After stepping up and putting forward, our value statement for our business,
ie We stand up for stepping up, I asked Steve, my bro and business partner, why do we do this and he answered on Skype:
“Because without stepping up magic doesn’t happen”
A fair point but why do we think magic can happen by stepping up?
After all, as I pointed out that we also have “Reasonable” as one of our values but not “magic”.
So for what reason do we stand up for stepping up?
He then answered:
“Coz the topic gets looked at when someone puts it centre stage – and we put our brains to work on that topic by standing up for its introduction…And the “magic” can happen”
My final reply was that “I don’t think it is the topic that gets looked at so much as the person’s view, on the topic, that gets looked at when they step up…it is our bias that is called to question…so I think we stand up for stepping up because it exposes our biases on both sides…it starts the, much needed, conversation.
Most of the books that I have read in the past have basically be on Behavioral Economics and on our cognitive biases.
Steve said,
“Yeah, good point. By exposing our biases the unreasonable ones can be left behind and the reasonable ones taken up.”
I reiterated,
“Yeah the reasonable ones are innocent until proven guilty of being unreasonable…we all could save ourselves 20 years of work if we understood this simple principle.”
Steve:
“Yeah and hence having a system that encourages biases to be exposed in turn increases the offsetting, perhaps.”
Des:
“…and having a system that closes-down stepping-up enhances the biases.
Hence how Kodak died (maybe). Stepping up and standing up for stepping up should, in theory reduce biased decisions…hence having biases is not the problem but having a bias about your bias, ie close-down stepping-up, is the death to magic in my view.
Just watched this BBC doco on SBS, called The Battle in Your Mind, on Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow, …a tough book to read but basically based on his Nobel prize for economics, on the win-loss bias.
But funny they summed up the thinking that System 1 (fast thinking) can be controlled by understanding System 2 (slow thinking).
But what I think is that I can use the other person’s biases to offset my own and vice versa. I simply think that conversation and stepping up to create them, is to over come our biases and results in a convergence of ideas. So simple really.
rethink PERFECT 
I liked your post on LinkedIn about stepping up.
Curious, how you define “Bias” // which is relevant because my inclination is to think of a bias as an intentional feeling or direction that I don’t want to change. “I’m partial to bootstrapping, but I’m biased b/c that’s the only way I’ve done it.”
How does your article change if you swap Bias with Perception? Perceptions can be changed easier than biases, IMO.
One of my favorite quotes: “All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
I feel like that quote is relative to your post in some ways.
That’s all. Cheerio.
thanks for stepping up 😉
Yeah I agree it is the perception that I think that I am talking about our “biased perception”.
I guess the idea is around our whole political system really. ie bias has its origin of meaning in
a slant or angle ie we have a bias to the left or right of politics.
Obviously the ideal would be the perfect centre or ideal but that aint gonna happen IMV (IMO), but I’m biased.
So barring us having a perfect view, I think we will tend to either side, which is what I am calling a bias.
So how we deal with that bias is up to the individual, how Steve and I have chosen is to use conversation, based on a number of agreed to rules of engagement, to protect us from each other’s bais, (we are so biased that we can lose it at times, reacting to each others one reacting to our own).
So whether it is boot strapping or getting 2m in investment both have their merits but sometimes our bias can over step those merits and hopefully this is where stepping up with reason and accountablility will step in, at least to some degree to correct our biased views that might not suit all situations or even the ones that we think it should.
And this is my perception (still biased) that I hope stacks up (to some degree) by its merits and not my biases, maybe time and more conversation will tell.
Thanks again
Des