Consider this scenario: Chuck is a successful CEO of a marketing agency. His firm is widely known as one of the best in the nation, largely due to Chuck’s personal 25-year track record.
Jerry is a recent newcomer to Chuck’s firm—hired to head up Chuck’s online engagement division. Jerry was recruited largely due to his having recently spearheaded a successful online campaign for a major automotive company from Detroit, earning him a prestigious marketing award. Chuck was eager to put Jerry’s skills to work on a huge promotional project for a large commercial truck manufacturing group.
After working on the assignment for 2 weeks, Jerry met with Chuck to give him a progress update. He gathered his laptop with some sample materials, eager to show Chuck what he and his team had developed. Their conversation was going smoothly until Jerry suggested using a newly developed social media platform for launching a high-powered, campaign that could saturate the market with the brand name in half the time they’d previously imagined. It was at this moment the entire conversation came to a grinding halt.
Feeling certain that an unproven media platform was a waste of time, Chuck enumerated an exhaustive list of reasons why this idea couldn’t possibly work, emphasizing his “years of experience with this sort of thing,” and instructed Jerry to stick with options that have an established track record. Jerry insisted this new platform would prove successful, citing his off-the-charts test market results, but Chuck stood his ground, and told Jerry to remain with more proven methods.
On the way back to his office, Jerry thought to himself, “Why is Chuck so hell-bent on doing this his way? He wouldn’t even hear me out! I mean—I know what I’m doing. My cutting-edge thinking is why he picked me to lead this project in the first place!”
Whether you identify and empathize with Chuck or with Jerry in this scenario, it’s important to understand what caused these men to resist each other’s suggestions in this scenario. It’s a psychological phenomenon called: Confirmation Bias.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, deduce and prioritize your actions based on whatever you’ve previously experienced that resulted in success or avoiding failure. Basically, you’re convinced you already know the best way to proceed in a given situation, so much so you are inclined to dismiss sound points of contrary information even if they are presented by a respected colleague.
There are a variety of strategies to employ when this type of blind spot is blocking you from considering a perspective other than your own, but I’d like to dig into a wildly effective approach—the “scientific method.” I’m choosing to focus on this tactic because you probably already use a version of this process every day. But, its effectiveness hinges on a handful of specific aspects which are typically overlooked.
Most of us remember this process from science class and zero in on the following highlights. You come up with a hypothesis, gather evidence to support your hunch, and then run a variety of experiments until you get the results you want. If you’re able to repeat your results a few times over—you have “proven” your hypothesis.
This is what most of us recollect, and this version of the method is seamlessly integrated in to our everyday reasoning when we attempt to prove and support what we assume to be true. Ironically, this line of thinking is an incomplete understanding of how the method is intended to work and often results in confirmation basis. To gain a more reliable outcomes you must employ the entire scientific method by incorporating a few other critical elements.
First, it is important when gathering evidence and data that you actively look for, and include, information that might disprove your thinking. In that same vein, while running your experiments, you must force yourself to question the validity of your own observations. Essentially, you have to approach your investigation from the other side—like a prosecuting attorney—going to extreme lengths to prove yourself wrong! Only after this level of scrutiny can you feel confident in the correctness or feasibility of your conclusions.
Here is a personal example of this method in action. I’m currently involved in developing a project that features online payment processing. Our platform design team became embroiled in a heated debate about obtaining consumer credit card information before or after a trial period with our product. A few of our team members leaned toward gathering card information first, giving us the ability to automatically process payment when the trial period was completed. Other team members were absolutely opposed to this idea.
When our discussion reached an impasse (as was the case with Chuck and Jerry) we agreed to compile data to support our divergent approaches, and to present our findings at the next office meeting.
Employing the scientific method, our most enthusiastic supporter of taking the credit card information first presented research data that actually disproved her hypothesis. She found that a significantly greater number of potential clients converted to paying customers when they weren’t asked for the payment details up front. Her research also yielded the finding that this method increased the length of time consumers continued using the product.
When it comes to making decisions about new ideas for your business, you can see how the practice of challenging your preconceived notions can lead to some mind-blowing discoveries. This method can bring clarity to situations when passionately-opinionated parties, influenced by their respective biases, are struggling to arrive at a unified vision. With that in mind, consider the benefits of applying this approach to other facets of your life as well, including your personal relationships, career opportunities, politics, and everyday decisions in need of some sound, viable solutions.
