A Joosr Guide to... The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli: Better Thinking, Better Decisions by Joosr

Author:Joosr
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: Joosr Ltd
Published: 2015-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

Unclear thinking can hurt you in the workplace

Making poor decisions that affect your personal life is one thing, but making poor decisions that affect your work is something entirely different. In the workplace, where the stakes are often much higher, unclear thinking is a hazard you simply can’t afford to ignore. Though every human—including your coworkers and boss—is susceptible to cognitive errors, those who can eliminate or work around them are often the people who go on to achieve success.

Nowhere is the effect of unclear thinking on employees more obvious than in team-collaboration situations. These assignments are meant to bring good workers together and allow them to bounce off one another; but in reality when put into teams, “social loafing” kicks in, and people subconsciously feel they don’t have to work as hard. Unless they’re actively trying to push themselves to maximum efficiency, workers tend to dedicate less effort and mental energy, which actually decreases the output of everyone involved. Additionally, team situations are often susceptible to the “groupthink error,” which arises when large groups of people all believe the same thing. In these groups, it can become very intimidating to publicly disagree with the general consensus. This leads to people following the group not because they believe an idea is correct, but because they don’t want to reap negative consequences or hurt the team’s unity by disagreeing.

Work incentives also tend to bring about strangely irrational behaviors in humans. It’s long been thought that positive motivation is the best way to incentivize workers, since the positive rewards are great ways to get employees excited about chasing a goal. However, this may be backwards for two very odd reasons. First, humans are loss averse, meaning they are generally affected more strongly by loss than gain. Workers will therefore be more motivated by the threat of losing $500 than they would be by the chance to gain $500.

Second, in a job people are passionate about performing, adding a monetary incentive will invoke the error known as “motivation crowding,” actually causing workers to lose motivation. In these situations, the goal set by the workers is an emotional one—completing a project, perfecting the work, or doing something they care about. Adding money to that removes the emotion, replacing it with passionless work. Therefore, strange as it may seem, the best way to get good work from passionate employees is to avoid monetary bonuses, making it a clear example of our unclear, irrational minds at work.

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