In the world of busy worker bees, there’s only one specimen that can do all and any tasks necessary: the scientist. While other lower animals can often be found in concerted work, where opportunity costs and benefits of specialization define who does what, the scientist is well above the need for help. Preferring solitude to socialization and caffeine to cooperation, the solitary scientist is an image of good old days, when society was driven forward by heroic explorers and experimenters.
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How does the scientist retain this mastery over all matters? The answer is a combination of two issues. First of all, due to the solitary nature of the scientist, each one prefers to work on issues on their own. Trying to cooperate would result in loss of status, because the other individual might be better at something (gasp!). After all, isn’t image above all? Better to do your web app for the experiment from scratch, rather than enlist the help of a computer scientist. On another level, the inclusion of additional people would mean a larger group for dividing spoils. You see, publishing a paper just by yourself in The New England Hyperprogressive Journal of Foucauldian Energy Fields is surely better than one in Nature, if in the latter you have to share the spoils with other people. Working alone, you can be the heroic explorer of your dreams. Working together, you’re just a cog in a machine, and nobody will remember your name. Especially if that other one is the first author.

This way of noncooperation manifests itself also in the physical structure of scientist life. Whereas other species tend to have open-plan dwellings that promote interaction, scientists’ lairs are typically made of single-person rooms. This ensures that each individual can stay nonproductive at their own pace, and means that interaction tends to happen only when the scientists gather around the local coffee pond to drink. Even that isn’t universal: in many societies, scientists have long learned that they can avoid these semi-forced interactions by having their own source of nourishment – a small espresso machine. This is a great way to show that you are not dependent on the tribe for anything. In contrast, if you are forced to accept other scientists in your territory, it shows that you have not earned your stripes to obtain the honorary title of a doctor. Or if you have, then sharing territory is a sign of weakness, both of your research and yourself.
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As the night appears, almost nothing changes. Since in daytime everyone would be sitting behind closed doors anyway, just by observation you can’t tell it’s already late. The disappearance of administrative personnel, however, signals the end of the hottest time of day. But if you could see behind those closed doors, you could find many a scientist, still procrastinating profusely. It’s a world of publish or perish, and there’s this critical deadline that you are close to missing (because you just spent two months learning how to do PHP, instead of that conference paper).

If you read almost any book about ”productivity”, ”efficiency” or similar, one of the tips you’re bound to get is to have fewer meetings. In my job, I’d say I have a meeting on average twice a month. So I must be the happiest, most efficient worker in the history of the universe, right? Not exactly.

I’ve found out that I love meetings. Not because they are often basically a group of people sitting around, drinking coffee, and pretending that the discussion totally justifies spending 15 minutes on the current state of politics, sports, or playing didyouseethatarticleaboutthethingilove. Or how many meetings are just rehashes of the old ones, because people a) don’t remember what you talked about last time, and b) haven’t done what was agreed on previously. So you pretty much keep going through the same points again (well, at least you won’t need new slides).

All this aside, I’ve found that meetings have an important motivational effect on me. Working from Germany for projects in Finland means that on a lot of days, I’m basically sitting alone in my yuge office (well, huge for a PhD student). We do have lunches together with colleagues at the office – but otherwise the social interaction is very academic: everyone says “hi” in the morning, and then retreats to their own cave…I mean room for the day. So, for most of the time it’s just me and the computer. Actually, it’s me and two computers, since I’m carrying a laptop to work in the train. Fantastic, twice the capacity for procrastinating online!

Oh yeah, the meetings. It may sound silly or obvious, but I see now that it’s way much easier to work, when you get to have a meeting every once in a while, talk to your supervisor about your work, and get at least a fleeting feeling that someone actually cares about the project you’re working on. I do realise that research is very much driven by intrinsic motivation – most people do the PhD because they’re really curious about some topic, not because they want to get a better wage or impress someone else (btw, these reasons seem way more common in Germany). But the fact that someone else is also invested in the project totally sparks me. I don’t know why, but so far I get the feeling that it’s related to a sense that I’m not willing to let other people down. So, at least for me, there definitely seems to be a floor level of meetings that I should have, because it helps to keep up my motivation. No book has ever mentioned this effect, but I guess most workplaces are chock full of meetings, so that this is not a relevant risk – unlike coffee and bun overdoses.
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With these thoughts in mind, I can honestly say I’m really looking forward to flying to Helsinki tomorrow, and attending some meetings! Another point to improve motivation would be to somehow make me seem more connected to our work group when here, but so far I’m lost on how to do that. If anyone else has any good tips from their teleworking experiences, help is appreciated!

