We All Know We’re right
Millions of dollars on the table when I walked into the room.
My client was chasing a new market segment. Their product team had done a detailed analysis and come back with the kind of number that gets budgets approved and champagne ordered. A newly discovered multi-million dollar opportunity. Irresistible.
Something felt off. I’d been around that market and my gut kept saying, huh?
So we dug into the analysis. We found a far too typical oopsie. A young manager had assumed every single one of their customers would buy the new product they were designing. On paper, that actually sounded reasonable.
This new reality was different. That new product was only viable for the top 15 percent of that market. The larger, more sophisticated buyers. The other 85 percent simply weren’t in need of the upgrade. Maybe later, not now.
This is an example of how the evidence we seek tends to follow our beliefs, knowns and perceptions. No one sets out to lie.
That young product manager believed in the power of that new product and its opportunity. So they researched and found the numbers to prove that belief.
When we resized the market based on reality, the picture changed. A lot.
Here’s the kicker.
Their second-tier target, the one nobody was paying attention to, represented three times the opportunity of the segment they’d been chasing. With a few simplifications and cost reductions to that kickass new offering.
They almost missed a massive opportunity. Why? Because they were doing what humans do. Proving themselves right.
Trained to Be Right
From our earliest moments we are taught that being right is critical. From not touching a hot stove to answering test questions as correctly as we can. We are rewarded for being right. Not so much so for being wrong.
Our minds become very, very good at making sure we stay in the right.
Which feeds a program known as confirmation bias. What’s that? It’s the tendency to look for information that supports what we already believe. It’s also the tendency to ignore or rationalize away anything that contradicts what we just know.
We all do it. Every day. It’s part of the way we are wired.
It can wreak havoc in business.
The more experienced we are, the more we trust our instincts. Obviously the more we trust our instincts, the less likely we are to question them.
Here’s a simple truth.
Domain expertise doesn’t make us more accurate. It makes us more confident.
Read that again.
The tendency to know and prove ourselves right gets in the way of the actual facts, discoveries and new ideas that fuel our innovation and consequent success.
We are so good at it that we almost always find exactly the evidence we need.
As every marketer knows, you can make numbers tell many stories, including the one you want to hear.
When Everyone Agrees
Our confirmation bias creates corporate truth. We may or may not know it.
We all know how it goes. The most senior person, or the one people believe really knows their stuff, shares their perspective. Everyone nods. A few add new points. Some might raise a concern. If it’s a big enough shift from the ”expert” opinion, there will be some resistance. Which means most of us back off as the resistance bandwagon rolls into the sunset. The meeting ends and everyone appears to accept the results. All aligned.
Except alignment isn’t agreement. And agreement surely doesn’t mean it’s true..
One McKinsey study found that high-quality debate made big decisions 2.3 times more likely to succeed. The problem is, most rooms don’t promote a real debate. They promote safe ideas, shared for consensus.
Corporate legends are the poster child for confirmation bias.
Nobody thinks to question them. They’re just true. Everyone knows they’re true. They’ve always been true.
“They’re our best customer.” “Our customers want us to stay the course.” “The competition has it, so we need it too.”
The reality is that most of these “truths” were handed down by mentors, learned in business school, declared gospel by that VP who retired ten years ago.
There’s safety in those legends. There’s also a blindness factor that is anything but safe.
A well known example? Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975. They produced a report predicting the market shift. Management looked at the evidence and decided it wouldn’t disrupt their film business. They had ten years to act.
They lost 75 percent of their value before filing for bankruptcy.
Prove Yourself Wrong
What do we do about a bias that’s built into how we think?
We do the opposite. Deliberately. Repeatedly. Until it becomes part of how we operate. We replace our training to hang onto past knowns with a desire to find today’s truth.
How do you start? It’s pretty simple.
Whenever you have a decision or insight or hunch, actively search for the evidence that proves you’re wrong.
Our instinct is to go find all the evidence that says we are right. Yahoo!
Here’s the thing. You’ll find evidence that you’re right without trying. You’re programmed to find it. Don’t.
Consciously look for the evidence that your assumption is wrong.
It’s a far more productive and insightful exercise.
By simply searching for evidence that you’re wrong, your mind begins to open to new possibilities. Simply because you question instead of running headlong to prove the known.
If you find evidence you’re wrong, you save yourself a lot of time, trouble and money heading in the wrong direction.
Finding evidence you’re wrong also means you find a lot of new information that improves your knowledge and thinking around whatever you’re researching. You improve your original idea with it.
Let’s say you prove yourself right. You still have a better perception, more insights and knowledge than you ever would have if you just ran straight to the checkbox of right. All those new insights give you even more ideas and opportunities.
Another technique I use is called Stump the Chump.
I have another technique I use with client groups that is an eye-opener.
I call it Stump the Chump.
Who’s the chump? Whoever wants to stand up for a new and different idea, one that isn’t part of those legends. With clients, it’s usually me the first time around.
Here’s the game:
Whoever is supporting the new idea is asked questions by everyone else.
The others ask questions that are designed to probe, understand more deeply, and address potential concerns.
After folks ask the probing questions, we then switch their perspective to ask questions focused on finding additional evidence for the new idea.
Everyone gets to play on both sides of the “new idea.”
Everyone learns to value both sides of that same idea.
Most importantly, everyone learns way more about the new idea than they ever would be simply disagreeing or rubber stamping it.
When you do this with a focus on discovery, not winning, you move out of right or wrong and into openly and curiously exploring all the possibilities.
That’s where truth and innovation live.
The Bottom Line
Forget being right. Focus on what’s true, right now.
Being right comes from our human training. Which isn’t always helpful.
Every time we discover a belief that no longer holds, we get a gift. We get to update our model. We get to replace what we thought we knew with what's actually true. We get to stop defending yesterday and start focusing on our true tomorrow.
That's not failure. That's the whole game.
The best leaders I've worked with don't get stuck on whether they're right or wrong. They stay curious. They stay hungry for the thing they're missing. They continuously replace their knowns with updated realities.
That's where the breakthroughs live.