What organisations know
Increasing change & uncertainty
- Organisations and their employees need to thrive in a world of increasing change, complexity and uncertainty. In this context, errors are inevitable, but predictable errors should be avoided.
- Organisations need their employees to perform a difficult balancing act between taking action and being decisive, and being diligent and focussed on risk management. Unfortunately, there are often risks associated with both action and inaction.
- The solutions to these challenges often rely on individuals making good decisions; they rely on individuals being able to work well together as teams; and they rely on them being able to effectively leverage technology, data and systems.
- Psychological & decision-making issues are relevant for each of these issues.
Need to super-charge teams
- Ideally teams should be cognitively diverse and should collaborate effectively. However, if diversity is only superficial or remains hidden then the benefits of diversity can be limited. At worst, differences between team members can actually lead to misunderstandings and mistrust. Organisations need to think past simple identity-based stereotypes, platitudes and assumptions to get to the heart of what makes diverse teams work or fail.
- Effective teams need to get the most out of individual team members' skills and expertise. However, the risk is that input from less senior team members, and from less confident and articulate communicators risks being overlooked. This can be despite these team members having directly relevant knowledge (such as from speaking to customers). The challenge is that it can be difficult for team leaders/managers to know whose views to rely on in which circumstances. Overlooking team members' skill and expertise can result in increased risk, as well as reduced innovation & creativity. It can also result in dissatisfaction among those team members whose expertise remains unrecognised and unutilised.
- Another challenge is that decisions made by teams can fail in implementation. Why? One reason is that when teams apparently agree, that agreement might not be genuine. Some team members might have secretly withheld their real views during their team meeetings. Or they mighty have withheld important information that conflicts with the consensus. If team members hold unresolved reservations they can lack commitment to the agreed course of action.
Sub-optimal communications & negotiations
- Part of working effectively within teams, across organisations, and with customers and business partners involves being able to communicate effectively in writing. But much written communication remains unread and unactioned. When recipients suffer information overloaded, and when their inboxes are full it can be difficult to get cut-through.
- Verbal communications can sometimes be problematic too. It is too common for one party to come away from a conversation thinking that they were very clear, only to find their colleague came away thinking something different. Without understanding the true cause of the misunderstanding it is easy for both colleagues to think their counterpart was foolish or malicious, undermining trust and collaboration in their working relationship.
- Sometimes communications involve a negotiation; with a customer, with a supplier, with a business partner, or with a colleague. But employees who lack practice at negotiations can be justified in wondering whether they achieve the best possible outcomes when they negotiate. This can occur when no agreement is reached, or if an agreement is reached that one party feels is inequitable, or even when both parties are happy (but don't realise a better outcome was possible for them both). Poor negotiated outcomes can lead to adverse financial consequences and can undermine long-term relationships.
The most costly mistakes
- Not all mistakes are created equal. Big strategic decisions and major projects can be more prone to error given that there is often less reliable data available on which to base a decision. Mistakes on big projects/decisions can have a particularly large financial impact, as well as being a drain on management time and focus. Failed projects can also impact the career advancement opportunities and reputations of the individual employees associated with them. But while some errors are unavoidable, when making big decisions organisations shouldn't allow their decisions to be impacted by predictable errors that result from well-understood decision-making biases.
- Another big-ticket problem can emerge at the interface between an organisation's people and its systems. When errors in systems and processes are overlooked or perpetuated this can lead to wide-spread customer complaints, to legal/regulatory breaches, to large financial losses, and to rework and to remediation.
What they don't typically know
Managing change & uncertainty
- How can we help employees to balance taking decisive action while still appropriately managing risk, particularly in the face of increasing complexity and uncertainty? When does decision-making research suggest that having more information is important, versus when it is likely to only lead to 'analysis paralysis'?
- In what circumstances is it safe to rely on professional judgments that are made on the basis of accumulated experience, and when are they prone to decision-making blindspots and to false confidence? What strategies can employees use to identify these different circumstances and to navigate the psychological challenges they face in each?
Super-charging teams
- What does research tell us can lead to problems in team dynamics (that can result in 'group think'), and how can these problems be avoided? What types of information tend to get shared at meetings, and what tends to be withheld? How can 'information cascades' and 'hidden profiles' form in team meetings, why do they result in poor team decisions, and how can these problems be avoided?
- What are the automatic and often implicit ways that people tend to judge others (including their team members)? In what circumstances do team members most need to challenge their implicit assumptions in order to fully utilise the skills and experience of their team members?
- What types of diversity matter in 'cognitively diverse teams', how can those types of diversity be utilised, and what are the barriers that teams face when they attempt to do so?
Communicating & negotiating with clarity & influence
- What psychological strategies have been demonstrated to get cut-through with written communications? How can 'layering' and 'chunking' help with this? How can we reduce the 'cognitive load' of the reader, reduce the perceived complexity of our communications, and 'nudge' the reader towards making appropriate decisions and taking appropriate actions?
- What are the common psychological mechanisms that underpin misunderstandings in verbal communications? How can employees learn to recognise and overcome 'attribution errors', 'the illusion of transparency', 'egocentric bias' and 'the curse of knowledge'?
- What psychological strategies can be used to enhance negotations, to reach agreement, and to uncover creative win-win outcomes? How can negotiators employe 'perspective taking' strategies? What can they do to build trust, rapport and commitment with their negotiating counterpart? What anchoring and framing strategies can they use to make their proposals seem more acceptable?
Avoiding costly mistakes
- How can psychological insights be incorporated into the design of systems and processes to help maintain users' focus, vigilance & accountability, and to avoid complacency? What information and feedback can be provided to users to help them to spot errors? How should it be displayed, when, and in what circumstances?
- How can we help users to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their own decision-making so that they know when to follow the process and when to trust their judgment and to over-ride the system?
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