There’s agreement that collaboration, rather than the work of a lone genius or expert, is the prevailing key to creativity and better decision-making. But is there a way, in the absence of other people that an individual can improve his or her decision making, particularly related to predictions? I’m the sole proprietor of my business so there are many days I’m in my office by myself without the opportunity to garner other people’s perspectives yet I’d like to increase the accuracy of my decisions.
According to Stefan M. Herzog and Ralph Hertwig of the University of Basel using an approach they’ve named dialectical bootstrapping would help. Although the name is ponderous, I do like the methodology they suggest to get beyond the borders of your own habituated thinking.
In the abstract of their article in Psychological Science, Volume 20, Number 2 (February 2009) on improving individual judgments with dialectical bootstrapping they state: “The ‘wisdom of crowds’ in making judgments about the future or other unknown events is well established. [This discovery is at the root of James Surowiecki’s 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds.] The average qualitative estimate of a group of individuals is consistently more accurate than the typical estimate, and is sometimes even the best estimate….We propose exploiting the power of averaging to improve estimates generated by a single person…A single mind can thus simulate the wisdom of many.”
My husband would tell you that I’m quite adept at giving (or guessing) the same answer over and over again so he’s certainly interested in having me learn new ways to arrive at a different answer the second (or third or fourth) time we’re discussing an issue. Therefore in the interest of both my marriage and my work, I read more about Herzog and Hertwig’s technique. It’s based on people surfacing their assumptions and rethinking their point of view (also a powerful option for a business when looking at why they’re stuck in business as usual). In their study of a hundred and one students, all students were asked to answer date-estimation tasks on 40 historical events. After their initial answers half were asked to use the following consider-the-opposite strategy in their decision making:
- First, assume that your first estimate is off the mark.
- Second, think about a few reasons why that could be. Which assumptions and considerations could have been wrong?
- Third, what do these new considerations imply? Was the first estimate rather too high or too low?
- Fourth, based on this new perspective, make a second, alternative estimate.
The researchers compared people who were given this instruction with people who were simply told to make a second guess. In other words, the control group was not told to use the researchers four step, consider-the-opposite strategy.
Herzog and Hertwig then averaged the two answers for both sets of people. The two groups were also averaged with each other. As they expected, when two different peoples’ guesses were averaged, the accuracy of the guess/answer increased by almost 8%. But when people simply guessed again without using a purposeful methodology for considering or analyzing why they came up with their first answer, the average of the two answers showed no improvement. For individuals who used the methodology, the average of their two guesses was 4% more accurate than either of their individual guesses. So what?
Well first, I would now be right 4% more of the time when I talk with my husband – bringing the number even closer to 100% accuracy, a 100% of the time.
Second, with changes happening more rapidly than ever our skills at predicting the future become more important. If we can reduce our bias and increase our predictive accuracy, our chances of success increase. Also, with the complexity of today’s world it would be negligent for any executive, entrepreneur or employee to become entrenched in the rightness of their view. They/we need to consider that their answer might not be right and that they could be operating from a set of assumptions that are inaccurate. Not a good place to be. So engage in some dialectical bootstrapping to simulate the “wisdom of the crowd” within your own mind.
(This article first appeared in The Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal in June 2009)