Often we say when we are making decisions that we need ‘more’ information.  As Clay Shirky said in something I watched once: it’s not about more information, it’s about better filtering.  I think it’s about better perspectives, ideas and concepts.  Yes that probably is more information but it’s filtered, tailored and well suited to your problem.  Sometimes more information leads to confusion and this isn’t helpful.

What then?

More perspectives?  How about better ideas?  Why keep digging the metaphorical hole in the same place… try something else.  Get somebody from outside the problem to come in and have a look.  Quite often they will frame it in way you don’t expect.  Sometimes we are coming from the completely wrong angle… this isn’t at all helpful either.

In the long run I suppose it would be easier to say that having more information would justify the amount of weight we put on the top of a organisation.  Ultimately though, most of the time, better ideas will do.  Wherever you can find them.

Whenever we are faced with a new problem a reaction can be, ‘can’t thinking’.  What?

Can’t thinking is when we are faced with the opportunity to change or do something and we say ‘can’t’.  The Late Russell Ackoff highlighted this is something of his I read saying that those unchallenged ideas, the one’s that can’t are often not impossible but are considered to be impossible.  They are possible but our mindset tells us it ‘can’t’ be done.  It’s more likely that we won’t try because of what we think or what we expect.  The reality could be completely different.

Newsflash: You won’t know until you try.  So instead of saying ‘can’t’ say ‘won’t’ or ‘yes’ and see what happens.  If you really can’t… then don’t.

I was reading this Tumblr post someone sent me recently and there is an interesting reference to ‘fencing’ at the end of it. The idea that a debate or a metaphor can provide a fence around our ways of thinking is something I had written about ages ago.  In fact large portions of my PhD work had been involved around the ideas of conceptual framing, the idea that we create reference points to refer to things we experience.   I think the ‘idea fence’ concept is much more interesting and I want to write about it.  So I did!

Idea fences mean we create a way of seeing things that inhibits us from seeing another perspective.  Someone I know would say about a problem,’Well it’s either this or that.’  My response was, ‘why can’t it be something else?’.  The idea fences we build put the issues we want to discuss in a neat little basket.  We fence them off and say, ‘this is my position and you can only enter my idea house if you are willing to open the fence of my idea gate’.   Metaphors ahoy.

I am very good at making idea fences.  I often resist changing my ideas because I like them and have grown accustomed to having them in my mind’s garden.  Yet, I know I have to do it and I hate it.   I think I know something then I find an article or somebody says, ‘have you thought about this?’ Then I hop back on the merry go round again and wheeeeeee more ideas.   Ideas also mean power in my world, ‘Oh you are the guy who wrote that paper or you are an Information Systems person aren’t you?’   Then I am fenced in by others.  This kind of fencing reinforces the fence around me, which in essence has no place in any real terms outside of my own thoughts; and creates a comfortable seat for me to sit in and contemplate.   I am fenced and fencing.

In closing this ramble tamble, let me assure that ideas have a persistent quality.  The ingredient of persistence is ‘belief’.  That’s what makes them real.  We believe they are and so they are and we act on them and it is so.  Yet, this perspective is yet another example of a fence I have built around myself and ask me in five years, if I am still alive what I think and the chances are I will have changed my mind!

Here’s a short thought:

Problems can only be practically solved because of the things we take to practically restrict their solving them.  People often blame politics, the environment, marketing, accounting but the biggest issue is what’s feasible or practical to do, given the known constraints.  There is a big difference between assumption and actual barrier, yet the actual barriers can be nothing else but thought in the beginning even though it may actually be a real issue that would hinder the problem solving effort.   Thinking, as someone said (sorry), doesn’t make it so.   The truth may be what happens after we do something, not sure about that; yet there is a level of pragmatism that always drives decision making in business.  We can’t do this because of that and we can’t do that because of this.   We need to think through these barriers carefully to see if they are real or a matter of our discourse.

