Bias is not uncommon. Biases are not necessarily good or bad either. It is highly contextual whether a bias is detrimental or helpful. However it is now reasonably well-accepted as a principle that a bias is detrimental to decision making in management, since the opposite has been upheld as a vital management tenet i.e., weigh all the possible options carefully and build consensus (the Nemawashi principle.)
Well - this is easier said than done.
Biases are deep-rooted, usually unknown to those who carry them. There are numerous biases that are at play in almost any group activity or even in one-on-one discussions. Binary bias, anchoring bias, confirmation bias, bandwagon effect - to name just a few. Overcoming the bias is extremely difficult when one unknowingly uses it and - worse - gets intuitively, firmly, attached to it. Further worse if they also have a firm belief that their position was completely unbiased.
But when proactively used, the following four methods can be of immense help.
1) Consciously create an agreement at the outset
Before any other steps, it is best to create a consensus at the outset that the group is committed to minimize any bias. Such an agreement prepares the group and particularly leads to depersonalized control of aggressive members of the group who are likely to overpower others inadvertently. This requires some awareness building and also some introspection by all. The time spent on it is worth investing and pays rich dividend downstream by mitigating the risks of unhealthy conflicts or even sub-optimal decision-making.
This helps not only for the task on hand but also for overall development of a healthy team ethos and culture for the longer term. Needless to mention that one explicitly accepted ingredient of the ethos must be open-mindedness. Open-mindedness is not just verbal concurrence to discuss any and every viewpoint but also to challenge one's own doxastic commitments - the belief systems.
For example, a team member may have a belief that training does not hold much promise because well-trained people leave anyway, as against someone else's viewpoint that training is fundamental to team development. Another similar example is that of alternative approaches to motivation. Some feel that warnings and punitive treatments are a must, whereas some may believe in the power of incentivization. Coming to an agreement - at least temporarily and, if it is infeasible, living with a disagreement but working together on the team decision wholeheartedly must be expressly embraced as the team ethos.
2) 'Blinded data collection' approach
Blinding is used regularly in clinical trials.
Single-blinded trial is one in which the participants do not know the treatment or intervention, but the experimenter does.
In the double-blind studies, the participants do not know the treatment and neither do the experimenters.
In triple-blinded studies, the participants don't, neither do the experimenters, nor do the assessors who carry out the analysis and present the results.
Compare this approach with the typical management decision making processes.
View these principles in light of the typical management situations wherein the frontline operators are the primary participants in data collection, the middle management is responsible - usually - for compilation as well as reporting and the senior management are the decision makers.
For example, if the frontline operators are compiling only real-time stop-start time-stamps, the middle managers are compiling the downtime-uptime proportion report and the cost of the machine downtime and the top management is viewing the downtime percentage and the "labour cost and overheads per hour" of downtime, the reported trend is not only accurate but also meaningful for cost control.
It is not uncommon to see that, for the ideas from staff to be evaluated in a forum of managers who are in authority and control, an idea from a liked Peter and that from a not-so-liked Paul, are best evaluated and taken to conclusion by not disclosing the sources - Peter and Paul - to start with!
3) Deliberate change of position
When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.
- Wayne Dyer
Deliberately and consciously taking an opposing point of view and researching the possible justification for it can be a somewhat mechanical but an effective method. This is similar to an organized and extemporaneous debate with no freedom to participants to choose the side of the argument! However, it requires encouragement to team members to take such a stance and it also requires leaders to actively engage themselves in the exercise of relinquishing their points of view to consider other viewpoints.
It forces one to look at the aspects one is likely to not seek or even ignore when presented by virtue of sheer filtering or confirmation bias. Developing, strengthening and using the viewpoint directly opposed to one's own thinking and beliefs requires utmost intellectual humility and it may not be easily feasible.
However, even on an experimental basis, carrying out some rounds of deliberate opposite advocacy can improve the productivity of decision-making processes.
4) Goal oriented discussion
If the purpose or the objective of the team endeavour is made clear and it is often revisited during the process of team activities, it can reduce the bias substantially. While this statement may look like an obvious aspect overstated, in reality, it is not rare to see teams drifting away from the objective. There are examples galore.
A machine is purchased to simplify the process, and then the process undergoes complicated modifications to suit the machine acquired.
A role is created to serve the purpose and recruitment is initiated. With candidates not suitably available, the role is modified to suit the candidates found.
A supplier is developed to resolve the bottlenecks in supply chain, but new bottlenecks are accepted to suit the new supplier.
The tug-of-war between configuration and customization of ERP, and often even that between reengineering of processes to suit the ERP and customizing the ERP to suit the processes, are fertile grounds to simply lose the sight of the original objectives.
Biases such as halo effect, bandwagon effect or anchoring bias and typical errors such as silver bullet syndrome can be minimized by constantly assessing the teamwork at all three levels i.e., why - how - what for planning as well as implementation.
As Morgan Scott Peck, a famous American psychiatrist wrote:
"Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a profound tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there."
Management is all about creating order where it is lacking and a profound part of it is that of averting bias in decision-making.
- Nilesh Pandit
February 9, 2023
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