To understand the cognitive dissonance advantage in management you
first need to understand how you think and make decisions. The advantage
comes from realising that the solutions your mind comes up with are
through the path of least resistance and rely heavily on experiences you
have had. Breaking out of this way of making decisions will make the
decisions you do make much more robust and will often create innovative
new solutions your competition do not see in time.
You
make decisions by combining your worldview, with memories you have and
material you pick out from the current environment. It is a fast and
frictionless process most of the time and you often know what to do when
confronted with a challenge. If every challenge you face is similar to
those that have gone before and you have succeeded then as long as the
world does not change you can continue with this process to good effect.
If the world does change then your solution will fail. This is where
cognitive dissonance can help.
First a bit more about worldview.
This is the set of theories you hold about how the world works. You have
built them up over your lifetime and reinforced them every time they
work. It is even stronger than this. If you see evidence that
contradicts your current theories of the world your first reaction will
be to seek more information confirming your theory and disproving the
rogue data you perceive has interrupted your view. This is the way your
mind works. Your memory is also a tricky character. If there is a
conflict between your theories of the world, current data you are
collecting through your senses and a memory you have you will change
your memory. You will not know you are doing this. It is just the way
the mind works. Finally you will only select information from the
current environment that you are interested in. Your theories and
memories help you select but in doing so you miss all the other data
that can tell you the world has changed and your natural solution needs
challenging.
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