Business Insight Zone

Sometimes I write something that expresses an idea that’s important to me for understanding business, but that elicits little response from readers. For the most part, I assume this is my own fault for not striking a chord. C’est la vie.

But sometimes, the good stuff may simply fall through the cracks during a busy workweek. So on the off-chance that you have time to spare on this Friday — which is a de facto holiday for many in the United States — here are three posts that I hope will appeal to you.

1. Confirmation bias: fight the Procrustean instinct.

What we need is a sort of corrective lens to keep us from falling victim to confirmation bias in ourselves. Do you remember the mission that fixed the giant corrective lens onto the Hubble telescope? The telescope was too valuable to let die, but its flaws were insuperable without that sort of correction. So NASA went to great expense to fix it. The result has been a trove of space images unlike any before it. The trouble is, you and I don’t have a team of engineers and astronomers to tell us that, by the objective record, our view of our personal cosmos is distorted.

2. Expectations of waste.

“What consequences unfold if the price of energy rises high enough that no one sees energy as a commodity that they can afford to waste?”

3. Not logic, but culture.

It’s the same for organizations as it is for individual people. Most folks don’t change their actions unless they change their whole way of looking at things. It’s true of heart patients trying to live longer. It’s true of people who want to fix what’s broken in their lives. And it’s true of organizations that want to embrace change.

Thanks for giving these a second chance.

~

Photo by brewbooks, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

Category: Blog housekeeping