Whether in business, military, politics, or sports, leaders decide. How? How do they edit the variables - strategy, personnel, operations, motivation?
We know from psychological studies (on both college students and inmates) that decision-making is not rational and that decisions are formulated upon a background of cognitive bias. Among other factors, people make choices to minimize loss, real or potential.
Michael Lewis writes, "Danny wrote to Amos (Tversky)..."It is the anticipation of regret that affects decisions, along with the anticipation of other consequences...what might have been is an essential component of misery."
During the Nixon Administration, Henry Kissinger 'framed' the Vietnam alternatives as 1) go nuclear, 2) withdrawal, and 3) status quo. Nixon, with the constraints of those limited alternatives, chose the status quo.
"When one fails to take action that could have avoided a disaster, one does not accept responsibility for the occurrence of the disaster."
The same long-term possibilities apply to policy today, with a slightly different spin, "maintain the status quo" versus effect change and bear the consequence of change.
Consider a generic high school basketball program, that brings in a new coach, for whatever reason. You could have open tryouts, keep existing players, or use some combination. By maintaining the 'status quo' (existing players), you 'avoid criticism' for "blowing up" a program and the parental wrath of current players. "If only you had kept my daughter, then the program would have been fine."
The list of cognitive biases is long. Here are a few of my favorites...
- Recency bias. What have you done for me lately? If a player has an exceptional game (e.g. James Young earlier this year for the Celtics), is it a breakout or a fluke? Performance tends to mean revert.
- Attribution bias. If failure ensues, blame something else - injuries, weather, officiating, scheduling, etc.
- Confirmation bias. Read and incorporate into your thinking only what you already believe. You hate zone defense; read about the advantages of man-to-man. You love motion offense; study only what pertains to your beliefs.
- Endowment effect. We place a higher value on that which we "own", whether a local sports hero or a coffee mug at an 'auction'.
- Bandwagon effect. We adopt certain actions or beliefs because the crowd does.
- Distribution bias. In investing, the tendency to sell 'winners' and 'keep' losers.
Learning to recognize biases, especially personal ones, gives us a chance to make the most logical choices. When it's tough, I invoke Tim Ferriss' quote, "what would this look like if it were easy."
Final play, last night at Atlanta:
My bias...I don't like to set up game winners/critical plays to the short corner.