The implication of bias

Every decision is influenced by a range of preferences and biases. I touched on this subject last month in my ‘Voices on Project Management’ post for PMI (see the post) but the effect extends to every cost and time estimate, the way every communication is received and understood and every decision.

As part of our work to upgrade Mosaic’s PMP materials (see more on the updated course) to align with the new PMP Role Delineation Study, we have developed a White Paper focused on the causes of bias including our innate cognitive biases, learned biases and emotional affective factors.

It is impossible to remove many of these biases; but being aware of them allows their effects to be mitigated, too read more: Download the White Paper.

Lessons from a Lift

Do you suffer from ABPS or know someone who does??? This newly defined syndrome can be highly counterproductive……

People in a lift (elevator for those who speak American) fall into two broad groups; the first group walk into the car, push the button they want and wait for the control systems to do their job. Others believe that the more they push the buttons the more likely the elevator is to respond.

In reality the vast majority of control systems log the first call and then optimise the movement of the elevator to meet all of the different calls from different levels of the building. The second and subsequent ‘button pushes’ add no value at all.

However, people with Accentuated Button Pushing Syndrome (ABPS) receive positive feedback from their actions, the elevator arrives after they have pushed the button 4, 5, 6 times, or more, therefore the multiple pushing clearly made a difference……

In an elevator, ABPS makes no difference and anecdotally I understand many ‘close door’ buttons have no wiring behind them, they are in the lift simply to make people with ABPS feel in control even if they are not.

ABPS in the workplace is an altogether different issue. When a project is running behind time, overrunning costs, or experiencing other difficulties; the equivalent of the elevator being slow to respond; many managers demand additional meetings, more frequent reports and other responses from the project team that consume time and money that could be better spent working on the project deliverables. These project resources are being diverted to placate the manager’s ABPS to the detriment of the project.

This phenomenon has been recognised for some considerable time without the underlying syndrome being defined. Cohn’s Law states: The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time reporting on the nothing you are doing…… (this should not be confused with Cole’s Law which is thinly sliced cabbage!).

Unfortunately, when the project is eventually delivered, the manager’s ABPS is reinforced because obviously all of the extra reports and meetings helped achieve the outcome; unfortunately correlation is not the same as causation! There is no easy way of measuring how much sooner the project would have finished if the resources had not been diverted by ABPS, but the manager feels ‘in control’.

This is not a clear cut situation, frequently there is need for better information to base decisions on (see more on decision making). However, it is easy to slip from requesting useful information that will help inform decisions (useful information is useful because it is used) into ABPS where the requested reports and meetings are actually counterproductive and make the situation worse.

So next time you are considering requesting more reports or extra meetings think about ABPS, will the diversion of resources from the project’s work to respond to your requests be constructive or detrimental? There’s no easy answer to this question!

If you are a victim of your managers ABPS the only antidote is to try and make the person with ABPS aware of the resource being consumed by their ‘syndrome’. A temporary solution may be to identify your version of the unconnected ‘close door’ button where the manager feels in control but there is minimal to no effort expended in response to the button pushing.

For more thoughts on ‘Advising Upwards’, my new book will be published mid year.

Australia’s new Prime Minister – Julia Gillard

It has been a fascinating 24 hours in Australian politics. The former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was dumped and we now have our first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The unfolding drama was a mixture of ruthless efficiency in the coup to oust the previous Prime Minister, immediately followed by the start of a process of inclusion and healing.

Managers faced with difficult decisions can learn a lot from today’s events. My thoughts on several key issues are:

1. Ethical dilemmas are always difficult and need decisions. As Henry Kissinger said: “Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided, more often it is a crisis invented”. There is no right answer to a dilemma, every option has a downside. Leaders choose a way forward and live with the consequences.
   [See: Ethics and Leadership]
2. When you do decide on a course of action, don’t hide the issues that created the dilemma in the first place, explain your reasoning and acknowledge both the greater good and the consequential harm. When a Deputy takes over from her leader there are inevitable questions of loyalty and trust, honest reasoning lets observers understand the reasons for the decision.
3. Conversations and transformational negotiations lead to better outcomes than win-lose transactional negotiations but often you need to make the first concession to start down this path [see: Win-Win Negotiations]. The Government and the mining industry were locked in a head to head battle over a new tax. In the space of 5 hours the new Prime Minister had unilaterally cancelled government advertising over the issue and offered open negotiations. The mining industry had reciprocated and suspended their advertising campaign. The negotiations may or may not reach a consensus (no one like having their taxes increased) but both sides are likely to end up with a better outcome if the transformational negotiations work.
   [See: Negotiating and Mediating]
4. In a disagreement over principles, you only need to achieve your objective; you don’t need to destroy the other party. The former Prime Minister has been offered a position of his choosing in the new government. If accepted, this means his talents and knowledge are still available to the team. Reluctant allies are better than committed opponents.

It’s certainly been an interesting day watching a really effective communicator in action in action; I feel as though I have learned a lot.

Complex Decision Making Explained

Complex decision making is a vital project management skill; required not only by the project manager but also by the project’s sponsor and client / customer among others.

Some of the key areas involving complex decisions include risk management, many aspects of planning (particularly optimising choices) and dealing effectively with issues and problems in a range of areas from scope and quality to cost and performance.

There is an underlaying assumption in project management (derived from traditional scientific management) that decisions will be based on a rational assessment of the situation to optimise outcomes. Unfortunately this is not true! As complexity increases assuming a ‘rational decision making paradigm’ becomes increasingly unrealistic. Human decision makers become ‘predictably irrational’.

Understanding the built in biases and ‘predictable irrational’ decision making processes used by people confronted with complex decisions can help managers requiring optimised decisions to craft strategies to minimise suboptimal outcomes. But where can busy project managers access this information?

I have just finished reading the most amazing paper on the subject that canvases the whole spectrum from risk aversion to behavioural economics in a practical, easy to read format; and it is free!

Behavioural economics and complex decision making: implications for the Australian tax and transfer system has been written by Andrew Reeson and Simon Dunsttall of the Australian national science agency, CSIRO. The report was commissioned by the ‘Henry Review’ into the Australian taxation system and is published on their web site. Whilst you can safely skip the last section which focuses on applying the knowledge to our tax system. The preceding 7 sections are focused on how people make complex decisions in any sphere and are just as relevant to complex project decisions as to complex investment and taxation decisions.

You can download this free resource from the review panel’s website: download the paper (a copy is also on the Mosaic web site on the assumption the Government site is temporary and will close once the Henry Review has reported: download from Mosaic).

If you find the report useful and you don’t live in Australia, you can buy the next Australian you meet a beer; it was his or her taxes that paid for this amazingly useful report. I know I will be keeping my copy handy for a very long time to come.