a military term, to describe technologic changes was introduced by Thomas Hughes in a 1983 book about the early years of electrification where the development of alternating current solved the problem with “low voltage transmission distance” of Thomas Edison’s direct current system. [1]
In her August 16, 2022 newsletter, Annie Duke proposed that considering reverse salients is an example of a mental model called “monkey’s and pedestals”. [2] The basic idea is if you want to train a monkey to recite Shakespeare (or juggle flaming torches) on a pedestal in a town square, you should start the more difficult task: training the monkey. Even though building the pedestal would be much easier and a quicker way to show progress is being made, it won’t accomplish the goal until the monkey is trained. In this case training the monkey is the reverse salient that is holding the whole project back.
Musings
I’ve written a lot in this space about the difficulties introducing routine shared clinical decision making into practice and identified a series of models describing conversation-based solutions to the problem. None have made much of a difference.
Perhaps we have focused too much on the pedestal of just changing the script of a standard clinical consultation and not enough on the monkey of how to enable clinicians and patients to become better decision makers.
References
1. Wikipedia, Reverse Salient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_salient
2. Duke, Annie. NEWSLETTER: MONKEYS AND PEDESTALS: FIND THE BOTTLENECK AND SOLVE FOR THAT FIRST. https://www.annieduke.com/newsletter-monkeys-and-pedestals-find-the-bottleneck-and-solve-for-that-first/
Remind us please; is there any other decision process other than expected utility? Hubris? Belief dominance? Power? Money? These are clearly part of decisions but all incomplete. Also, constraint theory seems more salient than sub system reversed?