The Bright Side Of Bias

Introduction

The purpose of this article is not to provide more information about how biases are harmful to us, or to explain why it is essential to check for biases when working with a team on projects that involve important decisions that carry risks. Rather, it intends to offer an alternative perspective by looking at the "other side of the coin". By doing so, can be demonstrated how this way of thinking may improve decision-making by taking into account other factors that are sometimes overlooked, such as passion, emotions, and deep knowledge of the subject matter and more.

Abstract

Biases are often mistaken for poor decision-making when dealing with tough decisions and uncertainties. However, they are often just misinterpretations of people who have previously made bad decisions in the wrong circumstances, which have led to the current understatement of bias.

This article aims to show that biases can be used in a positive way by being passionate and thoughtful about a specific subject, and then applying those biases to take projects to the next level.

Therefore, biases can become a different way of evaluating solutions, and perhaps even a better way of taking risks. When people look at things from their unique perspective and bring their own knowledge to a project, it can be an important upgrade to the project. Passion comes with a mix of important perspectives that are often missing from projects, which can bring alignment, satisfaction, and a sense of ownership to the project. People who like their job are much more willing to do everything to ensure the project becomes a success. Therefore, people with passion and understanding are more likely to make better decisions than those without it. This way of tackling decisions and problems can have a huge positive impact on how projects are developed.

However, passion can sometimes lead to unpredictability, and if not managed properly, it can lead to unsafe decision-making. Therefore, it is necessary to use other tools to counteract the "dark side" of biases. Although biases can sometimes lead to difficult and poor decisions, it is important not to ignore the potential of good ideas that can come from exploring projects in this way. Passion and knowledge are often ignored and left out of projects because decisions are not filtered properly, leading to problems that could have been solved.

To address the downsides, it is important to use useful tools to evaluate and reflect on decisions, and filter them well enough to bring out the best aspects.

What is a Bias?

Based on the Oxford dictionary is "A strong feeling in favour of or against one group of people, or one side in an argument, often not based on fair judgement" . As the same oxford dictionary mention bias are known to be a bad thing that all humans have, just because the way we thing, act and feel about things or different subjects, we started to have an opinion on these matters and we use them and comment them, when interacting with others, this give us a hole new way of thinking and each of us has a unique way of think based on where were born, how was our relationship with our parents, if it was possible or not to study, how wealthy are we, which countries we had visited, how traumatic has been our lives, how willing are we to embrace change, if we have lost someone and all those sub section of our lives make us think the way we do and this does make an opinion bad or wrong. But still there a big difference when Bias is only used to achieve something that we all know that is wrong, for example to damage someone.

Here you can find more information about the “Darth side” of biases and how this affect our way of doing things if not controlled or take into account considerably.

There is a thin line between what is people believes and what is right and biases has been used against others just because they feel like there is a supremacy or feeling of superiority and there are many examples in history where this has made a huge scar on human kind, here we need to discuss mostly based on how modern society looks like while remembering all of those things, to be on the right track and achieve the best way of doing things that biases have to show us and then focused much more on how those could help projects to be grater, unique and successfully as possible. So, to be clear, bias are always there and they always will be, so why try to work around or against them rather than trying to hear them and take the best out of them.

What is the bright side ?

The bright side of bias is the sweet spot where everyone can be themselves at their work and do the things that each person is passionate or have studied about plus the unique side of doing things based on all of those circumstances that we had lived before, and so, with the help of managers trust in their workers, companies and workers can benefit of this side of the coin to perfection the way that jobs are done right now, with this all companies should have amazing number on how developed and well finalized are their projects and in parallel better products, services are developed and therefore customer satisfaction and sales will improve substantially as now exists a synergy between the workers way and the company way of doing things.

This could start by finding a nice/perfect fit for the job/project or by training personal near capable. It’s important that companies try to develop a sense of ownership with workers for the company and their projects, because this make workers love what they do and have the freedom to do the job in their own unique way and at the same time, work harder to achieve goals and finalize projects in the best possible way.

Then is about maintaining their trust and their involvement with the company by helping them to progress by learning in dept their subject or an extra useful tool for the job and inspire to be much involve in other projects whenever is possible and depending on their development, this could also be about giving different incentives based on how well the job was done or because the deadline was achieved, etc.

Finally to continue the sense of involvement and trust companies should invest time on getting to know better with their workers, basic stuff like things that everyone is into, hobbies, things that people want to learn, if they have kids, if they have pets, thigs that can closer every time that they work together, this sense of connectivity also help understand why people think the way they do and possibly they can help other to see their point of view and came up with brilliant ideas to solve wicked problems inside their projects. Or even by doing this the project/product can be tested within the same company by fans or experts in the matter to again rise question that even people working close to the projects has not think of.

This means that the Danish flat non hierarchy way of working its a big plus to develop a sense of involvement, respect, environments where different nationalities can work together, sharing their beliefs and way of doing things, a space to do different activities weekly on Fridays, be part of a group that shares their passion or hobby and most importantly a way where all hands on deck means that everyone agree to do the next step to continuing on the project, which could be time consuming but the results are very good, consequently this should the be the way to go.

How to be in the bright side?

Now that there is possible to see the other side of the coin, what can we possibly do to embrace biases and flip the coin towards its bright side view.

Here are some examples of tools that can be used to find the rignt track or to work with the bright biased side and how:

- The decision matrix is a simple tool which can help to understand the different possibilities in between different decisions that are needed to take. This is a fair tool because it allowed the complete team to get involve in the decision, which includes their way of thinking in the final solution

this tool can be optimized when every decision is weight depending on their importance/relevance and so decisions ended up being align with the project/company or towards a common goal.

- Robust decisions making is a much more complex tool and it could replace a risk assessment process because it analyze pre information that sometimes is superficially looked and that is definitively needed to be observed.


Step-by-step process of RDM

- decision matrices, choosing advantages