“The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.” — Thomas Carlyle
In the early 1900s, a German schoolteacher named Wilhelm von Osten toured Europe with his amazing horse, Clever Hans. Hans could apparently solve math problems and even read German, tapping out answers with his hoof to the delight of crowds. A government commission investigated and found no fraud. Yet a few years later, psychologist Oskar Pfungst uncovered the simple truth: Hans wasn’t doing math at all — he was reading von Osten’s body language . Whenever Hans reached the right number of taps, his owner (and the onlookers) would unknowingly relax or smile ever so slightly, cueing the horse to stop.
Von Osten and Hans
Von Osten had been influencing the outcome without realising it, and Hans, clever as he was, had just become an expert in picking up subtle signals. The teacher so wanted to believe in Hans’s intellect that he was (ahem) blinkered to his own role in the act. It brings to mind Upton Sinclair’s famous words: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” In von Osten’s case it wasn’t a salary, but his pride and purpose — his whole mission — that depended on not seeing the truth of how Hans performed.
The Office Full of Clever Hanses
“Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who’ll argue with you.” — John Wooden
It’s easy to chuckle at the turn-of-the-century horse trainer, but the Clever Hans effect is alive and well in modern organizations. Walk into a high-stakes meeting, and you might notice the same dynamic: well-intentioned employees adjusting their words and ideas to fit what the boss wants to hear, often without even realizing it. As Gary Hamel and I discussed on the Innovation Show, people preparing a presentation for senior executives frequently “try to guess and anticipate what the senior executives want to hear” . Instead of raising uncomfortable truths or novel ideas, they stick to talking points that they know will make the leader comfortable and confirm the leader’s preexisting beliefs. In effect, many organizations end up with a stable of human “Clever Hanses” — bright people who have learned to read the boss’s subtle cues and give the right answers, rather than the honest or creative ones. This usually isn’t conscious scheming; much like Hans’s owner, leaders unintentionally telegraph their expectations, and team members (eager to succeed) instinctively respond in kind. Everyone is complicit, even if no one means any harm. And just as with Clever Hans, the outcome is an illusion of understanding: the boss feels validated, the team avoids conflict — but the organization may be missing out on reality and insight.
Such unconscious conformity can quietly corrode decision-making. If a CEO’s nod or frown dictates the discussion, you won’t hear the bad news in time; if a strategy review becomes a pageant of agreeing with the boss’s pet idea, bolder innovations won’t see the light of day. Over time, this behavior conditions leaders too — much like von Osten with his horse, they grow confident in a feedback loop of their own signals. A leader might think, “My team is on the same page and my strategy is sound,” when in fact the team has simply learned to suppress dissent. It’s the corporate equivalent of Hans tapping the “correct” answers: it tells the boss what they want to believe, not what is necessarily true. And it happens because speaking the truth feels unsafe. An organization has no chance in challenging the status quo if individuals cannot safely challenge their leaders. Honest dissent is the first casualty when subtle rewards and punishments train everyone to toe the line.
When Strategy Becomes a Script
“No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.” ― Sophocles, Antigone
This dynamic is especially problematic in strategy-making. If leaders become too predictable in their approach, it invites what one might call strategic gaming — people learn to play the system. In companies where planning follows a rigid calendar and formula, managers quickly figure out the checklist of buzzwords and metrics that will get their projects approved. They start crafting plans that check the right boxes and please the higher-ups, rather than proposing truly innovative bets. In “Jumping The S-Curve”, Paul Nunes revealed that average companies tend to make strategy by the calendar — an annual ritual — whereas high performers “keep the timing dynamic to avoid predictability and to prevent the system from being gamed.” In other words, if everyone knows the exact playbook, the game gets rigged. People spend more energy on fitting the mold than breaking it. Predictable processes might feel safe, but they can breed a culture of formulaic thinking where breakthroughs suffocate.
