Mindfulness and Cognitive Biases in Project Management

An abstract is written as one of the last parts of a scientific article, with the purpose of giving the readers a short overview of its content, which normally are used to quickly determine the relevance of the respective article. Since this article still is in its infant stage, this will not be an abstract, but rather a bullet-point overview of the initial thoughts regarding its content.

A quick introduction to complexity and why the world has gotten more complex

• Structural complexity
  • Number of elements
  • Type of elements
  • Different types of relationships between the elements
  • The number of relationships between the elements
• Dynamic complexity
  • The above mentioned elements are in constant flux
    • Feedback loops
    • Nonlinear and emergent behaviour (unk unks, human behaviour)
• Why more complex
  • Rapidly changing technology
  • Engineering systems
  • everything is connected
  • socio-technical systems (social intricacy of human behaviour)
• Long term lifecycle considerations

Mindfulness is introduced as one of the tools available to deal with the complexity

• The “definitions”:
  • Mindfulness is understood as “a rich awareness of discriminatory detail. By that we mean that when people act, they are aware of context, of ways in which details differ (in other words, they discriminate among details), and of deviations from their expectations” (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001, p. 32).
• A short descriptions of the five principles of mindfulness (Weick and Sutcliffe 2001)

I need to get the original document to get it from its source, and not from Oehmen et al

• • Reluctance to simplicity
  • Preoccupation with failure
  • Sensitivity to operations
  • Commitment to resilience
  • Deference to expertise

Look in (Denyer, Kutsch, & Lee-Kelley, 2011) for applications of these principles in project management

• The principle of sensitivity to operations is chosen for further elaborate (the reason for this choice is the last part of it)
  • “being mindful to the potential unexpected events that go beyond what one would usually control in the project context”
  • Thinking outside the box, I choose the “thing” you do not normally control in project management, to be one's own mind and the deviousness of cognitive biases.

Cognitive biases

Initial list of chosen biases. Will be changed and modified as I continue my research on cognitive biases

• Availability cascade
  • A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or “repeat something long enough, and it will become true”)
• Bandwagon effect
  • A tendency to do or believe something because many people do or believe the same. Related to groupthink and herd behaviour
• Availability heuristic
  • The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.
• Bias blind spot
  • The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.
• Confirmation bias
  • The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
• Conservatism
  • The tendency to revise one’s belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.
• Curse of knowledge
  • When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.
• Focusing effect
  • The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event. (Supports the idea of mindfulness. Don’t focus too much, keep the bigger picture)
• Framing effect
  • Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented.
• Functional fixedness
  • Limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

Maybe the quote I used in Change Management can be used here (relates to many of the cognitive biases)

• ”The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.” - Covey, S.R. (1992)

Depending on the final focus of the article, antifragility can be mentioned in relations to some of the five principles of mindfulness

• “Rule 1” can be related to preoccupation with failure
  • in regards to a developing a clearly articulated communication procedure in the event of an emerging problem. Establish an early warning system like in a human body.
• "Rule 1" and deference to expertise
  • Like a human body decentralize/delegate the fixing of a problem to the immune system, deference to expertise delegate the responsibility of mindfulness to everybody (or experts), and use the established communication for an early warning system.
• "Rule 4" and commitment to resilience
  • Fail often, fail cheaply can be correlated to the concept of resilience that states a) the ability to continue even though problems or deviations occur, b) if you get knocked down, you get up again, and c) the ability to learn from unexpected events (actually also relates to rule 1: the human body self-heals and gets stronger)
• etc.

Conclusion

• So the “mindful manager” has to be aware of, and understand the following principles/biases/”cognitive limitations”/”whatever expression fits best”:
  • You do not know everything
  • Do not rely 100% on you previous experience. New problems can/will happen
  • They are aware of cognitive biases
  • Look and seeks for deviations
  • “Engage with different perspectives of the project and attempt to create a more comprehensive understanding of the current problem and ways to solve it.”
  • etc.
  • etc.
  • A summary of the finding of the article