Howdy!

Last we talked about navigating uncertainty and announced the new name for the project (previously the Blueprint for those who just started following us).

This week builds on the topic from two weeks ago. You don’t need to read that post to follow along, but they’re similar themes!

This week:

• 🔮 Topic: How ‘collective illusions’ influence decision making

• 🧠 Bias: Bandwagon effect

• ✨ Tool: Belief Matrix

How collective illusions influence decision making

This week builds on the rabbit hole of perception errors we started two weeks back. Taking a look at optical illusions helps illustrate how blind we are to the cognitive heuristics we use to make sense of the world around us.

What they show is that so much of our perception is constructed by what our brains ‘expect’, not an objective representation of reality. In short, we upload very little information and ‘fill in’ the rest.

There’s no shortage of examples when it comes to our visual perception. We shared a few examples last week and many of these other studies are likely familiar:

• Much of our peripheral vision is constructed and up to 2/3 of color in our field of vision is assumed. (see below)

• How we interpret motion can be influenced by others as we adopt group norms.

• The rubber hand experiment shows we can trick our brains into feeling pain through visual association.

We don’t experience objective reality, we experience an interpretation built on relatively little information and reference points (that can be influenced by external factors)

The parallel here is that these same patterns are observed for cognitive illusions - errors we often don’t realize when processing information or making judgments. The problem is that we can recognize these visual illusions (and be amused and entertained by them), but it’s difficult to really grasp the idea that much of our reasoning is constructed on-site; it’s a facade.

It’s neither energy efficient nor necessary in most situations for our brains to calculate complete answers based on perfect information, so we opt for cognitive shortcuts. A simple, non-visual example of this is the ball and the bat problem or any of the cognitive reflection test questions.

In the first question, most participants, regardless of education or intelligence, produce the incorrect answer of 10 cents. When forced to work out the problem, or when they’re primed with techniques to wait and trigger system 2 thinking, they arrive at the correct answer, 5 cents.

This is an impulsive substitution error - our instinct is to opt for simpler problems over more complex ones.

Similarly, we look for social cues to adopt our beliefs or construct them in real time as we’re working in groups. (see information cascades and groupthink). It’s well-understood that we’re subconscious imitation machines, constantly molding to our environment.

We might think of this as good or bad news. Bad news because these mechanisms can lead toward regression to the mean of the group and conformity in thought.

Or good news because these are the mechanisms that motivate large groups to coordinate and align teams to common goals.

We can make the argument that explicit and observable beliefs, incentives, and principles can combat the spread of dangerous implicit perceptions that drive these collective illusions - before they become real.

What are collective illusions?

These challenges with individual decision making are typically observed in scenarios where the answer is clear or outcomes are known. Conversely, with strategic decision making the environment is uncertain and information is incomplete.

More often than not, we’re working in groups, dealing with ‘politics’, and triggering highly emotional responses. These are meaningful factors in how we make and communicate decisions.

This is where large group dynamics, particularly around shared beliefs (or the perception of shared beliefs) might help explain these challenges beyond the effects of groupthink in a conference room brainstorming session.

We rely on cues. In the case of social norms, we combine our existing beliefs and assumptions with real-time observations to understand how to act or respond. Without these unwritten rules, there would be social chaos. People would cut lines, face each other in elevators, and let a sneeze go without a proper ‘bless you’. (shock and awe)

But there’s one cue that’s particularly interesting - our desire to conform compounded by our tendency to miscalculate the beliefs of others.

Todd Rose writes about this from the broader perspective of cultural phenomena in his book, ‘Collective Illusions’, but the research (and the macro point of view) is applicable to how organizations operate.

In short, we have a difficult time accurately perceiving the beliefs and motivations of others, yet we conform to our perception of the presiding norms. This systemic, self-reinforcing effect can eventually convert these false perceptions into reality.

To summarize a few of the arguments:

• Studies, like this one on the use of malaria nets, show how individuals act in accordance with beliefs they perceive are shared by others, but that perception is often miscalculated

• Collective illusions can quickly become reality as the perceived norms become the real norms, overtaking what was previously the beliefs of the silent majority. (e.g. it only takes 5-10% of the comments on a social media post to account for a perceived majority of opinion)

• Nonconformity triggers cognitive errors that are similar to how we react in disgust. When our group agrees, we get a dopamine hit (neural reward), when someone strays from the presiding point of view, we get a neural error.

So what might we glean from this tendency to fabricate and fuel these collective illusions?

We can assume the same tendencies exist in organizations.

The beliefs and assumptions that drive decision making are based on our perceived beliefs in others - and those perceptions may be inaccurate. Most companies were built on strong convictions that guided their decision making and turned out to be right - or died because they held on to their convictions too long.

The risk is that these collective illusions within a culture (especially where productive discord isn’t welcomed) can quickly create an autoimmune response to contrarian viewpoints - which is difficult to recover from.

Consensus, or the illusion of consensus, is comfortable. Conformity triggers cognitive rewards and the safety we find in shared beliefs can entrench teams in the status quo.