One example happened to me years ago when I tried my hand at business.  We kept making decisions because ‘we had to’ and over a period of time the direction I blissfully steered the business to failed.  Each decision was thought out, reasoned over, implemented with an eye to improvement.  Yet as complexity unfolded, new ideas emerged which reset my decision parameters and modified my heuristics, I realised I was playing a fools game.  There was no ‘right’ answer, only what was feasible and known to me at the time and with the resources that I had to use.    Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber talked about this years ago, yet in all the work I have done, I have seen little progress in this regard.  Complexity is a bitch. Scholars like the late Herbert Simon called it decision making under ambiguity, what decisions are made that don’t contain that?  Tell me if you know.

The hidden tiger of decision making and complex problem solving is complexity.  It laughs at us when we confront it with our ideas, and changes shape the minute we make a choice.  What’s known becomes unknown and what seemed ‘right’ becomes not right after the action has been taken.  Is the truth something that happens to an idea as William James said?  Maybe.  Perhaps the truth is not just what happens to the idea but the reasons why it didn’t work in the first place.  It is elusive, nevertheless.

courtesy http://missdebbie.net/

A while back I started reading self-help books.  Now, I need as much help as the next guy HOWEVER… I am starting to wonder why this phenomena has become so successful.  Yeah I know (potential flamers) that thousands of people realised this long before I did.   Anyway, as a preclusion to the following let me say that I think that you can get a lot of value from reading self-help books.  But, one thing has bothered me… so much so that I am about to say it in CAPS:

I DON’T HAVE A VISION!!!

Phew.  That’s better. Nine out of every ten self-helpers will promote the idea of ‘manifesting’ or ‘having a vision’.  What if there’s nothing there?  I stopped (as in put the book back on the shelf and closed it NEVER to open again) reading a book that began with … all you need is a vision.   I suspect that I have dreams, passions and desires.  I sure as hell do (read this for more information).  Nevertheless I have been thinking about this for a while… I have no great desire to do anything much.  Sure, if I could land an agent and sell my book to a willing publisher that would be good.  Getting promoted recently was also pretty sweet and having children is lots of fun.  Yet, inside the great vast of my spirit is the essence of nothing.

I am not alone.  I know of heaps of people that are clueless about the reason they exist.  From the time I was sixteen until now I have had desires, only to find out after a period of time that I no longer wanted to do that.  Perhaps I am a transcient?  Anyway enough glamourous navel gazing let’s think outside the box.

Visions for sale

Perhaps the core part of the problem lies in the belief that our lives are said to have a grand ‘awesome’ plan to them.  What if we decided to anti-vision?  OR Anti-plan?  Let’s imagine that there is already a plan and the plan is to find out how NOT to plan?  I feel at peace the most when I am relaxing and not worrying too much about what tomorrow will bring.  Maybe anti-planning is the answer?  Planning to not have a plan… living by … emergence?  As things cross our paths we can deal with them and begin to build a better existence for ourselves.  Why do we need a vision?  Yes, I know, I have said having a vision is important… but hey MAYBE I AM WRONG!  I think what we find in the majority of self-help literatures is the manifestation of false hope syndrome. We believe in hope and hope lies to us.

We believe in what they say so badly we think we need a grand narrative and meaning to our lives.  Go to a cemetary one day for fun.  Look at the tombstones.  These are ordinary people that died, perhaps they had a dream, perhaps they didn’t.  What’s important now is that they are food for worms.  They are no more.  However, this is not a depressing thing.  It means simply that life can be ordinary.

Life is ordinary… most of time

I can count the amount of times I have had ‘defining moments on one hand.  Marriage, when my kids were born, getting my first real job etc.  Yet, none of these things teaches me about me.  It teaches me, that life is like a punctuated equilibrium with long delays inbetween the spikes.  Why do we strive to work SO hard to have all this stuff that destroys us in the end.  Why?  Is being ordinary so damned terrible that we have to avoid it.  We can’t all be Richard Branson or GOD FORBID Bill Gates.  No, you can’t all be rich millionaries.  SORRY.  Through hard work, divine favour (perhaps), money and good connections you can be something you think you should be… although I am wondering about the hard work part.   Everything I have I worked for, yet in that, the best things I have at the moment were given to me.  Hmm… DOWN WITH WORK!

