Selection Bias

I’ve been mentally wrestling with how to write about bias for a few months now. It is at once such a simple concept, but also incredibly complex because of just how pernicious they can be. In so many aspects of life, we have some sort of feedback mechanism that we can look at to help guide us when we stray off our desired path, but our biases are so ingrained in who we are as a person that we often have no idea we are being impacted by them.

In short, a bias is a prejudice in favor of, or against, something. The list of potential biases is long, but for this post, I wanted to start with an example of one that is present virtually everywhere – and that is selection bias. Selection bias occurs when the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis is gathered in such a way that true randomness is not achieved.

For starters, let’s look at something that our headlines are filled with – polls. We often think that polls are reliable sources of information, mostly because we see a poll having something like 1000 (or more) participants, and that that sample size is enough to be random. But all you have to do is start asking questions about the polls to see that they are not necessarily random.

First of all, only those participants who responded are included. If it’s a phone poll, only those people who pick up and answer the call are being included. The reasons why someone may or may not answer a random call are many (very busy so they screen calls, only have a landline and are retired and spend a lot of their day outside, among others), but selection bias is already at work.

Another - how were questions in the poll phrased? Depending on who is conducting the poll, the pollsters may be looking for a certain result, so there could easily be subtle keywords in the questions that nudge respondents in a particular direction.

I’m leaving the list of examples at two because I’m trying to make a point (quickly) – but the potential places where selection bias creeps into polls are numerous. Conducting a good poll is a battle against biases, and reputable polling organizations put a lot of effort into reducing potential sources of bias. Yet in the end, they still exist.

We can't avoid it - but if we can at least be honest with ourselves and think about where selection bias is creeping into our thought process, and what pieces of information we use to make decisions, we can start to mitigate it.

Recently, my wife and I were questioning how gourds propagate – commenting that in school, we learned that fruits propagate by being appealing to animals, who eat them, and then excrete the seeds in their solid waste. But gourds don’t taste good, so what gives? I mentioned that we are just used to fruits that we think taste good because they contain sugars that are sweet to us as humans. Boom – selection bias.

Have you ever gotten into something (a hobby, an activity - hell, just exposure to what your kids are interested in) and felt 'Hey, this thing is going through a popularity surge - it's everywhere I look nowadays!' and then when things change, you think 'That fad is over'. Boom - selection bias.

It's everywhere.

Objectives & Key Results - Increasing Productivity

 John Doerr's 'Measure What Matters' is a book about OKR's, or Objectives & Key Results. OKR's is a system of goal setting, originally developed by Andy Grove of Intel in the late 1960's, and has since adopted by many of the organizations that have not only become household names, but that have managed to remain agile and survive through tumultuous times, such as the dot-com bubble, and the 2008 recession - Google, Amazon, GoPro, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Rackspace, Dell, VMware, and more.

So, what is the OKR system of goal setting? OKR stands for Objectives & Key Results. Objective is the what is to be accomplished, a clear, concrete and action oriented statement; the Key Results are the how to get there, in measurable and verifiable benchmarks.

To help illustrate how this works, lets look at an example from the book that demonstrates some good use of OKRs, and some poor ones:

The left-hand side is an illustration of a well formed, cascaded OKR system. The key result for the GM becomes the objective for the Head Coach, who then defines his/her objectives using measurable metrics, which are further cascaded to the Offensive, Defensive, and Special Teams coach.

The right-hand side is an illustration of OKR that are not well formed. The key results for the SVP of marketing are vague - what does 'upgrade team branding' mean? What does it mean to 'improve media coverage?' It's very subjective, and there are no numbers or measurable values to judge progress. If things where rephrased where 'upgrade team branding' turned into something like 'improve brand recognition through surveys by 30%', or 'improve media coverage' turned into 'increase media exposure by 20%', that would be a true measurable value.

Also, the top level objective, to make money for the owner, is another example of a poorly constructed objective. Yes, all businesses exist to make money, but the top objective of making a single person money doesn't engender good will among employees.

Another key aspect of the OKR system is transparency - each person or group knows the OKRs that another person or group is working on. This reduces silo'd work efforts, and holds the organization, as a whole, accountable to the goals that were set out to be achieved. Additionally, if a group or person is falling behind in achieving their Key Results, transparency allows others to potentially pitch in and assist, if necessary.

If implemented properly, the OKR system results in:

• Everyone knowing what the overall objective for the organization is.
• Everyone having a clear vision of how their personal OKRs fit into the overall picture.
• A true team-based culture where people feel invested in their work, and work together to achieve a common goal.

The OKR system provides a model for goal-setting where a well formulated mission statement leaves off - it makes sure everyone in the organization is invested, and pulling, in the same direction.

Empathy - Emotional Literacy

In a previous post, Empathy - The Secret to Building Relationships, I mentioned that empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else's position and feeling what they feel. Doing this is part of emotional intelligence, or the ability to be aware of, recognize, and understand emotions.

Yet, before we can be emotionally intelligent, we have to be emotionally literate.

What does that mean? It means having the vocabulary - the words - to describe emotions. There are other facets of emotional literacy, but a good place to start is having a common language with respect to how we talk about emotions.

