I want to talk a little bit about Marvin Pipkin and what he can show us about challenging assumptions. When the United States Army Scientist returned to civilian life and joined General Electric in the 1920’s - he was set the “impossible” task of creating a lightbulb that was frosted on the inside. But Marvin, not understanding this was a joke for new recruits, set about as if it were possible, and in 1925, the new internally frosted light bulb was completed.
Creating and using assumptions are hard wired into our brains making them difficult to spot. With the vast array of information the brain processes every second, assumptions help us to think faster meaning it’s harder to bring them into focus.
The business obituaries are littered with the devastating examples of companies that have not challenged their assumptions:
So what can be done to help fforward-thinking companies challenge their assumptions and avoid becoming another tombstone in the corporate graveyard? This is what we do at Weploy...
Diversity is a key driver of creativity and innovation, because different experience, equals different ways of thinking and therefore different assumptions. Diversity isn’t just about gender or race, it also includes socio-economic status, full time or contingent staff, sexual orientation, age... the list goes on. This is why assessing for “Culture Fit” during recruitment can be detrimental to innovation. Often it’s just shorthand for people who think like me, when really you want people who think differently to me.
This is one of the things our customers value so much about Weploy - we remove any chance of bias from their hiring decision. The entire team is always very proud when we hear feedback from employers admitting their Weployee would never have got through their traditional screening process, but have gone on to impact the business for the better.
When making important decisions it’s important to challenge as many assumptions as possible. I try to examine how confident I am about the source of information on which I’m making the decision. Even fundamentally challenging the premise of our business and product, and also examining the criteria of how I make decisions - are the success criteria that have worked up to today really the right criteria for future decisions?
A simple way to do this is re-frame a statement - for instance an hotelier may change the statement “Hotels have rooms” to “Why do hotels have rooms?” or “Do hotels have to have rooms?” We all know of a company that is disrupting hotels without owning a single room.
Similar to building a wider diversity policy, it is important to get outside perspectives from those not involved in the decision and to build a culture of challenging arguments or assumptions. A tactic I use myself and encourage my team to do too, when I feel as if someone is making an assumption - just say “I want to challenge that X”. It takes leadership to foster that trust, so that more junior employees feel confident enough to speak up. Too often, these are the viewpoints that aren’t considered - when often it’s exactly these that could be critical to business success.
We can all fall into the trap of thinking that if we made the right decisions for the past five years, we will make the the right decisions for the next five. But remember Nokia - for three years they looked like they had made the right call. Until the full screen concept was dismissed and the smartphone era effectively put them out of business. So whenever I hear someone start a sentence with "I want to challenge…. " I consciously prepare myself to examine all my decisions.
If you look at the Fortune 500 companies from 1955 to 2017 - only 60 remain. That means 88% of all companies that were top of the world made the wrong decisions. Challenging the assumptions on which you base your decisions is essential if you are to succeed in an increasingly uncertain and disruptive operating environment. Before you and your team make your next business critical decision, I challenge you to take a few extra moments to challenge your assumptions and ask around for a few external opinions. This cheat sheet may help you!
...benefits from this? …is this harmful for? ...makes decisions based on this? ...is most directly affected? |
WHO ? |
...have you also heard discuss this? ...would be the best person to consult? ...will be the key people in this? ...deserves recognition for this? |
...are the strengths/weaknesses? ...is another perspective? ...is another alternative? ...would be a counter-argument? |
WHAT ? |
...is the best/worst case scenario? ...is most/least important? ...can we do to make a positive change? ...is getting in the way of our action? |
...would we see this in the real world? ...are there similar concepts/situations? …is there the most need for this? ...in the world would this be a problem? |
WHERE ? |
...can we get more information? ...do we go for help with this? ...will this idea take us? ...are the areas for improvement? |
...is this acceptable/unacceptable? ...would this benefit our society? ...would this cause a problem? ...is the best time to take action? |
WHEN ? |
...will we know we’ve succeeded? ...has this played a part in our history? ...can we expect this to change? ...should we ask for help with this? |
...is this a problem/challenge? ...is it relevant to me/others? ...is this the best/worst scenario? ...are people influenced by this? |
WHY ? |
...should people know about this? ...has it been this way previously? ...have we allowed this to happen? …is there a need for this today? |
...is this similar to XXX? ...does this disrupt things? ...do we know the truth about this? ...will we approach this safely? |
HOW ? |
...does this benefit us/others? ...does this harm us/others? ...do we see this in the future? ...can we change this for our good? |
Delivering on our mission to create a fearless and empowered world of work, we’ve made some helpful new updates to the platform that will enhance the user experience for employers in the Customer Service industry.
The nature of work has evolved throughout the years, pushing digital operations to the forefront. In response, this has also bolstered a demand for professionals with the skills to navigate these tech trends. With the growing number of companies going digital, the list of in-demand skills will look drastically different from the previous generations. What's more, as opposed to evaluating workers with the degrees they have, the future of work will prize skills over academic qualifications alone.