I guess the point of this post is to highlight the beauty of the ordinary.  There is real worth in being nobody in particular.   Ambition is a double edged sword that on one hand makes you want something but on the other takes you to extraordinary lengths to achieve it. Why do that?  Be normal, be beautiful!

Why should we sell our souls for a vision?

*Courtesy the cheezburger people

It’s interesting to note what people would do for money.  Decieve others, rip people off, sell drugs, hire hookers, snort coke (ok too much underbelly) and the like.  The question is what would you do for money?  How far would you go for cash?

The reason I am asking is recently a thought had crossed my mind to do with some rather dubious online marketing tactics.  After a period of time I realised that if I was going to do the said thing in question… then I would be deliberately have to deceive someone in order to make some money.  The bible has a bit to say about that so do many other books.  But, in my mind the question that I thought to ask was: what would YOU do for money?  I have lied for money before and felt like crap afterwards!  I have done all kinds of things for it.   YES.  Probably the worst thing I did was steal from my parents when I was a kid (hey they had it coming!). What about you?  What would you do for money?

I am watching something on sixty minutes about Generation Y spending money on the credit card.  They showed a young lady going on how she is a victim of the sleight of hand from the banks.  This got me thinking about the way we frame our problems in the modern world and I have to say I am appalled.  It would be easy to blame the banks (who probably shoulder some responsibility) but there is something in this report that irks me.

I make many mistakes but at the end of the day you have to take responsibility.  You have to say to yourself that if you racked up the debt there wasn’t a little man who swiped the card out of your hand and forced you to rack up the debt.  There are genuine mistakes.  Then, there are stupid ones.  In any case, you can read from a victim script, blam others or whatever.  My thing is this: your happiness in the present moment isn’t worth the years of having to pay off tons of debt.  There is no merit in that.  Absolutely none.

I have spent years paying back loans.  So far at least six of them and I am not even close to clearing what I owe.  Most of them were stupid decisions.  Yet, there is no one I can blame at the end of the day, I have to blame myself.  So should you.  Take responsibility.   You racked it up you have to pay it.  Whatever you put away today you pay for tomorrow… don’t be a jackass!

The thing that I want to see people do is to think.  Going without is one of those things you have to do sometimes in order to improve your overall position later… it’s a cornerstone of strategic thinking.  I see none of this with people (and I put myself in this category) who rack up a ton of debt and then blame others or claim bankruptcy.   You made the decision… now pay for it!

*Image Courtesy: http://www.ultimatestreetcar.co.uk/wallpapers.php

I have heard it said that there is more to life than work… sadly not for most people.   In Western society I have noticed an emerging desire for work that goes beyond common sense.  I could blame organisational psychology or whatever but in my opinion we have developed a “job=life” attitude.  This has to stop… it’s not healthy.

You are not your job

When you ask most people what they do for a living, the answer most offer is that, “oh I am a lawyer” or “oh I am [inserted job here]“.   The often cited unbalanced measuring stick called, “work-life balance” consists of working too much and then burning out.  You may like your job and enjoy doing it… but it’s just a job.  I don’t think we should make the mistake of selling our souls to a world that largely is run by people who have so much money that people have stopped meaning anything to them.  When you say that you are your job and your identity is wrapped up in what you do… then you are saying that you are that job.  Your priority in life is your ambition.

I know most people have nothing wrong with ambition… I have a big problem with it.  The ambition you have will often cause you to push people aside, make irrational judgments and enter into a reality of self-promotion which even the most deluded narcissist can see is wrong.  There is nothing wrong with goals neither as there anything wrong with trying to make a living… there is something very wrong when work becomes the centre of your life.

Working too hard is poison for you and your life

It’s sad to say but 4 billion people in this planet live on a dollar a day or much, much less.  The main assumption we have that these people need jobs.  I bet they already have one in most cases.  Perhaps they are working already for a big multinational?  Where did that get them?  Selling organs?  This point can’t be overstated … those who are working poor know exactly what I am talking about.  We work and work and work and work.  Where does it get us.? Sick, burned out… dead or dying.  It’s a sad state of affairs.

