Are you keeping your biases in check?

Is there anything more obvious than presidential elections to highlight the feebleness, fallibleness and natural biases that we call human nature?

From birth, we start building a view of our reality, our own “Matrix”, completely driven and influenced by what we see, touch, feel, think, value, experience… As a survival mechanism, we are programmed to classify and sort everything we see in terms that are familiar to us: too liberal, very conservative, too skinny, fake blond, risk taker, risk adverse, real thinker, open and approachable, too talkative, stuck in his ways, … As bad as this may sound, it is natural and it is human. Other than our past experiences, our values that have been developed through the society we interact with, we have no additional reference for what we see and hear.

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.”
–Ken Olson, president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
–Harry M. Warner, president of Warner Brothers Pictures, about 1927.

We like to believe we are open minded. But we seldom realize this is an illusion, a paradox. We are social creatures. We look for ways to belong and be accepted. So we seek people that share our beliefs, values and opinions. We look for evidence to support, to confirm our opinions and ideas. But we neglect to search for contradicting evidence. As much as we try, we can’t escape this natural law of humanity. However, if we recognize and accept that we are feeble and fallible, then we can establish practices to balance these natural biases that are inherent in every one of us.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
–Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”
–Steve Jobs, 1996

“Spam will soon be a thing of the past.”
–Bill Gates, 2004

These internal biases, whether we recognize it or not, are everywhere: the political party we support, political candidates we defend, the government policies we support, the jokes that we laugh at, the interviews that we have done, peer groups we hang out with, how we measure success and failure, to fund which project and how much, … Sometimes, we even name these biases: media bias, workplace bias, gender bias, anti-intelligent design bias, … The optimism bias, where we over-estimate the likelihood of positive events and under-estimate the likelihood of negative events, is openly acknowledged by the UK government. So much so that the Treasury’s Supplementary Guidance on Optimism Bias recommends for project appraisers to make explicit adjustments to the estimates of project costs, benefits and duration based on empirical data to inform project decisions.

Below are some of my recommended practices to find the balance we must achieve in order to effectively deal with our inherent biases. Recognize that this is a departure from holding onto the status quo, and with that it is a change. Inherently, we also resist change. However, as Einstein pointed out: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

• Question everything — This seems to be one of those skills that we lose at an early age: why, mom?. By questioning, we open ourselves to freely explore beyond the path that has been laid out. This creates opportunities to change the playing field from what is known and accepted to something new and potentially controversial. If nothing else, learn to play devil’s advocate.
• Listen and observe — Our minds are an efficient pattern recognition system that create, store and recognize patterns. This process enables us to create connections between seemingly unrelated things; connections that didn’t exist before. However, the efficiency and effectiveness of our minds also work against us. We can be quick to judge and jump to conclusions based on previously stored patterns. By purposely moving ourselves into listening and observation mode, we force our awareness to take over. With that, we can focus on the need to learn and understand, instead of analyze and process.
• Seek the beginner’s mind — From Shunryo Suzuki-Roshi’s wisdom: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” We may not realize it, or our ego may not want to admit it, but living in the world of “I know” is a real handicap. It keeps us in the past, and closes our minds to exploring and learning from the present. In contrast, a beginner’s mind is about recognizing that “we may not really know“, as we have the capability to distort and block things from our view. We all should practice a beginner’s mind by stating that “I don’t know“, and putting all preconceptions, preconceived ideas and judgments aside, and letting go to fully experience our environment.
• Harness collective wisdom — It has been said: two heads are better than one. By pulling together a relevant, yet diverse group of people, it is possible to filter out the biases of individuals. However, as James Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds) indicated, there is a paradox to be watched for: “The paradox of the wisdom of crowds is that the best group decisions come from lots of independent individual decisions.” He defines four key qualities that make a crowd smart: diverse group, decentralized structure with no dictatorship, facilitation to pull together the collective verdict, and independent to ensure individuals can focus on own information. So, before jumping to harness that collective wisdom, make sure you take time to analyze the group’s qualities.
• Remove ambiguity — As I mentioned before, we process information based on our own experiences. With that, it is quite understandable for two people to walk out of the same room with completely different interpretations of what just happened: who won the political debate; is the product ready to ship; what defines quality; how do you measure success; … So, instead of leaving important things to interpretation, remove ambiguity by clearly defining things in understandable and measurable terms.
• Re-frame questions and situations — In many cases, how we interpret and analyze information has to do with how it was framed. Re-framing is frequently used in conflict situations, where communication misunderstanding are quite common due to biases. By re-framing, holding onto the facts while restating opinions, beliefs and values, it is possible to change a person’s perspective of a specific situation, and thereby initiating a change.
• Change perspectives — Leonardo da Vinci suggested three different ways of looking at your creative work to achieve objectivity and ignite curiosity. Start with detaching yourself from your situation by envisioning that it belongs to somebody else, and think how would you approach it, and make recommendations to them. He then suggests that you walk away from your situation, so that when you return, you come back with fresh eyes. This also allows your subconscious mind to work with it. Finally, he recommends studying the situation from a distance (the top of a great mountain, the point of view of competitor, lagger or leader in the market, …) Again, the goal is to ignite curiosity and interest to see things from a different perspective.

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