The Agile Mindset - Beginner's Mind, Confirmation Bias
Naive confirmation and the dangers of being sure.
(This article is part of an on-going series dedicated to developing Agile mastery. Each post offers value to students on this journey, however, there is an advantage to those who start at the beginning.)
"Know thyself," proclaims the Oracle of Delphi. Perhaps the best way to begin is by understanding more about how your brain works. I'm not referring to the mechanics - the biochemistry, biology, and physiology of the brain. While all that is fascinating and something I devoted years of study in pursuit of my degrees in biochemistry and cell biology, knowing how the gears and cranks of an automobile works doesn't mean we know how to drive, much less drive well.
I'll dispense with the neuroanatomy in preference for presenting practical assignments that help you work with the machinery and cultivate a beginner's mind.
"If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"
"How are we supposed to get anything done if we're perpetually beginners?"
I don't know how many versions of this question I've heard over the years. The answer is: Context. The intent isn't to develop a beginner's mind and stay there. The intent is to reconnect to something we were born with and have lost along the way. When we are able to make a beginner's mind more present in our daily life we have access to a far greater array of options when life sends problems our way.
I spent my early twenties in and out of Zen Buddhist monasteries on week-long retreats in order to, among other things, develop mindfulness and a perpetual beginner's mind while in retreat. As hard as that was, learning how to take that into the rough and tumble of the real world was considerably more difficult. Outside the sheltered retreat, the challenge was to develop a beginner's mind that's always running in the background while working to serve others as an expert. When facing a novel situation, a true expert can rapidly cycle through states of beginners mind and aporia on their way to crafting an innovative and optimal solution.
Since this is an article and not a structured Zen retreat, we need to take a more methodical approach to developing a beginner's mind.
We make sense of the world by leveraging an amazing set of mental programs called "cognitive biases." I’m sure you’ve heard of them. They were in all the papers.
The brilliant thing is, everyone on the planet has a slightly, sometimes drastically, different configuration for running these programs. The configuration is established over time and is influenced by many factors, like the culture into which we’re born and how we experience events around us as we mature.
There is a common, although ill informed, effort in the world today to eliminate cognitive biases. But the only human being with no cognitive biases is probably most likely a corpse. We cannot not have cognitive biases. And that's a good thing. On balance, they serve a very important function. They keep us alive.
Too often I've been disappointed when attending a presentation on Agile and cognitive biases only to hear the presenter torture the group with a couple of textbook definitions of their favorite biases and end with some version of "Don't do this!" It helps to have a working definition of each bias, but that's just another version of describing the gears and cranks of an automobile. It doesn't tell us anything about how to drive, about how to use the gears and cranks.
The challenge isn't to eliminate them. The challenge is to understand their purpose, the influence they have on all of us, and how to better leverage the power behind cognitive biases. Often, this is as simple as recognizing them. If you've ever wondered what people mean by "active listening," this is your first insight into how that works. While listening, if you are sorting for cognitive biases (and other things), you are gaining insight into the speakers thought processes and world view. In other words, beginning to understand them, to develop empathy with them. (Nodding your head while telling yourself "I should be nodding my head to show I'm listening." isn't active listening. It's acting as if you are listening.)
It's well known that cognitive biases are easier to recognize in others. It's harder to recognize when we're running the various cognitive bias programs in our own heads. The first rule of cognitive biases is they cannot see themselves.
<sigh> Time to get to work.
First up is to take a closer look at what is arguably the most potent cognitive bias: Confirmation Bias.
Britannica is a good place to start (I know, I know! I’m hitting you with a textbook definition. Stay with me here.):
confirmation bias, the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional and often results in ignoring inconsistent information. Existing beliefs can include one’s expectations in a given situation and predictions about a particular outcome. People are especially likely to process information to support their own beliefs when the issue is highly important or self-relevant.