What have we got wrong about work?

From the day we hit pre-school (prep now) until the day we retire… we are working towards some kind of invisible goal.  As a matter of fact we become so used to it that when we reach our old age all we have to show for it is a house… if we are lucky.  Somewhere along the way we have bought the lie that work is what life is all about.  Work is what we do because we have to. If there was an alternative to work… I’d be doing it… sadly there isn’t.  I understand that some people love their work and there is a path where you can take that thinking.   Still, that “job” should never be given the status symbol of “identity” in your life.  Doing that only ever makes you realise that you are a slave to some invisible form of ambition.

So we work.  Like a stream of ants lining up to serve society.  Why do we do this?  Because we have to.  I was told that the university where I work runs off the good will of people who work there.  Indeed, it does… good will that is bought with a price.  That price is very high.  If I were to ask you to exchange your life for work at the age of ten or ask you to sacrifice your teenage dreams to do the right thing by your wife and family would you do it?  I bet you wouldn’t.  Why then do we act as though our jobs, cars, houses and the life give our lives meaning… when they don’t.  Clearly, if life was meant to be about work so society could advance… I am not seeing the advancement.  We still have all the same problems they did thousands of years ago… when evil landlords invented this work business.

Where is the greater good?

I have heard it said that to work is its own reward.  What is that reward?  Money?  Money that is gone before it hits my bank account.  Money that evaporates fast these days.  I am constantly reminded that my wife and I’s choice to have a parent at home is costing me dearly.  Yet, these are values I choose to live by.  A tough call?  Not really, if living purposefully and intentionally means I have to suffer to maintain my values than so be it.  I would rather live one day by what I believe and pay for it, than a thousand working to reach some invisible goal. That doesn’t mean however that it’s all smooth sailing or happy days.

So, what’s wrong with work?  Nothing.  If your work is fulfilling to you and meaningful and supporting of your values… then you have found a rare treasure.  What I think we have wrong about work is that it’s all life is supposed to be about.  Your life is your life.  You are here for a reason.  Yet, in finding that reason you do not have to sell your soul to make another person rich.  What I want you to take away from this post today is this: don’t let “work” become the end all and be all in your life.  The end result is just not worth it.

courtesy of razee81

Yesterday I was rambling about decision making.  Well… today I am going to talk a bit more about surfacing hidden bias.

The devils advocate

In religious literature the devil is a being who opposes God and argues against the ’saints’ of God in order that he may bring them down.  Being a Christian I don’t particulary like the devil there is however something we can learn from him.  How to surface hidden bias!   If you notice that you keep making the same mistakes you are probably operating under a bias of some sort.  Let’s take the example of the Gambler’s Fallacy.

“If I pull the lever this time I am more likely to win because I have pulled the lever more times”.  BIAS!

So the devil would say (if he was against gambling)…

“How do you know if you pull the lever this time … it will work”.

A seed of doubt gets sown into the mind of the participant and voila!  You have them doubting what they think they know!  If there is a bias here it will become obvious.  The relative strength of any idea, is only as good as the flaws that are in it.  Here is another example of the devil’s advocate.

“I have to buy those shoes.”  But… the devil might say:

“What would happen if you didn’t buy those shoes.”

The opposite point of view is used as a frame of reference to tease out the flaws in the thinking of the person with said bias. Okay one more:

“If I buy this item off ebay it will save me money later.”   The devil would say:

“How do you know that you will save money later… you might not even want to have it later.”

This technique makes use of the opposite point of view and forces people to confront their bias.  This does not guarantee that they will necessarily follow your advice but it’s a meaningful way to surface hidden assumptions!  Here is another technique I have seen people like Gordon Ramsey use.

Direct Confrontation

Say for a moment somebody you know is in dire need of a change of scenery.  They may be stuck in a rut and their thinking may not be helping them at all.  So what can you do?  Well, you can confront them!  There is an art to this as the following story indicates.

