Posts Tagged ‘collaboration’
Confirmation Bias Proves What You Already Knew
Human beings deal with complexities by creating mental models. Our models are necessarily simpler than reality and are based on our experiences. These considerations imply two things. First, models are intensely personal constructs. Second, personal models are difficult to change. When we find something that works, we’re reluctant to change it.
There’s a strong temptation to fit what we see into our models rather than invest the effort (and ego) into admitting our model is wrong, or at least incomplete. Oswald and Grosjean define confirmation bias as “the tendency to search for, interpret and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.” You probably know someone who engages in impressive mental gymnastics to fit everything into their world view.
In business, falling prey to confirmation bias can cost you money. If you developed a process that worked for years but doesn’t meet your company’s needs, you must be open to change. If you interpret critiques as personal attacks, you’re much less likely to improve your processes.
You can take advantage of confirmation bias to create interesting characters or “find the game” within an improv scene. Improv scenes run on justifying why something someone else said or did is true and important. If your character’s perspective uses “Yes, and…” to bring everything into his or her world view, you can be an interesting character and entertain your audience. Like in business, you have to be careful not to let your internal game hurt your team’s performance, but it’s a fun approach to take on occasion.
The exercise “Your Place or Mine?” provides an interesting context for justification and fitting incidents into your character’s world view. In this exercise, you and a scene partner play characters in two different locations. For example, one of you might be a fast food worker in McDonald’s and the other an archery instructor on the range. If the fast food worker hands the archer a french fry, the archer could interpret it as a small arrow and shoot it into a target, which the fast food worker could interpret as throwing the food into a customer’s mouth.
Cognitive Biases are Fun!
George Carlin once pointed out that comedy depends on exaggeration — to make something funny, you must distort one aspect of the situation or description to introduce humor.
If you’re thinking, “I don’t have to exaggerate anything…I make enough mistakes to feed a hundred comics for a year,” you’re probably right. We’re all susceptible to cognitive biases that skew our judgment. If you’ve read any of Dan Ariely’s work (Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty) or read the pop psych literature, you know the human mind is a frighteningly powerful yet flawed instrument.
I have good news: you can identify and minimize the impact of cognitive biases. What’s more, performers can use them to create humorous situations on stage. I downloaded a list of cognitive biases and will do my best to explore how they affect the world where business and funny intersect.
I first thought of writing a series of posts after a ComedySportz gig for health care professional employed by the Oregon penal system. One of their handouts (I always grab the handouts) listed about 120 cognitive biases and logical traps affecting the reasoning inmates and others use to assess their circumstances. I’ll leave the connection between prison, work, and comedy to your fertile brains.
First up? Everyone’s favorite trap: confirmation bias.
Book Review: The Gamble, from Princeton University Press
Title: The Gamble
Authors: John Sides and Lynn Vavreck
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Copyright: 2013
ISBN13: 978-0-691-15688-0
Length: 322
Price: $29.95
Rating: 93%
I received access to a preview copy of this book via the NetGalley site.
The popular media covers U.S. presidential campaigns like announcers calling a horse race, highlighting every move, nuance, and setback as if it could determine the winner. Why? Because not doing so would give viewers tacit permission to watch something else, drive down the networks’ ratings, and cost them advertising dollars. One journalist from Mother Jones identified 68 unique events the press labeled “game changers.” Were they, or was it just meaningless hype?
Approach
In The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election, authors John Sides and Lynn Vavreck analyze the race’s twists and turns in measured tones, emphasizing the role “the fundamentals” (especially the economy) play in presidential elections. Sides is associate professor of political science at George Washington University and the coauthor of Campaigns and Elections. He cofounded and contributes to The Monkey Cage, a politics blog. Vavreck is associate professor of political science and communications at UCLA. As academics, they had to strike a balance between writing for a general audience versus writing for an academic audience.
