We see what we expect to see, the things that confirm our existing views and expectations, to the exclusion of alternatives. When taken to extremes, loonies like holocaust deniers, and the ‘no vac’ lot emerge and sprout their fact and logic free poison, and attract a small following, and the rest of us just fail to understand how.
We humans tend to see things as if we were looking out a window. It consumes less cognitive energy when patterns of the past are just assumed by our brains to be repeated, so that is the brains default. The further back from the window, the narrower the view, but however close you get, there is still a restriction.
The challenge therefore is to find an alternative window through which to look at the problem facing you, or better still, assemble a few others with different windows through which they look at the same problem.
Do not just think outside the box, get another box!
One way to use this different box, or window, to continue the metaphor, when facing a challenge is to ask better questions, ones that force the challenge to be examined from different perspectives.
- Why is it so?
- Where is the leverage?
- Have we described the problem correctly, or just the symptom?
- What is the pain point?
- What has to be true for this outcome to emerge?
- For this expected result to become about, which assumptions have to be accurate?
- What happens if we do not decide?
- What does this challenge look like in other arenas?
- Are we relying too much on data?
- What does the behaviour of others when confronting this really look like?
- Is the data we have reliable, or has it been ‘managed’?
- How is this different?
- Have we simplified the challenge sufficiently for a solution to emerge?
- What would the devils advocate say?
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Driving change in a business means butting heads with confirmation bias.
This is why you need a distinct catalyst to kick it off, and keep it running, for the change process to be successful.
Ask better questions!
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