A while ago somebody very close to me was in an abusive relationship.  In the beginning I made myself available to talk to this person just about their relationship and the problems they had.  Overtime I noticed that I was not helping the problem… so I took a different approach.  I would confront them and deliberately raise the issue making a point out the bias in a non-accusing manner.

A word of warning: When you do this be prepared for fireworks.  People don’t like being told they are wrong or their ideas don’t work.  Yet, for the sake of helping them you sometimes have to hurt them.  Just today I did this to a person I have a great deal of respect for.  They basically got angry and said something to me which was uncalled for.  This is where things like learning to see through the biases of others is important.  They are not really angry at you (though they are temporarily!) they are angry because you have exposed them.  When you do this it takes extreme care.  Sometimes the best way is Gordon’s way though I wouldn’t recommend reaching for that one first!  The point is: we don’t know we have a bias until it surfaces and even then we are not sure how to get rid of it.   I have had this happen to me and it hurts!  Be careful.

Using positive ‘confession’ or self-talk

One of the better ways to rid yourself of a bias is to replace it with positive self-talk. Management research suggests that one of the ways we find answers is by talking to ourselves.  I have found that we solve our problems this way too.  That is, we can talk ourselves into and out of things on a regular basis.  Once we are aware of the bias, we can routinely begin to speak through the issue by replacing it with a positive belief.  Example:

“If I had of only looked when I crossed the street I would not have been hit by that car.”

This can easily become:

“I did what I did and at the time I thought it was the best course of action.  I cannot change it so therefore I accept it.”

What’s the difference?  Well the hindsight bias stops us from making better decisions in the future.  By accepting failure and alas being human, we can move forward.  We can make better decisions. Here’s a management example:

“Bob keeps calling in sick.  I have given him two warnings and this will be his third.  However, if I fire him now I won’t know whether or not he will turn out good as an employee.”

In this bias you are deferring action to a future date because you are fearful of confronting Bob.  Firing Bob is the future event you are avoiding so you make up a story to convince yourself that doing it later is the better option.  What to do?   Direct confrontation?  Hold up.  The problem isn’t Bob … it’s you.  It’s what you think the problem is.  If you have around here long enough you will learn my golden rule:

The problem is exactly what you think the problem is.

You think that Bob won’t be happy, you think there will be an issue of having to fire him and you think the outcome will be bad.  One thought produces another which in turn, produces another and that produces another and so on.  Until you have a mess that is purely made up of a system of related biases in your mind.   You need to first look at the situation and begin to restructure your thoughts.

“Bob keeps calling in sick.  I wonder what the problem is with Bob that he would do that?”

Now you have detached the future event from the payoff so you can leave it open as to what needs to be done.  Secondly, getting more information instead of building a scenario where Bob gets fired might actually create a win-win situation for you and Bob.  Bob may just be in the wrong job or he may have genuine problems.  Either way don’t predict events before they happen… you aren’t Nostradamus!

I find in situations like this that my imagination is helpful.  I can imagine a better outcome than Bob getting fired and it clears my mind to help me focus better.  I can use the devil’s advocate to challenge myself and more often than not it settles my emotions.  In closing I would like to relate a story of something that happened to me a few years ago.

After being offered a scholarship to finish my doctorate I had two catastrophic events happen to me.  1. I got struck down with pneumonia and asthma and 2. my primary supervisor pulled out of my PhD.  It meant that I wouldn’t finish my PhD on time and I might be out of a job.   During the coming months my boss continually reminded me to finish my PhD on time and hounded me.  I heard about how I was going to be found ‘unsatisfactory’ in my performance.  In my mind I began to build all kinds of horrible pictures, mental imagery of the worst sort!  My performance review came and went and to my suprise I was found ’satisfactory’.  I had spent so much time preparing for the worse that when the best happened… I was totally surprised!  I learned something extremely valuable from this experience (other than prayer works I might add!): don’t create a worst case scenario without considering the best case scenario.  Have both on hand because you have no idea what’s going to happen.  Be prepared and whatever you do don’t settle on one over the other.  Think it through and make good judgements!