These topics are explorations and thought experiments in reaction to our ongoing research - we’d love to continue the conversation, learn from others, and hear different perspectives! You can join the conversation here

Bias 8/50: Bandwagon Effect

We tend to find comfort in following other people’s ideas, beliefs, or actions over formulating our own

The bandwagon effect refers to the tendency for people to conform to the actions or beliefs of others, particularly when those actions or beliefs are perceived as popular or socially desirable. This phenomenon is often driven by a desire to fit in or be accepted by others, and can lead people to adopt certain behaviors or attitudes simply because they are perceived as being "normal" or "mainstream."

One of the key ways in which the bandwagon effect manifests is through the influence of social norms and peer pressure. When people observe others behaving in a certain way or expressing certain beliefs, they may be more likely to conform to those behaviors or beliefs in order to fit in or be accepted. This can lead to a situation where people adopt certain behaviors or attitudes simply because they are perceived as being the norm, rather than because they genuinely align with their own values or beliefs.

The bandwagon effect can also be driven by a desire for social approval or acceptance. People may be more likely to conform to the actions or beliefs of others in order to gain approval or avoid social disapproval.

Tool: Belief Matrix

This is a tool for surfacing and challenging existing, often implicit, beliefs. Clarity around beliefs and principles can lead to better, repeatable tradeoff decisions, but it’s rare they’re discussed or documented.

In essence, it’s a nominal group exercise to extract shared (or not shared) beliefs across the team and address any gaps in perception.

What will this tool help me do?

This tool will help your team remove the blinders of status quo bias and avoid escalations of commitment. It will click a proverbial reset button on the beliefs and assumptions that led to your current state and provide a framework for challenging them.

This concept of ‘challenging’ beliefs is strongest when it’s incorporated into planning cadences. It will help your team have hard conversations about where you have been, where you are now, and where you are going without directly challenging pet projects or bruising egos.

How to use this technique

What you will need

• The right group of people 

• The right context definition: There needs to be a clear context. What are you making decisions around? Typically this is something like a product, a campaign, or a company policy (e.g. work from home)

• A way to share information and send surveys: This is typically something like a Google doc/Confluence page and Google forms.

Give the team some homework

In a collaborative document, frame the discussion. Explain what this is, why we’re doing it, and who will be leading it. For example, “We’re trying to understand what we believe about our market and customers, this exercise will help us clarify what’s important to us when we make decisions”

The team can review the framing and ask questions about the process, but the next step is done fully async.

Surfacing and challenging implicit beliefs

It’s important that these tasks are done anonymously. Participants should not be able to see what other participants are responding with (when submitting beliefs or responding to submitted beliefs)

It’s typically best to ask these questions with a survey tool like Google forms or Typeform to easily collect the data:

Phase 1: Capture the beliefs

1. Ask team members to come up with general ‘Beliefs’ that the group holds about the product, customers, market, [insert categories]. These statements should start with “We believe…”.

2. For each statement, they should answer a simple explanation for ‘Why’ this belief is held.

3. Collect and consolidate the responses. Remove duplicates and make them clear without altering their meanings

Phase 2: Surface where individuals agree/disagree

In a new survey…

1. For each belief, have team member score, on a scale of 1-5, whether they strongly agree or disagree with the belief (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree)

2. For each answer, have the team member give a simple explanation for their answer (Why did they score the way they did)

At this point, you should have a spreadsheet or matrix view that shows each individual’s rating of each belief. It’s helpful to calculate the averages and color code where there is clear misalignment/disagreement.

Share and Discuss

1. Segment the beliefs into three groups: one group shows general consensus that we agree with the belief, the other shows a general consensus that we disagree with the belief - the third is a bucket of beliefs where there was no consensus.

2. Walk through the third bucket with the group. Let those who strongly agreed or disagreed state their point for each of these beliefs without directly disagreeing with each other. Synthesize the points on either side.

3. Instead of individual beliefs, run a convergence exercise that consolidates and clarifies the beliefs into a concise, clear set of beliefs. It’s helpful to have everyone ‘sign off’ and give a thumbs up to the final list.

Beliefs tend to be clarified through these conversations - capture where clarifications are made and iterate on the beliefs. The better beliefs are communicated, the better they help guide decision making.

A few rules for the conversation:

• Only focus on the beliefs where people disagree, or clarify where responses tend to be in the middle.

• When people are stating their points, they should not be able to directly disagree with another person. They can only explain their own point of view.

• People must explain their point of view. They cannot disagree without providing support for their reasoning.

This exercise can be done on a quarterly or yearly basis - re-scoring the beliefs to see if they hold true and adding new ones. It’s also an interesting next step to see which of these beliefs are the primary drivers behind ‘why’ we’re investing in some initiatives over others.

This is a tool adapted from nominal group collaboration specifically for surfacing beliefs - if you want to try it with one of your teams, we’d love to help facilitate! - just reply to this email

We hope this post was helpful and interesting! Have feedback? Just reply to this email! It would be great to get in touch!