3 Things I Learnt About Problem-Solving At #Nudgestock2021

Nudgestock 2021 — Ogilvy

Nudgestock is an annual BS (behavioural science) event by Ogilvy. This year’s event can be found on YouTube. Here are 3 things I learnt about problem-solving…

Embrace creativity, complexity and an unpredictable future — Rory Sutherland

Problems are often far more complex than we originally think and problem-solving requires more scope for creativity than the standard models currently allow. By changing the psychological frame in which people have to decide, and through changing the context and the story, you can change how the problem is viewed and therefore solved.

When you’re dealing with the rules of physics, they can’t be changed, so data from the past is necessary and sufficient to predict what will happen in the future because the laws of physics don’t change. However, the laws of human behaviour are highly context dependent and change according to fashion, whip, story-telling and mood. Therefore, the idea that the outcome must make sense now in order for it to make sense in the future is irrelevant, there is no way to predict the context of the future and its effect on human behaviour. It is a massive constraint on innovation and experimentation.

Knowing this, we can move away from the obsession that we can only do things that make sense in advance, allowing for deeper thought, creativity and innovation in the future.

Don’t just test the things that make sense, test the things that don’t make sense and then if you find they work then you have learnt something really valuable.

Avoid biases and create ‘safe spaces’ for discussion— Cinta Azwiendasari

A safe space is a place where you can say whatever you like without fear of career damage. Cinta Azwiendasari argues that safe spaces are necessary when attempting to solve challenging problems. In a complete rebuttal of ‘cancel culture’, it seems more important than ever to allow people to speak openly, make mistakes and then address where their thinking may have gone awry and allow people the opportunity to learn, challenge and change their behaviour.

Azwiendasari provides these useful steps to create an open and safe space to problem-solve:

1. Be mindful of our own biases.
2. Sustainability issues are complex. Allow time to create an environment to learn, reflect & have open dialogues without judgements.
3. A well-designed, facilitated process will improve understanding of the target audience
4. Avoid difficult jargons that are often used in the topic of conversation exclusively
5. Co-create with your audience: be open to new ways of thinking and creative ideas to change behaviours.

Maintain ‘Decision Hygiene’ — Daniel Kahneman

The godfather of behaviour economics/psychology, Daniel Kahneman, presented a practical way to ensure we maintain ‘decision hygiene’ during work meetings and decision-making, rather than allow the group in attendance to gradually converge to the popular opinion.

Kahneman suggests the following protocol for decision making in meetings, to avoid ‘contamination’ of the process:

1. At the start of the meeting, everyone in attendance writes down their opinion in private and before they have seen/heard anyone else’s opinion.
2. All information required to solve the problem should then be presented in an unbiased way. This must be done before anyone presents their opinion; if someone makes a comment on their opinion then the decision information is contaminated and, if that person is senior, then everyone in the room will then have confirmation bias towards that person’s opinion, and converge to agree with the person of seniority.
3. If the decision making process is uncontaminated, and a safe space has been created, then problem solving can begin through informed, open discussion.
4. Once a conclusion has been made, then there should be a moment when the final decision is decided upon through emotional consensus.

If a meeting to solve a problem is contaminated through early expression of opinion or deciding the outcome you want before the meeting has started, then the meeting is just ‘bullshit activity’ disguised as rigueur.

Gltchs is a content-driven platform that explores how to think, not what to think, because learning how to think means taking ownership of how we feel and act — transforming our experience of the world, how we interpret the inflow of information and how we operate in our careers, relationships and daily lives.