Giphy
Paul shares the example of the consumer products firm, Reckitt Benckiser (currently branded as Reckitt). One of its most successful products, the Air Wick Freshmatic air freshener, wasn’t dreamed up at HQ but came from a daring proposal by a junior brand manager in South Korea. It was he who spurred the company into action. The idea was an automatic air freshener that periodically sprays fragrance, a concept that would require adding electronics into a product line that had always been purely chemical. Headquarters was initially skeptical (why mess with a simple air freshener?), and many insiders resisted the notion of venturing into unfamiliar technology. But the CEO at the time, Bart Becht, saw something in the idea. He was “more impressed by passion than by consensus,” as Nunes writes . Becht chose to back this unorthodox suggestion despite the pushback — effectively rewarding dissent and originality over alignment. The result was a blockbuster product (the Freshmatic) that opened a new growth curve for the company. It was the kind of leap that formal plans and comfortable consensus rarely produce. The Freshmatic story shows how vital it is to allow some unpredictability and challenge into the strategy process. Had Reckitt’s leadership been fixated on only hearing what they expected, they might have shut down the quirky idea of a programmable air freshener and missed a major innovation.
The lesson is that when leaders break the script, they invite genuine creativity. By contrast, when every strategic conversation is a predictable script, capable people will either game the script or give up on it. They’ll present safe projects that get a polite nod, rather than bold ideas that provoke debate. They might hit their short-term targets (just as Hans kept tapping until the applause came), but the organization risks stagnation. Innovation needs a bit of messiness — a tolerance for surprises, dissenting voices, and the occasional offbeat idea that challenges the consensus.
Unbridled Honesty
How can leaders avoid becoming a modern von Osten, unknowingly grooming their teams to tell them only what they want to hear? The onus is squarely on leaders to change the dynamics. Leaders must foster a space for unbridled honesty, not just polite nodding. Gary Hamel stresses that a leader’s job is to foster an environment where “people feel confident in challenging them”. This means actively inviting the feedback that normally goes unspoken. For example, Gary suggests that at every meeting leaders should deliberately ask a series of questions.
Here’s what should be on that list:
Where was I wrong in the past?
What do you think I’m missing here?
What other options do you see?
What would our fiercest critics say?
What would you do if this was your business?
What would we do if we had a clean sheet of paper and no legacy?
What if risk was no object?
These are disarming questions — ones that flips the power dynamic and shows vulnerability. By openly acknowledging that you, the leader, might have made mistakes or might hold outdated assumptions, you give your team permission to speak up.
Beyond questions, leaders can take concrete steps to untrain the Clever Hans effect in their companies. They can vary how and when strategies are discussed, so teams can’t simply rehearse the expected answers. They can celebrate the people who respectfully disagree or surface bad news early, instead of shooting the messengers. Most of all, leaders must examine their own reactions:
Do you visibly bristle at criticism?
Do you rush to reward flattery?
Those subtle cues are as powerful as a pulled rein on a horse. Every time a leader reacts poorly to dissent, they teach the organization to stay silent and keep tapping toward the status quo. Conversely, every time a leader listens appreciatively to an opposing view, they reinforce that candor is welcome.
In the end, the tale of Clever Hans is more than a quirky anecdote — it’s a cautionary metaphor for leadership and perception. Von Osten wasn’t a bad man; he truly loved his horse and believed in what he was doing. But his desire for a certain answer blinded him to the truth he was quietly engineering. In our workplaces, we all run the risk of becoming a von Osten or a Clever Hans. We can be blinded by our own signals or too quick to respond to someone else’s. The way out is deliberate and thoughtful leadership that prizes truth over ego, even when the truth is uncomfortable. By making it safe to challenge and question, leaders can ensure that the only things tapping out answers in the boardroom are real insight and creativity — not just the echoes of the boss’s own ideas. In a world of unconscious cues and silent nods, we could all use a bit more self-awareness — because the solutions we seek might just be hiding in the questions we haven’t been willing to ask. But the mane point remains: without safe dissent, innovation gets stabled.
Find further thoughts on this with Gary Hamel here:
https://medium.com/media/f64375d0a15d094b5b51ed536c579a10/href
That episode on Jumping the S Curve with Paul Nunes here:
https://medium.com/media/6d991179c207e15c1ae9ea212c2bbd74/href
The Organisational Clever Hans Effect: Is Honesty Safe? was originally published in The Thursday Thought on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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