The past month or so I’ve been reading Taleb’s Black Swan again, now for the second time. I’m very much impressed by his ideas, and the forceful in-your-face way that he writes. It’s certainly not a surprise that the book has captivated the minds of traders, businesspeople and other practitioners. The book is extremely good, even good enough to recommend it as a decision making resource. Taleb finds a cluster of biases (or more exactly, puts together research from other people to paint the picture), producing a sobering image of just how pervasive our neglect of Black Swans is in our society. And, he’s a hilariously funny writer to boot.

But.

Unfortunately, Taleb – like everyone else – succumbs in the same trap we all do. He’s very adept at poking other people about their biases, but he completely misses some blind spots of his own. Now, this is not evident in the Black Swan itself – the book is very well conceptualized and a rare gem in the clarity of what it is as a book and what it isn’t. The problem only becomes apparent in the following, monstrous volume Antifragile. When reading that one a few years ago, I remember being appalled – no, even outraged – by Taleb’s lack of critical thought towards his own framework. In the book, one gets the feeling that the barbell strategy is everywhere, and explains everything from financial stability to nutrition to child education. For example, he says:

I don’t know about you, but I really find it hard to derive “no biking” from the barbell strategy.

​Ok, back to seeking out irrationality. Taleb certainly does recognize that ideas can have positive and negative effects. Regarding maths, at a point Taleb says:

My instant thought when reading the above paragraph was: “well, what about the areas where Taleb’s thinking totally blows us up?”

Now the point is not to pick on Taleb personally. I really love his earlier writing. I’m just following his example, and taking a good, personified example of a train of thought going off track. He did the same in the Black Swan, for example by picking on Merton as an example of designing models based on wrong assumptions, and in a wider perspective of models-where-mathematics-steps-outside-reality. In my case, I’m using Taleb as an example of the ever present danger of critiquing other people’s irrationality, while forgetting to look out for your own.
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Now, the fact that we are better at criticizing others than ourselves is not exactly new. After all, even the Bible (I would’ve never guessed I’ll be referencing that on this blog!) said: “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
In fact, in an interview in 2011, Kahneman said something related:

If I interpret this loosely, it seems to be saying the same thing as the Bible quote – just in reverse! Kahneman seems to think – and I definitely concur – that seeing your own mistakes is damn difficult, but seeing others’ blunders is easier. Hence, it makes sense for organizations to try to form a culture, where it’s ok to say that someone has a flaw in their thinking. Have a culture that prevents you explaining absolutely everything with your pet theory.

So, last week I had the fantastic opportunity of participating in the #behavioralhack event, organized by Demos Helsinki and Granlund. The point of the seminar was applying behavioral science, energy expertise and programming skills to reduce energy consumption in old office building. We formed five different groups consisting of behavioral scholars, energy experts and coders. Our group focused on the old conundrum of how to get people to use the stairs more, and elevators less.

The first observation from us was that – apart from just shutting down the elevators altogether – there is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all magic bullet to solve this. On the other hand, we know from research that people are very susceptible to the environment. Running mostly with System 1, we tend to do what fits together with the environment. And, unfortunately, our environments support elevators much more than stairs.

Thinking about our own workplaces, we quickly discovered all sorts of features of the environment that support elevator use, but not stairs:

1. The restaurant menu is in the elevator
   
2. There’s a mirror (apparently many women use this to check their hair when arriving)
   
3. The carpets for cleaning your feet direct you to the elevator
   
4. The staircase might smell, or be badly lit
   
5. You can get stuck in the staircase if you forget your keycard
   

All these features make the elevator easier or more comfortable than the stairs. Considering that the elevator has a comfort factor advantage from the start, small wonder people refrain from using the stairs!

All in all, our solution proposal was quite simply a collection of such small items. Since the point of the seminar was to look for cheap solutions, we just proposed a sign, pointing to the elevator and stairs, with “encouraging” imagery to associate stairs with better fitness. Fixing the above list so that the stairs also include a mirror and a menu also cost almost nothing. In fact, the advantage can even be reversed: remove the mirror etc. from the elevator, and replace them with just a poster saying that walking one flight of stairs a year equals a few pounds of fat loss (it does).

