On decision hygiene

Reduce bias and noise, and bring more people into the decision making process

Have you ever been in a meeting where you felt the first person who spoke unknowingly set the tone and had an outsized impact on any decision? What about a room where the most senior person dominates discussion or decisions regardless of what others think and maybe even say? How about a meeting where there were just too many people to hear everyone’s opinion and get alignment? Here I want to share some tools to counter a subset of biases and noise that impact decision-making. 

Vote, discuss, vote

Before we dive in let’s discuss the anchor bias. Picture a meeting to decide if you’re going to make an offer to a job candidate. You go around the room saying “yes” or “no” to make an offer. The anchor bias occurs when an individual is influenced by a preceding vote, where they may have been thinking yes, but the previous person has said no. You may also discuss this hypothetical candidate before a vote, but the discussion also influenced the vote and altered some voters' minds. The final decision has been anchored by the first speaker.

This can be countered by a blind vote before any discussion. This might happen simultaneously using Roman voting (thumbs up or down) or through some digital means. This way no one is influenced by preceding votes or the discussion of the candidate. It is at this point that people discuss the differences between their votes, before having a final vote to make a decision. 

I experienced this years ago without actually knowing about it, as part of an iterative planning meeting for a software development team. The team would estimate a piece of work using their fingers to show a numerical estimation. If the votes were broadly aligned, with small variances discarded, the estimate was logged and the team moved on. Where there were bigger discrepancies, those were discussed. Questions usually were along the lines of “you gave a large estimate, what are you seeing that the rest of us haven’t?”; or conversely, “you have a low estimate, are we overcomplicating a solution?”. Once that discussion was completed, the estimate would happen again, hopefully with more alignment the next time around.

Think, write, share

Daniel Kahnemann’s excellent book Thinking Fast and Slow demonstrates that we have two modes of thinking. The first is almost instinctual, and uses heuristics and assumptions to make quick decisions, called “system 1”. The second, system 2, is where you stop, think, and process information before giving a response. The thing is, we can be impatient and lazy beings, and if we can give a quick answer, we might just do that. By taking a moment to think, and not writing, not speaking, we can engage our system 2 brain and consider more deeply what we are being asked. 

After a period of thinking, write down what you have thought, and when a group has completed this, only then share what you have. This does a few things. It counters the individuals who jump right in, who can without knowing, take over a discussion. There are two challenges with that: first, that person is likely working with their system 1 brain, and they are likely preventing others from contributing unique concepts and questions into a discussion and decision. 

If in a meeting there is a considerable power differential between the most and least senior person, you can take this a step further. Collect everything that has been written down (either in person or digitally), and have a facilitator read them out. This way all ideas are equal, and the best ones might just come from someone you were not expecting them from. 

1, 2, 4, all

What about very large groups, or where you might want to introduce some team-building elements to a workshop? This is where one of the liberating structures, 1-2-4-all, can come into play. You can use the above, vote-discuss-vote, and think-write-share, as suited. First work by yourself (the 1 in 1-2-4-all), but when you come to the vote, or the share, work with one other person. Discuss, synthesise, and/or rewrite your ideas. Then join another pair, making 4, and do the same. Only after you have again discussed, synthesised, and rewritten ideas do you share with the entire group. 

This way, you can start to get people collaborating and get to hear everyone’s ideas even in large group settings. 

Next steps

Want to challenge yourself and your teams to make better decisions? I’d encourage you to look at the work and training offered by Red Team Thinking, and consider a hygiene audit of how decisions are made with your teams as discussed in Daniel Kahneman’s latest book, Noise. 

Further reading

Red Teaming: Transform Your Business by Thinking Like the Enemy. Bryce Hoffman

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein

Thinking, Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman

The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures. Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless