4. Shooting the critics
This mind-bug involves the tendency to marginalize people who disagree with them. Leaders know any decision they make is subject to their judgment being questioned. This author has unfortunately seen many pool company owners and managers who are simply not in the market to have their decisions, beliefs, and choices questioned.
This is not just about owner/managers. All people subconsciously develop the tendency to marginalize people who disagree with them. When this occurs, innovators and change agents must fight the system to improve it. But this mind-bug causes intolerance for challenge, leaving huge gaps in judgment and missed opportunity.
5. Experience bias
Biases involve believing future events will likely occur in a very specific way based on prior experiences, and not seeing how conditions differ.
It is logical to consider experience, but some things are not always remembered with complete accuracy. Human reasoning is accompanied by various subjective experiences, including the interpretation of thoughts, feelings, desires, and decisions. As a result, this can compromise one’s ability to recall and perform an objective comparison. Once afflicted, one’s belief can often be so strong they fail to look for contradictory evidence and and as a result impute hostile motives to even the most helpful people who question the relevance of their experience. Today, there are many pool companies that have gone out of business because leaders based decisions almost entirely on their experience only to find their memory was not as good as they may have thought.
6. Closed mind
Being closed-minded occurs when someone is unable to hold and examine two opposing views at the same time and does not acknowledge other’s perspectives.
Those afflicted with this mind-bug subconsciously shutdown the very thing that can help them examine their own beliefs—evaluation of diversity of opinions. In essence, things are the way they see them because that is the way they see it.
When this happens, perpetrators are sometimes not aware of it. Other times, some may even be proud of it. These people make the self-serving assumption they have figured out the way things are and anything that challenges their point of view becomes ‘unthinkable.’
It is not that these people shoot their critics or fail to listen. On the contrary, these people may spend time demonstrating their listening skills to others to prove they are good listeners, but they just do not hear them. They are simply not aware they do not allow themselves to hold—and mindfully examine—two opposing views at the same time. They give plenty of lip service to others, but true diversity of thought is non-existent.