Books without sufficient analytical rigor might not be considered during tenure evaluations, so the authors took a bit of a risk by writing mainly for laymen. I thought they struck a clever and useful balance by dividing the book into two sections: commentary text, where the authors summarize their findings in the main body of the book; and appendixes that present their data and analyses in more depth. The main text contains plenty of facts and figures, but the appendices extend the analysis by including summary statistics (such as standard deviation and standard error) and other measures of interest to professional academics.
Analysis
So, did the various campaign gaffes, missteps, blunders, and revelations make a difference? Sides and Vavreck conclude that, in the long run, they did not. The American electorate is more or less evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans with only a small percentage of persuadable voters for each election. Seemingly substantial missteps such as Mitt Romney’s statement about the (alleged) 47% of Americans who pay no income tax and Barack Obama’s (real) horrific performance in the first debate caused a momentary blip in the polls, but the candidates’ results settled back to the predicted norm within a few days.
The Republican primary season provides an even starker example of how Mitt Romney kept his forward momentum as challengers such as Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum were “discovered” by the media but ran off the road due to policy mismatches with the electorate, poor debate performance, or personal issues the press uncovered. The fundamentals of Romney’s campaign didn’t guarantee him the nomination, but the odds were ever in his favor.
So too with Obama, who could rely on an (albeit slowly) improving economy to lift his campaign. Sides and Vavreck point out that even a general sense that things are getting better makes the incumbent very hard to overcome. Just as most Vegas odds makers give NFL teams a three-point edge for home field advantage, improving economic times provide a lift to sitting presidents.
Of course, campaigns and independent organizations do their best to overcome these limitations through voter outreach (aka the vaunted Obama “ground game”) and advertising. The authors’ analysis confirms previous work that ads shift opinions for a short time after viewing, but the effect fades quickly. The Romney campaign tried to leverage that fact by buying a lot of advertising in the days just before the election, but the Obama campaign had done a good job of maintaining their candidate’s presence and prevented the Romney campaign from succeeding.
The Gamble also addresses what the Obama win implies for American politics. Did his win, which was by a reasonably substantial margin, constitute a mandate and indicate a liberal trend in the polity? Recent votes in favor of legalizing gay marriage and marijuana seem to argue in favor of that interpretation, but Sides and Vavreck found that the electorate tends to equilibrate by moving in opposition to the winning candidate’s views. In other words, a liberal candidate’s win results in a more conservative electorate and vice-versa.
Conclusion
When it comes to U.S. presidential elections, the percentage of the electorate that will vote for their preferred party’s candidate regardless of attempted persuasion is so large as to render most campaigning moot. The campaign machines are so well-tuned, the authors argue, they cancel each other out over the long run. The fundamental elements, especially the economy, are far more relevant. I find that aspect of The Gamble comforting.
Before I close, I’d like to give a quick shout-out to the cover designer. I didn’t see the designer’s name in my preview copy of the book, but the cover image uses the point of the “A” in “Gamble” as the fulcrum of a dynamic balance between red and blue, which is a terrific touch. It makes a good book that much better.
Curtis Frye is the editor of Technology and Society Book Reviews. He is the author of more than 30 books, including Improspectives, his look at applying the principles of improv comedy to business and life. His list includes more than 20 books for Microsoft Press and O’Reilly Media; he has also created over a dozen online training courses for lynda.com. In addition to his writing, Curt is a keynote speaker and entertainer. You can find more information about him at www.curtisfrye.com.
A Playful Attitude Makes Life Easier
News flash: life ain’t easy. I used to hear that being an adult wasn’t easy, but with the piles of homework and outside activities heaped on kids these days it’s fair to apply the statement to everyone. George Carlin opined that every kid’s daily schedule should include a couple of hours staring out the window — I think that’s a terrific idea.
Having time to yourself gives you the freedom to think about whatever comes to mind and combine ideas in new ways. In other words, to play. This attitude can become a habit, letting you see the unconventional and humorous sides of issues even though you take them seriously.
