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Every one of us have our share of bad judgement and we either get away with it or we pay a heavy price for that. An idea that friendly strangers are bad would have prevented me from getting some great friends, yet we carry around stereotypes and preconceived ideas every day and put to use those ones. Some of the things which affect our judgement are

Ladder of inference/ Mental models

I came across these terms in Peter Senge’s The fifth discipline. It is about how we form opinions based on our narrow scope of observation and later on due to the influence of those opinions we form, we select the data from the event which validates our opinions. This was very well explained by one of my peers through an activity.

The facilitator randomly threw few pens on the floor and asked the audience for a number, the audience counted the no. of pens and gave an answer which he rejected by giving some random number. He continued to do the same thing many times and the audience started giving random numbers for ten consecutive times. After that he revealed that he was showing the number in his hands and the pens on the floor was just a decoy, post that when he threw the pens down people started noticing the number in his hand. In this experiment people just formed an opinion by relating to the pens down on the floor and the number.

It is no wonder why people form opinions based on their first impression/interaction, the world we perceive is just a model we have created based on the data we selected which are hardly verifiable or incomplete facts.

Recency effect/ Primacy effect

It is very easy to remember things which happened recently than a while ago. It is also very very easy to remember the first encounter but lots of things which happen in the middle tends to get lost. This effect in the hands of business people has become an effective tool but in the layman’s world if only the first and last things matter; then people who put a consistent effort to maintain something are not rewarded much compared to people who just create a great first impression and leave on a positive note but have completely messy approach.

We are always on the run and may not be able to review things as a whole but it is better to not concentrate on first and last things but look at things as a whole, it is very easy for us to form opinions based on just the first and recent impressions.

Availability heuristics

This is tricky, we like to consider ourselves intelligent and knowledgable; so we think that we have carefully selected the data and formed our opinions. Things which happen as expected is never a news, the one which comes up in the news is always something odd. News is often sensationalized, a good example is about the safety of the airplane travel. If we are able to imagine something vividly, then it is easy for us to picture the good things or pitfalls in it. We always look for shortcuts to confirm our opinions are right and that affects our judgement a lot, this often combines with the recency effect.

Good judgement comes with experience, experience comes with bad judgement

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Random thoughts comes to us when we free up our head from the day to day jugglery. The usual time of the day those thoughts peak up are shower, traffic signal lights, elevator, waiting at a restaurant but rarely at the work table. Our sub-conscious mind will continue to work on a problem to find a solution and pop it up at times when our conscious mind has taken a rest. It is at those times that I felt the need to capture the thought as it was too difficult to recollect just moments later. The sad part is that some of the ideas we get that time used to be great, seeing it die is painful.

How do we capture ideas as soon as when we get them? The only way is to have paper and pen to write on or note it down electronically. I tried using my mobile phone to capture notes but nothing was close to a physical notebook in terms of comfort and ease of use. The drawback of carrying a notebook was the size, even the hardbound pocket sized notebooks were difficult to carry around. Pocketmod came to my rescue, it allowed me to print a booklet in a style I would like and did it in just one A4 sheet of paper.

Carrying a pen and paper with me, helped to concentrate at the task at hand and not wander off while in meetings. The moment I capture my thoughts, my mind becomes free to get back to the task at hand in full swing.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Almost every office room meeting place has a table. Rooms of different sizes gets filled up with tables of comparable sizes barely leaving enough space for the chairs and some people to move around. Using the right tools for the right job is necessary, the same way the right meeting room setup is necessary for different types of meetings. A typical conference table usually creates a perception in the attendees that either there is a head of the table or sub consciously it is a Us vs Them debate. If a lot of collaboration is required in the gathering then the table in between the people does not help.

Anything in between people is a barrier, unless people are trained to overcome that. Tables are usually designed to fit the room such that the periphery is a usable space. A typical conference is room is bigger length wise, trying to focus on one side of the room where the presenter or the head of the table is. I have observed in many of the meetings when we need to have a huddle or a focussed discussion then most of the people leave their seats and crowd around a corner to put their ideas together and come with a common picture. Every person in the room has to shift to some other side leaving the comfort of their seats to get something done.

Increasingly we use workshop/brainstorm style meetings which requires frequent huddles and group interactions. By having a large almost square shaped room without tables to occupy the free space, we will be able to promote free movement of people. Also the square shape will not plant a thought in people’s mind that the conversation is unidirectional. The times I have tried this approach of having sessions in large rooms and easy to move furniture, I found good level of participation from everyone.

Table is definitely an important furniture but filling rooms entirely with a table for convenience will make people just too comfortable in their zones.

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