Testing Your Assumptions

You've used AI and/or Excel to build a beautiful model that examines the ROI of a new venture, project, or initiative.  The result? A strong case for investment, because the ROI is quite good.  You are ready to make your case to senior executives and/or investors.  How can you stress test your model?  The most important thing you can do is to test your assumptions. After all, garbage in, garbage out. If you build a model based on false assumptions, you are in big trouble.  Of course, confirmation bias afflicts many of us as we make decisions. We may be picking and choosing assumptions to deliver a rosy picture, rather than making more realistic presumptions about the future.  

How do we decide which assumptions warrant the most attention and should be tested vigorously?  Jon Fjeld was a long-time tech industry executive, and he now teaches at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.  He has a simple method for determining which assumptions need to be scrutinized first.  He argues that three factors are critical:

1. Severity:  How big is the impact on the project if the assumption is not true?

2. Probability: How likely is it that the assumption is not true?

3. Cost:  How expensive and time consuming is it to test the assumption?

Fjeld uses these three factors to create a simple ratio that can be used to rank your assumptions.  His equation is: (Severity x Probability)/Cost.   The higher the ratio, the more important it is that your prioritize the testing and validation of that assumption.  While we don't actually have a clear way to quantify these three factors, the concept of this ratio makes good sense.  By thinking about these three factors, and their relationship to one another, we can do a better job of deciding how we want to test, experiment, and prototype before making a big bet.  

Educating Students More Effectively, Preparing Them for the Workforce

Source: https://theglobalscholars.com/

Did you use a laptop to take notes in class during school?  Do your children use laptops during class to take notes?  University of Wharton Professor Adam Grant points us to a recent meta-analysis published in the Educational Psychology Review by Abraham Flanigan and his co-authors.  The results are crystal clear.  Grant summarizes the key findings: 

24 experiments: Students learn more and get better grades after taking notes by hand than typing. It's not just because they're less distracted—writing enables deeper processing and more images. The pen is mightier than the keyboard.

Perhaps all those schools requiring students to spend a big chunk of their day on Chromebooks should rethink their pedagogical approach.  As more and more companies complain about the skills and capabilities of entry-level employees, we need to rethink how we teach and how students learn.  Yes, we need to enable young people to use technology productively.  We can't go back to the stone ages.  However, we cannot just blame the phones and social media for the challenges that learners face these days (though banning phones in schools is an excellent idea).  We have to ask ourselves whether we have contributed to the challenges learners face by shifting so much teaching and learning from paper and pencil to the Chromebook (or other devices).  

Reviewing the Performance Reviews

Do you write effective performance reviews for your team members?  Have you received a performance review that you considered especially constructive and useful?  Stephanie Mehta has an interesting article about performance reviews in Fast Company this week.  She focuses on the effort by Ironclad CEO Dan Springer to improve the way his managers evaluate employees.   Mehta writes,

The CEO then read one written midyear review from every frontline manager—about 80 in total. He says about 20% were outstanding. Another 60% were solid—clear, metrics-driven, with specific examples. But roughly 20% missed the mark. Some featured long narratives that showed care for the employee but lacked actionable guidance. Others were short and vague. Springer tapped these managers for further training on how to give effective feedback. “We really did try to make it fun and not boring,” he says.

I admire the commitment to providing an in-depth examination of how these reviews are written and then following up with training.  Many managers receive very little education in how to write an effective review.  They are promoted to lead a team and then asked to take on this important task without a great deal of guidance and support.  Providing useful feedback is an art and a science.  Educating leaders about the science of providing constructive feedback is essential. For example, research suggests that providing forward-looking advice is more effective than traditional forms of feedback.  Giving them chances to practice is key to helping them master the art of reviewing their team members' performance.  

How Quickly Should a Leader Respond to Feedback?

Suppose that you a leader receives feedback, perhaps through a 360 degree evaluation.  Should leaders respond immediately to this feedback and change their behavior?  Perhaps not.  A new study suggests that moving too quickly to adapt in light of constructive feedback may be detrimental to a leader's reputation and effectiveness. Stanford Leadership Insights reports on the findings from an interesting new study by Danbee Chon, Ovul Sezer, and Francis Flynn: 

While past research — and conventional wisdom — suggests that leaders should respond promptly to employee feedback to avoid seeming dismissive, the researchers demonstrated through a series of studies that people don’t necessarily trust rapid changes in their leaders’ behavior, especially when they consider those changes to be difficult. Instead, they may regard sudden shifts as inauthentic, betraying a lack of fidelity between a person’s actions and their genuine thoughts and feelings.

What's the implication for leaders?  Is it simply to move slowly?  Not necessarily. The research suggests that leaders should carefully explain to their employees the consideration and effort that they put into a behavioral or policy change.  They should explain how they considered the feedback, why they chose to adapt given the critique from employees, and very importantly, how hard it was to alter their behavior.  Showing that it was not a kneejerk reaction meant to placate others is critical in these situations.