Decision Making While Swimming in Divergent Views

by Stacey Lett, Regional Manager – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

It seems like we’re all overwhelmed these days. Bad news, natural, disasters, man-made, disasters, and fears of upcoming meteorites, diseases, hurricanes, and government shenanigans. Even the nightly news has nine stories of current and pending disasters followed by one story of a little boy who found a marble, separated by commercials telling us to “ask our doctor” if this new drug is right for us.

What’s different today is that there is no escape from it. It comes through social media platforms on our phones, our computers, it plays on the radio, network and cable news, it comes from massive industries of political and financial pundits, and paid influencers of many kinds. Second-hand versions of that information come from our coworkers, our neighbors, our friends, and even our clergy.

It is difficult these days to extract the information we need from these sources and make the best, most proper decision in response. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by having to do so, yet that’s what we do both in life and in business; we make decisions based on the information we receive, and hopefully make good ones.

Making it more difficult is the proliferation of paid influencers who have a vested interest in making a believer out of you. These aren’t just the social media types telling you how wonderful their product is, embedded with subliminal messaging to influence your decision to buy based on their representation of their experience. Since the rise of “infotainment,” it has been difficult to separate out fact from fiction, reporting from advocacy and trends from high-pressuring, yet subtle and crafty, marketing.

For example, there are a few people and organizations on the east and west coasts who have made their billions on creating movements in a stock market. Whether it be spreading false narratives on a business in a “short and distort” scheme, creating “hype around a new product or trend to drive their stock holdings value up until they cash out in a “market manipulation scheme” (e.g. Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, a scheme for which she as CEO was sentenced to prison), or a group  of companies hitting the speaking circuit to spread their latest “trend,” in which they are all heavily invested– a broader form of market manipulation. The effect is the same, only different in scope but the intended effect is the same. It is meant to confuse people into making decisions that may not be in their interest but is very much so in the interest of the perpetrator.

Unfortunately, there is no escape from it. The “information age” was supposed to usher in an era of unlimited sources of knowledge. What wasn’t ushered in with it is gatekeepers who could filter out the blatant falsehoods and flag possible opinions when they are represented as facts. It has been left to us users to determine the validity, which is very hard to do when you are relying on the same media to provide alternate sources on topics from which to develop an informed conclusion.

We only need to look back a few years for several examples of failed “next great thing we all will be using.” Most evaporated after years of hype, others hang on by a thread. We have to admit when the media bandwagon started rolling many of us were scrambling for a seat. “Google Glass,” “Internet-of-Things,” or “driverless anything” – all seemed to have driven stock values up but it is still unclear if the “juice was worth the squeeze.” To what degree ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence platforms will make things worse is yet to be seen. But it would be wise to keep our guards up.

I recently came by some advice that could apply to any situation where critical thinking is required. So here are three fallacies to avoid, courtesy of The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli.

1. Be critical when you encounter predictions. Precise forecasts can be illusory, and the experts making them rarely face negative consequences after the forecast is proven disastrously wrong.
2. Don’t fall prey to information bias, “the delusion that more information guarantees better decisions,” writes Dobelli. Forget trying to amass all the data before making a decision.
3. Know the difference between risk and uncertainty. Risks have known probabilities, uncertainties don’t. According to Robelli, a forecast like “there’s a 30% chance that the euro will collapse in the next five years” is meaningless — because the economy resides in the realm of uncertainty.

Some say the solution is “trust, but verify,” and some say maybe we now have to diligently not trust and verify. Either way, we are all on our own when filtering information and drawing conclusions to act upon.

Check out Proactive Technologies’ structured on-the-job training system approach to see how it might work at your firm, your family of facilities or your region. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer. This can be followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues. A 13-minute promo briefing is available at the Proactive Technologies website and provides an overview to get you started and to help you explain it to your staff. As always, onsite presentations are available as well.