The power of noticing: what the best leaders see

Event report

Professor Max Bazerman, an expert in the field of applied behavioural psychology, reflected on the cognitive biases that undermine good decision making in organisations. Drawing on a range of recent real-world examples, including the Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the failure to anticipate the 9/11 attacks despite a string of terrorist incidents in the 1990s and the ‘conflict of interest’ that lay at the heart of the Enron scandal, Bazerman argued that we all get trapped in familiar patterns of thinking that inhibit our ability to notice, and act, on information that may not be immediately obvious until it’s too late.

Part of the reason for this ‘unintentional blindness’, as he put it, is that we too often focus on one task to the detriment of another – something that was clearly demonstrated to the audience when it was challenged to watch two separate groups of people playing ball simultaneously, while only counting the number of ball passes between one group. Although many participants identified the correct number of passes, most failed to notice a lady with an umbrella walk across the court mid-way through. This short exercise revealed how focusing on one task can often impede our ability to notice other salient information.

He suggested that organisations, and particularly leaders, have the responsibility for addressing these types of cognitive biases to improve decision-making. This can be achieved by:

• Paying greater attention to the things around you
• Taking an outsider’s view
• Auditing the organisation (identifying the changes that will help to create a noticing organisation)
• Recognising and acting on problems: when something feels wrong, figure out what it is.

He praised the behavioural insights team in the UK for being at the forefront of ‘noticing’ and capitalising on the biases that shape every-day decisions to improve the implementation of particular policies (e.g. changing the wording on reminder letters to ‘nudge’ people to pay their taxes). The Harvard Behavioural Insights Group aims to emulate this success through various research trials that demonstrate the role of behavioural insights in US public policy. For example, Bazerman’s research suggests that the government might be able to encourage more honest reporting on tax forms by simply moving the signature line to the top of the form, such that signers declare that they will tell the truth rather than that they have told the truth.

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