More on Slow and Fast Thinking

Introduction

Try to make change easy so that the brain does not feel threatened and go into defensive mode.

Your brain likes to be in control. Therefore it hates surprises and prefers to stay in familiar territory, ie status quo or zone of comfort. It likes predictability as it helps us feel in control.

Fast thinking is the automatic reaction often described as gut feel; slow thinking happens when we need to engage in more complex tasks.

Under stress we prefer fast thinking with its short cuts (cognitive biases) as slow thinking requires more brain power. Sometimes the cognitive biases appear irrational but are consistent amongst us all; there is a degree of predictability in these shortcuts.

"...when our brains are overloaded our defensive wall rises. When we are defensive our risk-taking, open-mindedness and future thinking reduces and we are more likely to use these shortcuts..."
Edwina Pike, 2022

Giving you limited choices, allows you a feeling of control and you will become less defensive.

However, too much choice results in choice overload, ie too much going on and this can be paralysing

Tribalism

"...humans are tribal animals, so we feel protected and safe within our tribes. We are the member of many different tribes; family, school, church, interest groups, work. Each tribe forms its own socially acceptable behaviours which we tolerate as OK within the group. Tribes appoint their own leader, someone who will keep the tribe strong and their member safe. In organisations this is often, but not always, the manager with their hiring and firing rights. In return, the members protect their tribe: we do not challenge our tribe, we seek only good for our tribe. We gravitate towards our tribes; the challenge is to understand the people of other tribes..."
Edwina Pike, 2022

Once you reach the maximum number of meaningful relationships, you can no longer operate on trust.

We use barriers like processes, rules, policies, guidelines, etc to manage the communication between our tribe and other tribes; it is a way to protect yourself and your tribe.

Most relationships with other tribes are transactional; you speak good of your own tribe and badly of others, reinforcing that they are threat to you.

Breaking down these barriers is not easy.

"... Tribal leaders set the tone for their own tribe. The barriers between tribes often correlates to the quality of the relationship between the tribal leaders.
Where there is a disconnect between two tribal leaders, however great the relationship at an operational level, tribal members will try to act to protect their own leader and their tribe. To break down barriers, shift the relationship at the top of the tribe and both tribes will follow..."
Edwina Pike, 2022

Sometimes long term tribal enemies' feelings are too strong to change.

NB Need to understand the dynamics within each group and minimise the impact of your change

It is important that you understand what is happening around you, eg tribal conditions, and can use the cognitive biases to your advantage in the change process.

Cognitive Biases

Cognitive biases are the short cuts used, when you are cognitively overloaded. Some examples include:

- loss aversion (you value what you own; struggle to let go and grieve for any loss; need to recognise the loss)

- negativity (you remember negative events more than positive; you avoid taking risks and close your mind; need to rewrite the story in a more positive tone)

- endowment (you have a sense of ownership over things that you have use of and struggle to let them go; create ownership through use)

- IKEA (you value what you have contributed to, and invested time in; use carefully to create conviction)

- recency (preference for the most recent knowledge; we discard the past; need to remind and remain recent)

(For more examples of cognitive bias, see elsewhere in the Knowledge Base)

The around 200 types of cognitive biases that can impact changing organisational behaviours; these are divided into 4 groups

i) social (these biases predict the influence of groups and tribes on the behaviour you see)

ii) inertia (prefer the status quo, as these biases predict how likely you are to seek stability, or something you know)

iii) data (your brains take shortcuts in how they process data, these biases give insights into how data will be received)

iv) ego (your confidence, or not, drives some of your choices and can be used to predict behaviour.)