DO SOMETHING! - Why we rush to make bad decisions
“Well, we have to do SOMETHING!”
How many times have you heard this line from either leaders at work, home or in society?
Sometimes it’s a legitimate emergency. A situation where life or property can be lost if someone doesn’t make a decision and take action IMMEDIATELY. These are not the situations I plan to talk about here.
This artical concerns itself with those situations in which something happens… somewhere… and people immediately begin rushing to formulate the “solution” or at least the reply.
These are situations and “emergencies” more societal in nature. These “emergencies” are usually sparked by the news reporting a tragedy, or change that might have wide-ranging ramifications. Things like a school shooting, abduction, or oil spill might be good examples of reports that would spark this process of “rushing to solutions”.
We rush, because the new piece of news you just heard makes it topical. It’s something from today. Something seemingly urgent.
We rush because we are empathic and don’t what this thing we just heard about to effect anyone else negatively.
We rush because we realize we live in a litigeous society, and we don’t want ourselves or our organizations being damaged or destroyed by something we could have done something about.
All these factors are responsible for people and organizations moving quickly, in order to get on record with a position, in order to minimize damages done by the new piece of information or development.
Some examples:
A fraterniy pledge is hurt at a college, and every school rushes to tighten hazing definitions.
A kid is molested, and every organization rushes to create new screening guidelines
A plane crashes, and everyone rushes to ground similar airplanes or airlines
The examples above all happened in my life just this month! Imagine what a year of this looks like!
The more meetings I attend and the more I watch the political news, the more I realize that humans seem to have a problem with quantifying and assessing real risks in any reasonable way and are even less good when under pressure or emotional.
This is not to say that safe pledges, kids and airlines are not good ideas…they are. I’m objecting to the almost purely emotional path we take to reach conclusion when we hit the “do something” level of panic. I’m objecting to knee-jerk decisions, that might actually do harm, that spring out of genuine caring and desire to do better; quickly.
In this article:
I’ll attempt to identify and illustrate why the “do something!” mentality is approriate if the proper process is used, but is pointless or dangerous if executed improperly.
I’ll attempt to suggest better, more calm and thoughtful alternatives.
I’ll explain the sinister side of this mentality/opportunity.
Why “do something” needs the Scientific Method.
Just like in science, being well meaning, but cavaliar in our process can lead to outcomes worse than the original condition. And being well meaning, but failing to define accurate methods of measurement, benchmarks and adjustments, results in inconclusive progress or degradation of the present situation. Both need to be avoided, as byproducts of rushing to “do something”.
In most situations of “do something” we only do the following:
identify a situation that gets our attention.
Envision ourselves or our organization having to deal with that situation.
Realize that we would like to avoid/improve that situation.
Formulate how that solution might look.
Institute new mandates in the hope of achieving our goals.
Sounds good, except I’d suggest we missed some REALLY BIG points in the process that can render the process erroneous, if not dangerous, if omitted.
Actions missing include:
Scientific Method Diagram
Where are we today?
How will I determine, measure and quantify where we are today?
What is my timeline for measuring success?
What do I do if things aren’t improving or are getting worse during my timeline?
Am I willing to admit that my “solutions” were erroneous?
How do I differenciate between “correlations” and “causation” when interpreting my results?
These are all steps that seem to be routinely ignored when people decide “We have to do something!” In the next section, i propose how a problem should be addressed, How it should be adjusted/abandoned, and how to determine if actions need be taken at all.
10 STEPS
to better problem solving
And an example*
Determine the problem/situation
What are we trying to solve/improve/avoid?
Example: We want to make students more safe against molestation.
Fact Finding
What has been done to date on this problem/situation? Where have there been successes and failures? How do we avoid making the same mistakes? How do we update efforts so that we are not repeating past failures?
Example: How do you determine safety? What is the existing data? What specific areas of concern to we want to focus our “safety” discussion? What safety measures have been tried already?
Determine starting benchmark
Where are we today? What is the problem we are trying to solve? How would we set a benchmark right now, that we could use later to compare our progress/regression? Where is our starting point?
Example: Of the 1000 students we talked to, 95% said they feel very safe. 4% said they were somewhat safe. 1% said they felt unsafe.
Decide if actions are possible
Although we might want to solve the problem, the tech, knowledge or consensus might not yet exist. This means we have to limit the scope of our discussions to things that are possible now. Other limitations might include: money, time, motivations, politics, and many more. Always remember that “not doing anything” is always an option based in the Fact Finding portion above. If during your research of options, it is determined that doing nothing is the best action at this time: that is as valid, if not more valid than “doing something” for the sake of doing it.
Example: Do we have new tech, processes, or strategies that lead us to believe we can make students more safe ?
Decide what actions to take
After we decide what is possible, we need to narrow that list to what is most likely to achieve the desired result. Although this seems like the easy part, it might be the most difficult, as a variety of opinions are likely to exist in any decision making group that will make this process excrutiating. This is the “devil is in the detail” part of decision making.
Example: Of the new tech, processes, and strategies available, which gives us the best chance of making students more safe, and how do we best implement?
Implement actions
Take your best idea (or a decision to not act at this time) and put that into action. Keep notes routinely along the way. This might help determine if the process went wrong at a specific point, when you hit your timeframe, and you begin to examine the data.
Example: We are going to require extra trainings for all people in contact with students.
Measure outcomes
This is maybe the most tricky step of them all. First of all, it requires those involved to be completely neutral and unbiased in their interpretations of outcomes. This is difficult for humans who you have also asked to be “energetic and passionate” in their implementation of the plan and procedures.
The other major pitfall here is determining causation vs. corrilation. The results may have moved one way or another during your time period, but that does not mean your measures were the relevant factor. There are literally an infinite amount of factors that could have been responsible, and you need to be disciplined enough to only look at things you can prove to be directly caused or effected by only your actions. This is difficult.
Example: How safe are students presently?
Above is a pretty good, humorous example of correlation vs. causation.
Reivisit, interpret, quantify results
Example: How safe are students presently?
Amend, Add or Abandon the plan
Example: How safe are students presently?
Start new process or accept the present condition
Doing no harm is better than change for change sake. Sometimes using a scientific process to consider all factors and results, will convince you not to act, or abandon further changes…and that’s a good thing. We don’t want to go backward, based on stubborness of an agenda.
Example: How safe are students presently?
Shock Doctrine
The sinister side of this, or maybe the conspiratorial side, is that these leaders know that people are most susceptable to unreasonable concessions or change right after a tramatic event.
This fact has been documented in various scientific studies, books and journals, but citing reference materials is rarely convincing. I’d rather have you ask yourself one simple question: do you think sweeping, personal rights encroaching legislation like the Patriot Act would have passed muster, if America had not just been attacked on 9/11?
If you answer is “no”, I think you have all the research you really need. This is a real thing.
Link my “odds” story
Link to my “lottery” story
I’m proposing that we always take the time needed to use the scientific method in ALL situations to make our decisions. Even if that decision takes time to develop, or doesn’t develop at all.
In the above examples, things were missed. Critical things. Things you don’t find without a thoughtful deep dive.
What should have happened with the examples from the top:
A fraterniy pledge is hurt at a college, and every school rushes to tighten hazing definitions.
First step maybe should be research into what has been done and how those actions are impacting hazing. Is it working? Here is an opinion, based on my 35 years experience.
A kid is molested, and every organization rushes to create new screening guidelines
A plane crashes, and everyone rushes to ground similar airplanes or airlines
When we make changes and issue mandates, we NEED to first make sure our results are quantifiable and that they will be measured and compared to baselines. If we do not, we might very likely be making many things worse, all in the name of just “doing something!”