Groupthink – Jeremiah Stanghini

On Judging a Book, er, Manager by its Cover

There’s been some news recently regarding the Toronto Maple Leafs that’s, well, that’s frankly, the very opposite of heart-warming. And hearing this news, put some other news in a different light for me. Before we get to that, let’s back up to the 2014 Olympics in Russia.

Heading into the ’14 Olympics, Canada returned its head coach for the men’s hockey team that had led them to victory in the 2010 Olympics held in Canada. As a good Canadian boy, I was super-excited to see Canada defend its Olympic gold medal. In watching the games, I remember thinking that it was like Team Canada was playing with some kind of ‘cheat code.’ Their style of play made it very difficult for teams to score on them — they allowed three goals the entire tournament. One of those was on the penalty kill in their first game of the tournament. They also held their opponents in the semi-finals and the gold medal game scoreless. Very well done, eh?

Fast-forward a year and the Toronto Maple Leafs announced that the coach that led Canada to gold medals in 2010 and 2014, Mike Babcock, would now be the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs (he led the Detroit Red Wings to a Stanley Cup victory in 2008). I was overjoyed. Overjoyed! The Leafs won the draft lottery to select first overall at the end of Babcock’s first season and with it, the opportunity to get a generational talent — Auston Matthews. Things were looking pretty good.

Fast-forward to the current season — things haven’t been going swimmingly for Babcock and the Leafs. Expectations were high after resigning some of their stars to expensive contracts. However, the proof very much wasn’t in the pudding. In the first quarter of the season, the Leafs didn’t play well enough and ultimately, the team decided to part ways with Babcock. When I first read the news, I was stunned. I knew that there had been talk of it, but it didn’t seem like the right call. Babcock was a coach with a record that preceded himself and I still had in my mind the images of how much better Team Canada at the ’14 Olympics looked in comparison to other teams. Hoo boy, was I wrong.

That brings us to this week. Earlier this week, there was a story that came out in the middle of the night about some, oh, shall we say, “poor motivational techniques” employed by Babcock with the players. Now, before I should go on, I should say that I’ve never played professional or organized hockey. I don’t know what it’s like in the “locker room” or on the “practice ice.” I have, however, played organized baseball, so I am familiar with some of the groupthink and harsh conditions that can be employed by coaches/managers for any number of reasons. OK, back to it.

Right, Babcock and poor motivational techniques. When I first heard this story, and it wasn’t coming from a “major publication,” I didn’t want to believe it. Instead, I told myself that it was an unsourced claim and that someone was trying to vindictive or hurtful in dragging Babcock’s name through the mud. Flat wrong. The next day, the beat reporters interviewed the player subjected to the poor motivational techniques and… well, as it happens, it did happen. Colour me surprised. Very surprised.

I had this image in my head of this great coach, this coach who had it together, who could command the locker room and motivate the players to do great things. I mean, just look at what he did with Team Canada in 2010 and 2014 — how could the guy who brought so much joy to Canada in these times be the same guy who would subject a player to abject humiliation in front of his teammates? Major cognitive dissonance for me.

And as quickly as I was having those thoughts, it was a stark reminder that you can’t judge a book by its cover. You can’t judge a coach from what you see in the 2+ hours during the 80+ games they play during the season. There’s so much more than meets the eye in sports. The coaches are with the players as part of their frickin’ job (!). They seem the daily for many stretches at a time. As fans and viewers, we go to work all-day. We spend time with our kids. We have other hobbies. There is so much behind the scenes in sports that we don’t see. Yes, we see the players/coaches give interviews, but that’s a very small snippet of their personality and it might even be some kind of a “show” that they’re putting on. Some famous examples: Bill Belichick and Gregg Popovich. There’s more than meets the eye.

In trying to pull out a more applicable lesson, I can’t help but thinking about leaders, managers, or senior management, in our day-to-day work as public servants. Yes, we see pockets or snippets from people who come from these groups, but that doesn’t mean that what we see is a true representation. In this case, counter to my example from above (in that I was thinking the best of Babcock, while it turns out there were some unsightly things going on), it’s common to associate negative action with “management” (i.e. they’re not doing enough, they don’t see me, they’re not responsive, etc.). While all of that might be true, let’s consider for a moment that maybe there’s something else going on there. Maybe management is doing a lot to try and make sure that they’re meeting needs. Or, maybe that senior leader in the meeting who seems like they’re not taking an interest in you, that senior leader who’s not recognizing you for who you are — maybe there’s more to their story. Maybe they’ve got things going on in their personal life. Maybe they’re in the middle of a messy divorce. Maybe they just heard that one of their parents has Alzheimer’s. Maybe their dog is sick. Who knows!

