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.

*Image Credit: Namida-k

Scholar Robert Chua says that we have spoken so much about decision making that we have gotten it to the point where we can no longer talk about it in a meaningful way.  However, we need to say something because we are of those that must make decisions.  I think decision making is the act of making choices in certain situations where there are knowns and unknowns.

Your boss comes to you and says can we afford to do this?  Should I do that?  You job is to reason between the two points of view and reach a conclusion.   You reason between that which we know about and that which know about.  Here is a story from my own life:

Recently I was asked what I thought about an assignment from a student… was it good enough?  When I looked at her assignment it looked to me as if it was fine so I sent back an email saying that I thought it was fine.  When marking time comes I have to apply a set of criteria.  That criteria returned an above average grade but wasn’t a ‘perfect’ grade.The student then contacted me and said, ‘You told me that I would get a better grade, you said it was fine.’  My very unpopular response was: yes the assessment was fine and that’s the grade I gave it.  To me it was good enough.  It was fine.  But it wasn’t great.
On the surface it looks like I am being nasty.  However, that student demonstrated a decision to trust me to tell her what I thought.  She gave me the criteria for making that decision.  She asked me if it was good enough.  To me it was.  But I can’t tell you what a great assignment is until I see one.  Why?  Simply because I don’t set out to make perfect assignments… as a student that’s your job.  I can give you the parameters.  I can tell you this is what I think greatness looks like, but unless you show me greatness… how will I know what it looks like?

The decision for me was based on a set of knowns in my mind.  What is good enough?  I have a set of ideas locked away in my mind that says, ‘here this is what is good enough’.  Therefore my response was framed that way.

In my way of thinking we make decisions to solve problems.  Note:
1.    A decision is made under constraints
2.    It’s based on what we think the problem is
3.    Under the constraints of 1 and 2 we make certain choices
4.    We act
For this reason when you make decisions you need to be aware that you are acting under constraints.  What kind of constraints?  What kind of process are you involved in?  What kind of pressure has your boss or employees or YOU put yourself under?  All of these things affect the way you make decisions.  A decision is something you make based on a certain criteria.

What kind of decisions do you make?

What is your role?  What are the expectations of your role?  Here is an example from my own life:

Role: I am a lecturer

Expectations: To undertake research, teaching and service to the university under given constraints.

Decisions I make and am responsible for: When to do research, how to manage students and deliver courses, when and where to help the in the university decision making process.
These are the decisions I am paid for.  Note the constraints.  These are the things I can’t control.  I can’t just make my own decisions when I find a cheat for example.  I can use judgement.  The question is am I aware of those constraints?  Do I know what I am responsible for?

Decisions are those things we have to come to a conclusion about in which we must choose a course of action.  They are based on what we know about something and unfortunately, what we don’t know.  In my life I have often made decisions on what people have known and how they have come to know it, without realising I am operating under different constraints.  That is, when I make decisions, I have thought I could copy what someone else had done and expect much the same results.  It just won’t work.  Hence, this is why we haven’t yet invented a business system that can actually do the job it was assigned to do.  Every organisation is different… every person is different.  We have different stories we tell ourselves. And on we go.

To conclude this post I want you to begin to think about the decisions you make and under what constraints you make them.  What are the rules you use to make decisions?  What pressure do you put yourself under?  Think about it… the answer may just surprise you.