On Being Found Faster
/I love a map and compass navigation challenge on foot. It's a great way to viscerally experience the biases that we spoke about last week in yourself or a team.
A friend and I once entered a 24hr navigation comp. At about 2:30 a.m., after a challenging bit of nav, we finally summited a hill we thought we were aiming for. The trouble was we’d been there for over 4 hours before. We’d done a big loop and were a long way off-course for the hill we were actually seeking. In hindsight, it was easy to see the many subtle and obvious signs that we were wrong. Rather than paying attention to what was really happening, we had been convincing ourselves we were right. We pursued our error until it was a blindingly obvious slap in the face.
As we said last week, this pattern can show up in all manner of business and life decisions — backing ourselves blindly when there’s plenty of evidence for at least a review, if not a wholesale course change.
Here are a couple of ways to minimise the trap and catch it early:
Hypothesize rather than conclude. Simply talking hypothetically helps the "I'm Right” trap. A hypothesis is to be tested, so straight away, we are in exploratory mode and looking for evidence to either confirm or disprove the hypothesis. It’s also helpful to run a time-bound experiment — “let’s act as if X hypothesis is true for 3 months and then review what we have discovered”.
Being contrary. If there is any hint that you might be acting under incorrect assumptions, pause and deliberately take the contrary view. It shifts you out of the confirmation loop. In this mode, go all out to find every hole in your plan and expectations. See what stacks up.
What works best for you when you are stuck in a confirmation loop?