In our post on 'The 5 Key Traits for StartUp Success', we talked about the soft skills you need to thrive in the workplace. But if you truly want to future-proof your career, here are some skills you may want to add to your arsenal:
When I think about the best leaders I've worked with there has always been one element that stands true. I trust and respect their decision making. I don't have to want to be their best friend, but I have to believe in the decisions they make.
I'm faced with a multitude of decisions every day and my biggest priority, both professionally and personally, is to constantly improve how I make decisions. So I thought I'd share the four most important principles I've developed when it comes to making decisions. I've also added further reading within each principle, and if you're keen to learn more I'd highly recommend subscribing to the podcast and blog of Farnam Street as it's a goldmine of wisdom within this field of study.
We are faced with a paradox of our own evolutionary making. People who lack choice, seem to want and fight for choice but this has a cost. The more choices and decisions we make, the less effective we become over time at choice making. It's well understood now that we have limited resources when it comes to making decisions, and continually working this muscle creates decision fatigue. We see this in all parts of life, with research showing judges make poorer decisions later in the day. But we're not just talking about big decisions, choices come at us from all angles each day. Choosing what coffee to order, which shampoo to buy, if I should snooze my alarm or get up. No matter how trivial, they all have an impact on our ability to make good decisions. So to improve, the only option is to limit the number of decisions you make. A great tool I found on the Farnam Street blog was a take on the 2x2 Eisenhower matrix that categorised decisions into four categories.
Those decisions that are inconsequential, whether reversible or not, are to be delegated. For decisions that have consequences but are reversible - there is opportunity to run experiments of which your team or individuals can share the learnings. The only decisions that should require your brain power are those which are consequential and irreversible. Of course this is only a framework and you will have to clearly define what the terms ‘consequential’ and ‘reversible’ mean to you and your business. But this has already helped me focus on what matters and build capability and empowerment in my teams.
Further reading: https://fs.blog/2009/07/an-introduction-to-decision-making/
It's easy to think that great decision makers are those that are instantly able to weigh up a scenario, identify the possible outcomes and come to an immediate decision. It's impressive but what's the rush? If this really is an important decision - by which I mean one that is both consequential and irreversible, then the desire to make an immediate decision is due to us falling prey to a cognitive bias of pushing to do what is easiest with the available information.
It's hard to think of opposing points of view or other alternate outcomes but that's really what success in my job is all about. I try to give myself time to think about as many contributing factors and apply as many lenses onto a situation as I can. Then I give myself thinking time. Personally, I’ve found I need to change my environment, go for a walk, or sit in another part of the office to let my mind wander around the decision. Play thought experiments and try to walk through the outcomes with different hats on.
One great model from the mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi is to inverse the problem. To do this, rather than try to think of solving a problem forward (for instance - trying to increase productivity in your team), instead invert the problem, and ask what are all the things that I could do to reduce productivity in my team. Then don't do them! It may not solve the problem you're facing but it can mean you don't factor in arguments that can lead to poor outcomes.
Further reading: https://fs.blog/2014/06/avoiding-stupidity/
First let's define what a decision in uncertainty means. Uncertainty is when we don't know the outcome of a decision and we don't know the probability of those outcomes. This is different from a decision in risk - where we don't know the outcomes but we do know the probabilities. A professional poker player will know the probabilities of a win based on their hand but the outcome is still unknown. So, when dealing with uncertainty you are going to be ignorant of some elements that are relevant and consequential to a decision. Importantly there are two states of ignorance.
It may seem that if we can't predict the unknowable outcomes any better if they are recognised or not... then why bother. But when you are aware of your own ignorance, you can start to look for sources of cognitive bias that could cloud your decision-making. There are plenty of such biases that can affect how we approach decision making - but the three that are most relevant are:
Personally, I look to embrace my own ignorance when it comes to uncertainty and try to uncover how my decisions could be coloured.
Further reading: https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rzeckhau/anatomy of ignorance.pdf
Another factor I find important is to optimise decisions for the long term. Again - the human brain is hard-wired to seek instant gratification. For me, this comes down to looking for win/win scenarios and what is called second order thinking. They are strikingly simple concepts in theory but both require conscious effort to implement. Any relationship, if it is to last, must be win/win so when I'm considering which direction to go, it must benefit both my customer, and Weploy as a business, if it has any chance to prosper over time. The other model, second order thinking can be boiled down to a simple phrase:
And then what?
If I make this decision now, what happens tomorrow, what about in a weeks time, a month, year, 10 years… Not all decisions need you to go too far in the future, but thinking about the branches of possible outcomes through and then what is hugely valuable. I regularly find decisions come up that can be negative in the first order (have a high cost, slow down production etc.) but when we move to the second order and third order they can become a net positive. As all of my decisions should look to build long term, sustainable competitive advantage, second order thinking is essential if I am to succeed.
Further reading: https://medium.com/@noahmp/second-order-thinking-3fc2a224b131
So those are the four principles I try to use when making decisions, hopefully you find it valuable and I'd love to hear more about the most important tricks and models you use to improve your decision making.
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