You can’t optimize what you’re defending
In business, I’ve always been fascinated with how people cling to systems or choices that no longer serve them. It's rarely about logic. It’s about identity, ego, fear. And no, I’m not claiming to be immune to this (AT ALL).
I talk often about the sunk-cost fallacy: the mental trap where we throw good money (or time, or energy) after bad, simply because we’ve already invested so much.
But when I discovered the Pyramid of Belief, a metaphor from Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, it gave me the cleanest visual yet for how we end up trapped.
“As people justify each choice they make, they gradually harden their attitudes, moving down opposite sides of the pyramid. The lower they go, the further apart they end up ... Even a trivial initial choice can snowball into extreme and intractable attitudes.” — Tavris & Aronson1
By the time they reach the base, they're not just far apart, they’re enemies to each other’s reality.
Watching $30K a month disappear
Years ago, I worked with a senior leader on a corporate-wide change initiative. It was clear within the first quarter that the shift wasn’t working. It was costing $30,000 a month in operational losses.
He didn’t disagree with the numbers, but he wasn’t keen of going back to the C-suite and admitting failure. I understood. Who wants to be the one to say, “This didn’t work”?
So I asked him one question:
“Would you rather tell them in a year that we lost half a million… or tell them now that we’ve lost $100K? One of those two conversations is definitely going to happen based on what we’re seeing.”
That broke the loop. We reversed the change, owned the loss, and eventually got a nod of approval from the CFO for course-correcting early.
If we had kept justifying the change every month, we’d have slid all the way down the pyramid, until backing out became reputational suicide.
Why automation doesn’t save belief-driven systems
In my consulting work, this metaphor shows up everywhere. Especially in legacy systems or inefficient workflows that people still defend because:
“It’s how we’ve always done it”
“That’s what the last director wanted”
“It works well enough for now”
But I don’t just bring in automation to fix broken systems. I bring in first principles thinking to challenge the beliefs behind the system.
I’ll literally strip everything back and ask:
“Forget how we got here. Forget where we think we’re going. If we had to choose A or B today, knowing nothing, what would we pick?”
The silence that follows is often the first honest moment in the entire project.
Watch for the signs
Want to know if you’re on the way down the pyramid? Look for these tells:
You immediately dismiss conflicting data as “crazy”
You justify current actions by referencing past effort
You feel threatened by even hypothetical alternatives
When you feel that flicker of defensiveness, stop. Ask yourself:
“Why am I so quick to push this away? What am I defending here, truth, or just consistency?”
‘Steelmanning’ the opposition
One of my favorite tactics is asking clients to steelman the opposing view.
If they’re clinging to a process or policy, we’ll perform an incredibly effective thought exercise during our workshop:
“We’re going to make the strongest case we can against our current approach. The team who most clearly argues against our current workflow wins.”2
This snaps the brain out of survival mode. It opens the door to creative, honest problem-solving. And sometimes, they surprise themselves.
This Is What My Brand Is
Our role at 10x Velocity, whether we’re automating workflows, leading AI adoption, or revamping infrastructure, is to challenge entrenched beliefs.
We’re not here to fire people or cut costs for shareholders. we’re here to liberate smart people from dumb systems that no one questions anymore.
Because every minute spent defending a broken system is a minute you’re not spending solving your real problems.
Your Turn
Where are you in the pyramid?
What belief, process, or project have you been justifying for too long?
What would it look like to stop defending it and start interrogating it?
What could you steelman today?
Start there. That’s the climb back up.
Want to host a workshop built around the Pyramid of Belief? Reach out, this is my favorite hill to die on.