Step 1
Since cognitive biases are easier to spot when running in other people's brain, looking for instances of confirmation bias on display during conversations with other people will be your first task. The usual hot button topics are excellent fodder for this exercise. And the usual long form main stream media sources (i.e. sources that include video and audio but are not the “news”) can be put to good use (for once) as forums to observe the confirmation bias program in action.
You'll need to spend more than a few minutes observing the conversation, so find examples that last for 30-60 minutes and are between two people. As you get better at identifying confirmation bias, you can extend this exercise into conversations between three or more people. It will also help to avoid panel discussions. You want to practice with examples that match more closely what you're likely to find in your daily life.
It isn't important if the people involved in the conversation agree or disagree. In fact, it might be easier if they are all in agreement as you can then identify when they are nodding their heads at each other as they discuss the "facts." If there is disagreement, first study the person with whom you disagree.
Do they interrupt often?
Are they citing information that can be objectively verified?
To what degree are they responding emotionally?
Do they respond to the other person's comments or do they dismiss them?
Can you identify when they are consistent or inconsistent?
Level-up your skill by watching the same conversation and applying the same analysis to the person with whom you agree.
Step 2
Pretty quickly, this will become easier and easier. The more you learn to recognize it, the more you'll see it. Don't be surprised if you find yourself observing it in unexpected places and with unexpected people. That the confirmation bias program is running so frequently is partly what makes it so potent in our instant information culture.
Now for the hard part. Learning to identify when the program is running in your brain and, more importantly, determining if it’s helping or not. To reiterate, the confirmation bias is just a program that is neither good or bad. Knowing how it's being used by the rest of our mental machinery is what’s important.
Now think of a recent difficult conversation in which you’ve participated. The more recent, the better. It could have been with anyone - a customer service agent, a co-worker, a family member. Which of the following questions do you feel most comfortable asking yourself?
What if I am wrong?
What if I am mistaken?
What if they are right?
How important is it to me that I am right?
How important is it to me that they are wrong?
How much will this matter in a week?
How much will this matter in a year?
How much will this matter in a decade?
Step 3 - Practical Application
It's a fun exercise to see the confirmation bias in action. It's a different matter when you begin to see it running in situations you need to care about, like at work when you're tasked with finding a way to motivate a team toward better performance. Maybe an influential member of the team expresses doubt that a particular course of action has any chance of success. You know, or you think you know, the motivation behind this and that it has little to do with the viability of the solution. What do you do?
Paradoxically, you do not want to call out their confirmation bias. Flashing a PowerPoint slide with Britannica's definition of "confirmation bias" and essentially pointing a finger while proclaiming "J'accuse!" won't be as helpful as you might like it to be. No, grasshopper. Having sussed the confirmation bias program is running merely signals the beginning of the effort to solve the puzzle.
Of course, it’s possible the course of action on the table objectively isn't a good one, but you sense there is more opinion in the air than fact. Sometimes the confirmation bias may be serving a worthy outcome, but it's up to you to ground the conversation in as much fact and evidence as possible so that the team 1) make a professional decision and 2) learns how to do better next time, if only subconsciously, because of your efforts.
The solution is to leverage the power of questions. (The subject of questions will be covered many steps from now. Patience, grasshopper.) For now, I'll give you a short list of questions you can ask that are designed to guide people to go deeper and explore their assumptions and confirmation bias. With patience, persistence, and time, it's been my experience that people will eventually find their way to agreeing on something useful and actionable. And for any one day and any one meeting, that's good enough for now.
If we do X, what will the consequences be? (Pursue secondary effects.)
I don't see, yet, how X will lead to Y. Can you say a little more about that? (Surface more affirming evidence. The word "yet" is important here.)
How can we test for Y before we commit to that course of action? (Press for several smaller tests rather than one big test. Fire bullets, then cannonballs, as Jim Collins suggests.)
If you have any questions, need anything clarified, or have something else on your mind, please use the comments section or email me directly.
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