The idea of guiding decisions (business or otherwise) on data sounds so …infallible. Unfortunately, the same data can mean different things to different people. You see, we humans have a tendency to seek data that supports our original point of view. What’s worse, finding contradictory data may actually make us believe in the wrong view EVEN MORE. “Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger” wrote Joe Keohane in How Facts Backfire (The Boston Globe).
Wait. What???
Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, describes this tendency as “backfire”. True, this is research on politics and not on decision making in business... but I, for one, am not going to disregard expert information that indicates that I may be making poor judgments! :^)
In fact (ha!), Scientific American’s 60-Second Mind reports on another study that shows that We Only Trust Experts If They Agree with Us.
Consider this in the context of decision making in the business world. For example, if an employee proposed one strategy and then changed her mind based on new data, wouldn’t that be viewed negatively? Most of the time, the answer is yes—and that’s a problem.
The moral of the story for those of us in the business world? First, be aware of your human flaws and make a conscious effort to be genuinely open to new data and new expert opinion. Second, commend that employee who overcomes her human tendency to (only) validate her point of view and changes her mind!
In sales, perception is reality. Based on the buyer's initial perception, emotion trumps logic. The buyer then custom-fits facts & figures to justify his/her emotional decision and calls it a logical and informed process. The higher the level of the buyer (CXO, etc.), the more emotional the decision, culminating in "people who don't know what they're selling telling lies to people who don't know what they're buying." The best example of this is in software sales where a Chief Information Officer mindlessly informs an independent software vendor ("ISV") that there's no need to consider the ISV's offering because the company has a "strategic relationship" with IBM and that only if the IBM solution completely fails will third-party software be evaluated.
ReplyDeleteGreat input. The idea of emotion trumping logic even more at senior levels of the organization is fascinating. I agree that it's easy for CxO's to fall back on things like "strategic partnerships" that are difficult to validate. In many cases, this approach makes the CxO look like she/he is thinking at a higher level than everyone else (without any real proof).
ReplyDeleteGood stuff--keep the input coming!
Hi this is somewhat of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding knowledge so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated! data science from scratch
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