How Rational Are We?

Many valuable project team behaviours have, at their core, a requirement to accept ambiguity for extended periods. For instance, a project leader must simultaneously reconcile an unshakable confidence that the project will succeed with the recognition that their team, being only human, are flawed in their beliefs, research techniques and decision making processes. 

The belief that the project will succeed is necessary to gain and promote the confidence of the internal stake-holders (team members) and external stake-holders. 

The recognition that the team is flawed is necessary to prevent premature closure on important decisions, and ensure that the team works in a fully engaged fashion – progress is not made without a degree of dissatisfaction with the current state of things!

Many people will maintain a paradox when they see the phrases I just used: “being only human, are flawed”.  One of our human flaws is to act as-if we ourselves are not flawed, while others around us can be.  Sometimes we need the mirror turned back on ourselves!

For reflection, one area that I have found informative (and often entertaining) is the field of technical analysis (TA).  This is an area where the prize for winning is huge, but the TA community is confronting a system that is complex or chaotic.  This combination fosters a remarkable number of superstitious beliefs and elaborate pseudo-science.  (For a pithy primer, in his book “Evidence Based Technical Analysis”, David Aronson explores what he calls the “Illusion of Validity” citing 11 ways that the TA community deceives itself.)

Let me give you a quick shock to the system:  I’d like to quote this excerpt from Michael Shermer’s book “Why People Believe Weird Things” (1998), that references a 1990 Gallup survey of over 1,200 American adult’s beliefs:

67%	Personal psychic experiences
52%	Astrology
46%	Extra-sensory perception
42%	Communicating with the spirits of the dead
41%	Humans and dinosaurs living at the same time
35%	Ghosts
33%	A previously existing continent called Atlantis
22%	Aliens from space landing on earth
19%	Witches

So how rational are we?

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Beliefs, Cognitive+Gap, Behaviour, Teaming