For a heavier solution version, we noted that you could make the stairs vs. elevators a company wide competition, by for example tracking people in the hallways with wifi, Bluetooth etc. Additionally, stairways could have screens showing the recent news, comics, funny pictures, or anything that fits with the company culture. On the other hand, we said that probably most of the change can already be achieved with the above cheap suggestions, and so ended up presenting that as the main point.

From a meta point of view, I really had a lot of fun! It was great to apply behavioral science to a common problem – and I was surprised with the amount and quality of ideas we had. Combining people from different fields and backgrounds turned out to be a really good thing. I know it’s a kind of platitude, but I really now appreciate the fact that novices can create big insights by asking even really basic questions, since they come without any of the theory-ladenness of academic expertise :) I have to say that a fun and competent team made for a great evening!

This semester I had the exciting chance of teaching half of our department’s Behavioral Decision Making course. What especially has gotten me thinking is James March’s book chapter Understanding How Decisions Happen in Organizations, taken from the book Organizational Decision Making, edited by Zur Shapira. Similar points can be found in March’s paper called How Decisions Happen in Organizations.

In the chapter, March presents all kinds of questions and comments directed at organizational scholars. Basically, his main point is that the normative expected utility theory is perhaps not a very good model for describing organizational decisions. No surprises there – modelling organizational politicking through utilities is pretty darn difficult. What did catch my eye was that March has a pretty nice description of how some organizations do muddle through.

This idea concerns decisions as identity-based actions. The starting point is that each member of an organization occasionally faces decision situations. These are then implicitly classified into different classes For example into HR decisions, decisions at strategy meetings, decisions after lunch, etc. The classification depends on the person, of course. What’s key is the next two steps: these classes are associated with different identities, which then are the basis of decisions through matching. This way, the decision gets made by basing the choice on rules and the role, not just on the options at hand.

So the manager may adopt a different identity when making strategy decisions, than when thinking of who to hire for his team. The decision is not based on a logic of consequence, but rather on a logic of appropriateness – we do what we ought to be doing in our role. “Actions reflect images of proper behavior, and human decision makers routinely ignore their own fully conscious preferences. They act not on the basis of subjective consequences and preferences but on the basis of rules, routines, procedures, practices, identities, and roles” (March, 1997) So rather than starting from the normative question of what they want, and which consequences are then appropriate, decision makers are implicitly asking “Who am I? What should a person in my position be doing?”

I feel that this kind of rule-based or identity-based behavior is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it offers clear cognitive benefits. A clear identity for a certain class of decisions saves you the trouble of meta-choice: you don’t have to decide how to decide. When the rules coming from that identity are adequate and lead generally to good outcomes, it’s an easy procedure to just follow them and get on with it. On the other hand, the drawbacks are equally clear. Too much reliance leads to the “I don’t know, I just work here” phenomenon, in which people get in too deep in their roles, forgetting that they actually have a mind of their own.

Which way is better, then? Identity-based decisions, or controlled individual actions? Well, I guess the answer looks like the classic academic’s answer: it depends. It depends on the organization and the manner of action: how standardized are the problems that people face, is it necessary to find the best choice option or is satisficing enough, and so on. Of course, it also depends on the capabilities of the people involved: do they have the necessary skills and mindset to handle it if left without guiding rules and identities? Of do they need a little bit more support for their decisions? Questions like these are certainly not easy, but every manager should be asking them one way or another. 

One of the important biases in business is the sunk cost fallacy – the tendency to throw good money after bad. For example, you’ve spend tens of thousands on developing a new product, but it’s still not working. A common thing to do is go on with the development simply because “you’ve already spent so much on it”. However, what should matter is the future: is more money likely to make it happen? The past is irrelevant – that money has already been spent.

Surely, watching over employees should reduce this problem?

Unfortunately, not necessarily. While some research tends to show is that being accountable for your choices makes you less susceptible to sunk cost fallacy, sometimes accountability makes the effect even worse! Research is mixed on this, but for now I’ll accept that accountability is not the magic bullet. Well, there have been other ideas for reducing the fallacy.