So why do we care? A lot of recent research has indicated that emotional intelligence has been identified as a major factor in business and career success. If we can identify when we, ourselves, are getting more emotional that we'd like, we can take steps to address the issue(s) we are dealing with before they become liabilities. Additionally, if we can identify, at least to some degree, the emotional state of our colleagues and/or customers, we can know if it is a good time to bring up certain topics, or whether it might be better to wait. A previous post about attention as a resource lends itself to being a good example of this - if we are able to tell that a person is frustrated, it might be better to wait to ask a favor of them, vs assuming they should just be able to deal with their own problems and treat you the same regardless.

One could go into much deeper detail on emotional literacy, but at a high level, the following table gives some examples of the five primary categories of emotions (top row), and words we are all familiar with to describe different levels of intensity of those categories.

                    Happy        Sad            Angry        Afraid        Ashamed

High            Ecstatic      Miserable   Enraged     Fearful       Disgraced

Medium      Satisfied     Somber      Frustrated   Insecure     Embarrassed

Low             Pleasant     Moody        Annoyed    Worried      Regretful

To me, knowing that something like being frustrated is a form of being angry is really helpful. For example, if we hear someone say they are frustrated, we can now know that we have to deal with that person differently then if they were, for instance, embarrassed about making a mistake. Anger is often dealt with by letting the person vent and speak their mind, whereas if someone is embarrassed, they may need some subtle words of encouragement to help them regain their confidence.

Like it or not, we as humans are emotional creatures first, and rational creatures second. Our emotional center is deeper in our brain stem than our prefrontal cortex, so everything is processed through emotions first, and logic second. Knowing this, and knowing what emotions are stirred up in various situations that we encounter throughout our day, is a powerful tool to helping us not suppress our emotions (which doesn't work), but to deal with them in a productive, and constructive, way.

This Resource is More Valuable than Time

Most people agree that time is one of, and often THE, most valuable resource we have. For good reason - once time has passed, we can't get it back.

There is one thing that I never thought of as a resource until I heard someone else mention it as such: attention; and lately I've been thinking that attention is even more valuable than time. We all have the same amount of time in our days, but there are some people for whom we look at and wonder how they have time for all the things they are able to accomplish. There may be multiple contributing factors, but I would bet a large sum of money that they are very deliberate, focused, and militant about where they put their attention.

Time is valuable, but attention is where things get done.

Most people cite things like work, family, and hobbies (not necessarily in that order) as their priorities, and thus what gets their attention. And yet, those three things are already enough to fill out our days. If you manage to get someone's attention, you are dealing with their most precious currency. You owe it to them to make it worth their while.

That is why I keep my posts short and to the point. I know that you saw this post in a feed, and could have kept scrolling. My title was competing with dozens or hundreds of other posts for your attention. Yet, you decided to move your index finger slightly off to the side and click a button on this one. You took a chance on what I have to say, and I owe it to you to be respectful of your time.

Knowing that attention is a valuable resource has helped me think about ways that I've previously wasted it in the past, so I can avoid wasting it in the future. It's one thing to say that certain things are a waste of time, but if I can identify what gets my attention, I can work to address the issue of wasted time upstream.

For example, checking Facebook is a waste of time to me. I still do it on occasion, but there has never been a time when I checked and thought to myself 'That was time well spent.' So one might think that it's easy to just.. not check Facebook, right? For a while, I had the app installed on my phone, so I'd get notified by the blinking light that something 'needed' my.... (wait for it)... attention. But once the light was going, it was over - it already had my attention and was diverting it from more important things. The solution wasn't to resist that urge to check - it was to uninstall the app and remove the attention grabbing mechanism as a whole.

We live in an attention-grabbing society, and our consumer-focused economy is based on things vying for the limited amount of attention we have available. By being conscious of where we put our attention, we can be more focused on the things we care about and that matter to us.

What Do You Love Enough That You Are Willing To Fail At?

“Practice makes perfect”

“Failure is not the opposite of success – it is part of success”

Pick your favorite quote about success, and chances are there is some aspect of it that involves failure, overtly stated or not. I find these quotes to be helpful reminders that we can expect to fail as we grow, but knowing that intellectually, vs really embracing it, are sometimes two different things.

I heard a quote recently that completely changed how I think about failure in the context of learning a new skill:

Do you love doing it enough that you are willing to fail over and over again?

This was a bit of a revelation to me because, once I started thinking about it, the things I am good at today are things that I failed at, a lot, in my past. Yet, there was something I got from learning that skill that kept me motivated, even though I wasn’t always successful at it. Contrasting that with things I wanted to learn, but ultimately gave up on, and I realized I was drawn to the end goal of being proficient, but the process of gaining proficiency was not something I enjoyed enough.

I think this is especially true as an adult. It’s easy to forget how much time and effort was spent on gaining proficiency in the skills we currently have that provide us with a career and stable paycheck. Yet, when we go to learn something new and start running into difficulty, we make excuses by saying things like ‘oh, I was never good at foreign languages’ or ‘I was never that athletic anyway’.

Thinking about learning a new skill in the context of having to love it enough to be willing to fail over and over again does two big things that I think are important. First, it gives me the permission to give up if, in being honest with myself, I find that I was mostly drawn to the end result. Second, if I do take on learning something new, it helps me focus on determining what the rewarding aspect is that will help keep me motivated throughout the process of failing, until a rewarding level of proficiency is achieved, and a flywheel effect of satisfaction has had a chance to take hold.