when we’re personally involved

Daniel Kahneman performed an experiment involving a lottery run with a twist. Half the participants were randomly assigned a numbered lottery ticket. The remaining half were given a blank ticket and a pen and asked to choose their own lottery number. Just before drawing the winning number, the researchers offered to buy back all the tickets. They wanted to find out how much they would have to pay people who wrote their own number compared with people who were handed a random number. 

The rational expectation would be that there should be no difference. After all, a lottery is pure chance. Every number, whether chosen or assigned, should have the same value. An even more savvy answer would be that you should have to pay the people  who write their own number ever so slightly less, because of the possibility that there will now be duplicate numbers that, if chosen, would mean the size of the price would be cut in half. 

Neither of these turned out to be the right answer. Regardless of nationality or demographic group, people who wrote their own number always demanded at least five times more for their ticket. This reveals an important truth about human nature. When we’re personally involved in “authoring” an outcome, we are far more committed to it because we feel we own it. The underlying psychology relates to our need for control, which is a deep-rooted survival instinct.

…The lesson for change leaders? If you want to increase the motivation for (and therefore, speed of) the implementation of change, it pays to involve others in creating the aspiration, even when the answer may already be clear in the mind of the leader…. Change programs whose aspirations phase is characterized by an organization-wide, collaborative effort are 1.6 times more likely to succeed. 

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

beware of optimism bias

Beware of optimism bias: the expectation that the best possible outcome will emerge. This accounts for why divorce rates in the western world are around 40 percent, yet when you ask newlyweds to rate their likelihood of divorce they are most likely to put it at 0 percent…. It also explains why, as our colleagues Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit describe, “One of the most emblematic outputs of the dreaded strategic-planning process is the ‘hockey stick’ forecast – the line that sails upwards on the graph after a brief early dip to account for up-front investment. These hockey sticks, confidently presented by executives pitching their new strategy, are easy to draw but they don’t score many goals. What tends to happen in reality is that the strategy fails to meet the bold aspirations and is replaced by a new one. 

Being aware of such biases doesn’t help one avoid them. As Dan Ariely, one of the foremost thinkers in the field, declares, “I am just as bad myself at making decisions as everyone else I write about.” Fortunately, however, there are a number of proven and practical tools to minimize biases in decision-making. These include, among others, the following: the “pre-mortem” (generating a list of potential causes for failure of a recommendation and working backward to rectify them before they happen); “red team-blue team” (assigning one person/group to argue for, and one to argue against, a decision); “clean-sheet redesign” (developing a system from only a set of requirements, free from considerations related to current investments or path); and “vanishing options” (taking the preferred option off the table and asking, “What would we do now?”). Importantly, simply ensuring you are engaging a diverse team in decision-making will reap significant rewards – which research reveals can improve decision-making quality by more than 50 percent.

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

the mere aspiration

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of mind, for the moment realizes itself.

Anna Jameson

Forty Thousand Sublime and Beautiful Thoughts Gathered from the Roses, Clover Blossoms, Geraniums, Violets, Morning-glories, and Pansies of Literature. Christian Herald. 1915