The point here is that, in all the circumstances that bring people together, all the times where we’re greeted by the faces of people near our orbit, we can never really be sure of the events that immediately preceded the stranger to be sitting across from you. So, take a moment, take a breath, take a beat and remember, there’s more to this person’s story.

Silence Isn’t Golden: Everyone Thinks You Should Speak

You’re sitting in the weekly management meeting and the senior person at the table is running through the agenda at a fevered pace. Decisions are being made, left, right, and center, and you can barely keep up with what’s going on. Wondering if you’re alone, you look around the table and it seems that most of your colleagues are following along splendidly. All of their body language indicates that they know what’s going on and are in agreement. As you didn’t have time to read the accompanying materials, you think that it’s probably just you.

How many times have you found yourself here? Watching something happen and assuming that you’re the only one that disagrees with the way things are going.

Hopefully, not too often, but my guess is that 100% of the people reading this have, either: a) found themselves in this scenario, or b) know someone who’s found themselves in this scenario. OK, OK – 99% of you.

As it happens, there’s a name for this – pluralistic ignorance. Huh? Yeah, it’s a bit heavy on the jargon – both in its name and often times, its description. In fact, there’s even disagreement from academics about how to describe it. That’s why it’s often best to explain the phenomenon through examples. There’s the one I shared in the opening, but let’s be honest, that was only a few sentences and you probably spaced out reading it [are you back?].

OK. Here’s a quick video example of one I’ve come across that usually helps crystalize the concept for folks.

https://vimeo.com/63062967

The video shows a few minutes of Prof. Dan Ariely’s class at Duke. It’s only about 4 minutes, so go ahead and give it a quick watch (I’ll wait).

Seriously, g’head and watch it. [Note: it’s a Vimeo link, so many apologies to any of you unable to watch it because of a firewall/blocked IT.]

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Pretty cool, eh? Now, I bet some of you might be saying to yourself, “Yeah, but I would have spoken up and asked the professor what the heck he was talking about.” Sure, maybe you think you would have or maybe you actually would have. The point here is that most people don’t or won’t. This post is supposed to be about change management, after all, so let’s bring it home with something a bit more on-point for all of you.

If you’re reading this, you probably have some experience in change management. Whether you’re a seasoned executive who’s led through countless mergers and acquisitions or a student who’s recently joined the team and are finding yourself super-bored (i.e. you’re on GCconnex/GCcollab reading whatever you can get your hands on), you’ve come into contact with change management. Yes, you have. Depending upon where you are in your career, your examples might be more personal (hello Generation Z!) or professional (hello seasoned executives).

So how does this relate to pluralistic ignorance? Remember that example I shared in the beginning where you found yourself at the decision-making table, but you weren’t quite sure what the heck was going on? That’s exactly the kind of meeting that might happen before a major change. Everyone appears to be in agreement with what’s being said. However, what’s really happening is that most people aren’t in agreement with what’s going on, but think that everyone else is in agreement with what’s going on, so they bite their tongue. Then what happens? Well, then, your group becomes a statistic. And not a good one.

Do you want to become a statistic? Do you want to continue to perpetuate the terrible idea that any change in an organization is doomed to fail more than half the time? I sure as heck don’t. So what can we do? Well, we can speak up. We can prove ‘pluralistic ignorance’ wrong by raising our hand in the management meeting. We can speak up when we don’t understand what’s happening or don’t believe we’re headed in the right direction or think that our decisions aren’t based on foundational data.

This post originally appeared on GCconnex/GCcollab.

The Most Common Biases in Business Decisions

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you’ll know that one of topics that I write about the most is cognitive biases. So, when I came across an article on the Harvard Business Review that neatly wrapped up some of the more common biases in business decisions, I just had to comment on it.

I agree with just about everything in this table (?), but I’m surprised about one thing: the endowment effect. That is, I’m surprised it’s not listed in the table. Specifically, listed under ‘stability biases’ as this is where it would fit. To refresh your memory:

In short, it means that people want more money for something than they’d be willing to pay for it. Put differently: we overvalue that which we own. You could think of a simple example of this through the course of a negotiation. When negotiation with someone, we’ll probably overvalue what we bring to the table. Someone may offer you $50 for your 25-year old keyboard (piano), but you think it’s worth at least $75. Barring any outside appraisal, the endowment effect is likely at play here.

Given the number of deal-making that takes place on a regular basis, I’m surprised that we didn’t see this as part of the table. It seems to me that in business, when money is often the thing that’s held in the highest regard (for better or for worse), you’d want to have people with the decision-making power understand that they may be overvaluing what’s theirs.

Upon further reflection, I can understand why one may not see it as a “common” bias because in today’s society, (at least in Western cultures), the common transaction is cash for stuff and not stuff for stuff (barter). If bartering were more the name of the game, then I would certainly want to see the endowment effect on that list. Either way, though, it’s certainly worth remembering that we tend to overvalue the stuff we have.