I discovered a terrific example of this approach in the description of the Wharton School of Economics’s course An Introduction to Operations Management on Coursera.org. The FAQ list contains this bit of whimsy:
What is the coolest thing I’ll learn if I take this class?
You will look at the world with different eyes – you will start to detect bottlenecks, identify productivity wastes, and come up with ideas to improve business processes. A known side effect of these skills is that you might drive friends, family, or co-workers crazy when you point to their improvement opportunities…
The descriptions for the other three Wharton classes contain similar humorous elements. This approach should appeal to casual learners the Wharton School wants to engage with (it certainly caught my attention) and makes the prospect of taking a MOOC offered by a prestigious MBA program a little less imposing. I like their thinking and can’t wait to get started.
Improv, Business, and Emergent Behavior
One of the joys of improv is not knowing exactly what will happen, but improv isn’t unique in that respect. I didn’t get a script when I woke up this morning and I’m guessing you didn’t, either.
What I did have in place when I woke up was a context. I’m in a society with rules, both internally and externally imposed, that guide my behavior. I also interact with other individuals. Mathematicians and computer scientists study simple versions of these interactions using models such as John Conway’s Game of Life. The Game of Life is a model based on a grid of cells. Some of the cells are turned on and others are turned off. At the beginning of a turn, each cell compares its state to its neighbors’ states and turns on, turns off, or remains the same based on a set of rules all cells have in common.
If you follow the earlier link to the Game of Life Wikipedia page, you’ll see that interesting behaviors emerge from various Game of Life starting configurations. The phenomena are interesting enough for researchers to create a new field of inquiry, complex systems science. According to Dr. Melanie Mitchell of Portland State University and the Santa Fe Institute, complex systems is:
…an interdisciplinary field of research that seeks to explain how large numbers of relatively simple entities organize themselves, without the benefit of any central controller, into a collective whole that creates patterns, uses information, and, in some cases, evolves and learns.
— Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour
Complex systems is new and, while it’s provided some interesting insights into some systemic behaviors, it hasn’t resulted in models that predict how consumers or businesses will interact in an environment (e.g., the internet) or with a product. The good news is that you can do field experiments and see what behaviors emerge. Some marketers use the “cool kids” strategy, where they make a few dozen units of a new product and give it to the cool kids in a high school to see what they do with it. As William Gibson noted in “Burning Chrome”, a short story first published in the 1982 collection Hackers, “the street finds its own uses for things”.
A similar rule applies to existing products. If your bosses panic when customers use a product in unintended ways, call a meeting, brew some herbal tea, and figure out how to take advantage of the gift you’ve received. You’re not wrong or stupid for not having foreseen every possible way your products could be used, but you are both of those things if you let your ego get in the way of capitalizing on what your customers tell you they want.
Always Be Ready
Performers should always be ready to go. If another group doesn’t show up or someone gets sick, you can step in.
I did the regular show with the ComedySportz Portland group last night, during which our referee hyped an after hours show by another group. Unfortunately, that group had cancelled their show, but the message didn’t get to anyone in the show that night. We had a significant portion of the regular crowd stay for the after hours show, but there was no one there to do it.
Most of the players in the ComedySportz show had had long days, but they were willing to hang around and do a show for the folks who stayed. I always carry the materials I need to do Magic of the Mind (and my wife’s out of town visiting family), so I volunteered to do the after hours. Part of the team stayed to do a quick Q&A session with the fans while I set up, but after those five minutes it was business as usual. Well, as usual as it can be when you’re doing a show in a t-shirt and cargo shorts.
As an aside, I actually have two emergency Magic of the Mind kits: one in my ComedySportz bag and another, more complete set in the trunk of my car.
If you’re a speaker, you should always have a digital copy of your slide deck with you in case a scheduled speaker isn’t able to go on. I recommend preparing three versions of your talk: 50-minute, 25-minute, and 5-minute. The long version works for conference presentations, the middle for a half-slot, and the short version as program filler or for a quick presentation during a break. You can use the Ignite conference series model to create your 5-minute piece. Ignite presentations consist of 20 slides displayed for 15 seconds each. The slides are on auto-advance, so the presentation lasts exactly five minutes. The format requires some extra rehearsal, but it’s great for boiling your presentation down to its essential elements.
