There were many things to learn from the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. One of the lessons that has considerable application to the workplace is the risk of living in an echo chamber. The term “echo chamber” was used to describe the propensity of voters to surround themselves with messages that were consistent with what they already believed—thereby echoing and ostensibly validating their existing opinions. The exact same thing happens in organizations.
The vast majority of us like to live in a world that conforms to our expectations. We like to be right and, most importantly, we like to be comfortable. To achieve that comfortable existence, we attend to the information that supports what we want to believe and we ignore information that disconfirms it. Democrats chalked up editorial endorsements for their candidate, reveled in the mockery comedians made of the Republican nominee, and settled in on election night to receive a very rude awakening.
Is there an echo chamber in your organization? Is there something difficult or unsettling brewing in your business that no one is paying attention to? Does the energy going into defending your strategy outstrip the energy going into testing and improving it? Do you overweight the opinion of supporters and negate the input from detractors? If so, your day of reckoning will come. It might not be as dramatic as election night, but it will be just as painful.
Silence the Echo
It’s essential to seek out and address evidence that runs contrary to your existing strategy. There are many ways to do that:
- Reconsider the sources of information you use to build your strategy. Tried and true industry sources (publications, analysts, etc.) might be as invested in the status quo as you are. Seek out new voices with radical, disruptive perspectives. Find signs that point to a future that will be different than you expect.
- Listen to critics, don’t discount them. If there’s one thing we should all learn from the election, it’s that you ignore the people at your peril. If your customers, clients, distributors, or advisors are trying to tell you something you don’t want to hear, just ignoring them won’t change reality. You might even benefit from adding an agenda item to your regular meetings called “the 3 things we didn’t want to hear.”
- Look for canaries in the coal mine. Just as you look for green shoots that give you clues that your strategy is working, you need to look for dead canaries that suggest something might be amiss. Are there products, regions, distributors, SKUs that are underperforming? What can you learn from them? Why are things going south?
- Invest more time in contingencies. The more committed you become to a given path, the more effort you should expend imaging how else it might play out. Specifically ask people to identify the assumptions underlying the plan and then substitute alternative scenarios. Be prepared for how you would handle it if the alternative scenario unfolded.
- Assign a devil’s advocate to slow things down when ideas gain too much momentum. Give the devil’s advocate the authority to challenge the evidence you’re using to support your case. (More on the effective use of devil’s advocates, here).
Don’t mistake your own echo for legitimate validation. If you do, you’ll just keep believing you’re right until the moment when you get undeniable, irreversible evidence that you were so very wrong.
Further Reading
Increasing Diversity on Your Team