Courtesy of tijmen

I want to talk to you about biases and how they effect your judgement.

Identifying Bias

A bias is a way of thinking that you are accustomed to that sits in your head.  It’s main features are that it forces you to make decisions through it.  Hence:

1. When you make decisions that contain bias you get the same result… again and again.
2. When you are not aware of a bias you have no idea it’s affecting your outcomes
3. The reality of what you are doing is obscured by your biases
4. A bias is built into your decision making processes

The classic example is that of the football team.  If you follow a certain team, no matter how biased you think you are or aren’t… you will always side against the decisions made to that team… even though they may be right.  I have a friend who follows the ‘Collingwood’ football team in Australian rules.  No matter what I say during a game he is ready to kill me if I suggest that the umpire was right.  Do you know people like this?

How do Biases effect me?

The main way a bias effects you is that it makes you have impared judgement.  Once I was sitting in a meeting where I had to work out who to ‘let go’ as they say.  When the conversation came up about the person I suggested, everybody agreed.  I suggested the ‘least’ qualified to be removed.  At the time I justified my decision by saying that the person should have gone because they didn’t meet the criteria of the organisation.  Can I say it was a big mistake?  That person was the best person I have ever had working for me and I have not settled on another person since.  ‘Qualified’ people have come and gone but most of them have given me headaches.  I learned through this experience that my judgement was affected by ‘qualification’ bias!

In your case you have different biases that live in your mind that act as a template for how you make decisions… this is part of what the late Geoffrey Vickers called ‘the art of judgement’.  How do you know when you are operating under a bias?  Let’s have a look.

Types of Biases

It is impossible to label all of the biases as I know them.   But here is one I encounter more often than any others… hindsight bias.  Let’s look at this story:

I recently moved out of a house in another suburb because it had asbestos roofing… I didn’t want my children to get sick.  After I moved they changed the roof and fixed the asbestos problem.  I should have stayed.

Note: This is hindsight bias.  You have identified a problem, noted the solution but failed to take into account the moderating variable you weren’t aware of.  What is this moderating variable?  It’s the fact thay you didn’t realise the roof would fix the problem.  If you knew that… and were certain of it… you probably wouldn’t have moved.   How then can you justify a choice you weren’t aware of… it wasn’t a choice at all! Here is another example.

I have played the poker machines 200 times in a row.  The chances of me winning are much higher next time I pull this lever… after all you have to be in it to win it!

This is the Gambler’s Fallacy. I have met entreprenuers with this condition, sales people and many, many others.  It’s the idea that previously random events decrease in their probability which each new cycle of the event.  People stuck in this fallacy are likely to believe in things like ‘lucky’ streaks or use some item of clothing that brings them luck.  Former Australian Cricket Captain used a red rag in his pocket for good luck when he was batting.  Now for one more example:

I met a woman once who bought a loaf of gold bread.  When I asked her why she told me that she was collecting them and would one day sell them on ebay.

Quite often we make purchase choices without realising that afterwards that we actually have no need of the item we just bought.  The ultimate goal of the purchase is justified through the bias.   This is post-purchase rationalisation or post-hoc (meaning after the event) rationalisation. We do this when we are facing a messy problem.  We create stories to justify our actions. A final example of biases in action:

I was worried about having burn-out.  So I looked up burnout on the web and it was confirmed… I have burn-out.

What’s so bad about this?  The person in question has only looked for confirming evidence of their bias.  They have not really looked up evidence that suggests the contrary.  What if they have something else?  They call this one: Confirmation Bias. You are seeking information that only confirms your position… not denies it.  When you do this you can become narrow minded.  It can develop into all kinds of mental problems and make you frame your problems in such a way that you will not be able to see around them.

Other types of bias

The ever helpful Wikipedia resource lists a bunch of other biases which you can read about here.  The main type of biases I have mentioned here are probably the most common ones I have seen.  The main point of what I have said here is that these things live with us.  In a later post I will talk about surfacing hidden biases and learning to develp yourself from them.