If you have a few minutes of down time in an airport, on a plane, or in your hotel room, take a few minutes to flip through your slides and notes to review your talking points. Stepping up to help a meeting organizer and delivering a polished, professional presentation is good for everyone and can lead to future speaking opportunities.
You Might Not Have a Book in You…Yet
A book with your name on the cover is a badge of honor. Many individuals find writing anything longer than an e-mail too painful to contemplate, with good reason: writing your first book-length manuscript is hard.
I’m preparing for some upcoming speaking engagements, so I took the time to re-read Million Dollar Speaking by Alan Weiss. Weiss has made a very (very, very) good living as a speaker and trainer and came highly recommended from a friend who makes a very (very) good living as an entertainer on the college and corporate circuits. In his book, Weiss explodes the myth that says “if you have a speech, you have a book”:
This should be restated as follows: if you have a speech, you have an excruciatingly tiny book. Speaking and writing are discrete skills, sometimes synergistic but not at all equal. Don’t give the published work short shrift: books require extensive research; tight, Jesuit-like logic; brilliant metaphors; and immaculate construction. If that sounds like it doesn’t resemble a lot of books out there, that’s because most books are not very good.
Improspectives runs 126 small-format pages and, according to the word count feature in Microsoft Word, contains 28,807 words. Most business books are 250 pages in length; at 350 words per page, you’re looking at 87,500 words. That’s a lot of information. Consider this: if you speak for an hour at a rate of 150 words per minute, you will have spoken 9,000 words. The spoken word and, by extension, video, are low bandwidth when you’re not presenting graphical content. it’s easier for you to talk for an hour than to write 9,000 words and, yes, video can be more fun to watch (though Weiss gives the example of a speaker whose video showed him writing on an easel pad), but you’re trading your convenience for the amount of information you deliver to your audience.
I dislike giving bad reviews to books, but I did want to give a real-life example of how having a speech or, in this case, a workshop doesn’t mean you have a book. Red Thread Thinking, by Debra Kaye (with Karen Kelly) describes Kaye’s “red thread” approach to finding connections between ideas for profitable innovation. I’ve been in and led enough corporate training sessions to see the value in her approach and believe her workshops would be valuable to many businesses. Unfortunately, so much of the good that comes out a workshop is unspoken and difficult to quantify. Many workshop leaders walk into the room with at most five or six pieces of paper with their outline and rely on the participants to provide the fuel for the day. Even success stories, if you can share them because of confidentiality concerns, can get repetitive when they rely on the same methods.
That’s where Karen Kelly comes in. I don’t know for sure, but I would guess the main author, Debra Kaye, had difficulty generating a manuscript that met the 250-page ideal for business books. The “with” credit on a book indicates the secondary author took on a significant role, which in this case meant lengthening the book by pumping the main author for more talking points, stories, and supporting research. Using that additional input, the professional book doctor can remix material, restating it in slightly different ways to change the emphasis and illustrating the points with new examples. If you add in a prologue and appendices and trim the target page count a bit, you reduce your writing burden from 87,500 words to around 70,000.
Once the first draft is in place, the developmental editor flags obvious repetitions and incongruent material so the “with” author can adjust the manuscript as needed. As an experienced author, I can see where Karen Kelly helped the Red Thread Thinking manuscript along. I think she did a great job, both due to her professional skills and because Debra Kaye’s basic ideas are sound.
My advice to anyone who wants to create intellectual property to support your work and sell in the back of the room? Don’t be afraid to write a series of short pieces at first. A 10-page white paper or 30-minute podcast is far better than a book that’s 90% fluff. Build your material gradually and, when you have enough of it for the type of book you want, bring it together into a coherent whole.
Improspectives 
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