Don’t Think Harder, Think Smarter

Key takeaways from the BA Manager Forum workshop run by Chris Goy (of Rolls-Royce) and Mike Williams (of AssistKD).

This workshop was held to look at common thinking errors, offering practical hints on how to avoid them.

Cognitive Bias

Our minds automatically take shortcuts to enable us to respond quickly in threatening situations, however these are not always appropriate. Cognitive bias is where we may have a distorted view of reality based upon the limits of on own experience and learning. This can cause us to take an inappropriate shortcut. Developing an understanding about cognitive bias, and how our life experiences influence these biases, can help us to reduce the impact of them on our decision making.

The Cognitive Bias Codex identifies and classifies over 180 different types of bias. Some examples are:

Confirmation bias – “That’s what I was expecting.”

Bandwagon effect – “I think we should do this… So do I.”

Dunning-Kruger effect – “I have just started and I am already an expert.”

Primacy bias – “The first one was best.”

Recency bias – “The last one was best.”

To reduce your cognitive bias:

Question your first thought.
Avoid the ‘echo chamber’.
Get out of your comfort zone and expand your horizons.

Perception and Attention

We have a constant stream of information coming from our senses, but we don’t always have sufficient resources to be able to attend to all of it. How much can we cope with? The ‘Invisible Gorilla’ (see the recommended reading below) is a famous psychology experiment which demonstrates this phenomenon where when people were concentrating so hard on one thing, they missed something glaringly obvious. To avoid falling foul of this effect:

Be aware of your focus level.
Take a holistic view when appropriate.
Seek perspectives of others.
Sharpen your attention – mindfulness.

Fast and Slow Thinking

System 1 (fast) thinking (Daniel Kahneman ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ 2011) operates automatically and quickly with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. This can be risky, for example clicking on phishing email links. It can also lead to false correlations and conclusions, for example linking two facts which are not related.

System 2 (slow) thinking allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.

Sometimes we need system 1 (fast) thinking, if a rapid response or action is required, for example reacting to a hungry polar bear in front of us or evacuating in case of a fire. If urgent action is not required, then we can engage System 2 (slow) thinking. Stop and think, consider alternative hypotheses, evaluate these alternatives and then act.

Optimise your thinking:

Allocate time for thinking.
Reflect on your thinking: Which environments help you think more clearly? When is the best time of day for thinking? What thinking tools are in your toolkit?
Thinking is like any other skill; it gets better the more you practice.

In Summary

Our thinking is not always smart.
Don’t suffer from delusions of competence.
Adjust your focus.
Ensure you have time to think.
Be aware of your biases.
Embrace diverse opinions.

You may be interested in AssistKD’s free Creative Problem Solving eLearning course – you can find it in the ‘Free Courses’ section of the AssistKD Learning Zone.