McKinsey recently published a short and very interesting article Bias Busters: When the question—not the answer—is the mistake. While not specifically about sustainability, it very much speaks to practitioners. If you aren’t familiar with “framing”, it is
“a well-documented cognitive bias in which people with identical information make different decisions based on how the information is presented. Research by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman showed that the way a problem is presented can heavily influence the options people consider and the decisions they make…
A frequent consequence of the framing effect is asking misguided questions. In business settings, framing an issue too narrowly or embedding unchallenged assumptions often leads teams to ask the wrong question.”
Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler is another who has widely researched and published on the matter. It is a hidden epidemic in sustainability, although not new.
McKinsey offers suggestions to counter bias, including
“challenging the problem’s definition. Rather than accepting the frame as given, teams benefit from broadening their inquiry. One proven debiasing method is to invite constructive dissent—devil’s advocates, challengers, or red team–blue team exercises—not just to question answers, but to question the questions.”
The bias that sustainability is an absolute business essential – with subsequent self-aggrandization – were primary reasons for its downfall in the 1990s. Hopefully, we can learn from that and not repeat it (see Killing Sustainability – members have free access). Here are a few examples of common sustainability questions I question:
What other biased questions can you think of, and how can those be reframed in a way that moves your program forward?
Finally, today is September 11. I hope you can find a moment for quiet remembrance, whether at work or home.
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