Mistake Pathways

Take a minute in your workday and google “Decision Neuroscience Mistake Pathways.”

Quick summary: our brains are designed to repeat mistakes. Something called 'frequency bias' makes us– as individuals– likely to repeat the same mistakes when we inevitably try again… because our brains create 'mistake pathways' that reinforce the cognitive routes we took to get to the original error.

[Wow. That totally explains my 20s.]

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How does it apply at work? And this is me, not the research talking….

Companies “think” via their governance models– through their annual Finance processes, their HR policies, their Risk Management guidelines, and the massive disconnect that all of that has from their aging Tech platforms– the ones that should be reinforcing those practices.

How does that play out?

Well, remember that big, failed Agile transformation with Famous Consulting Company #1?

Yep. There’ll be a big, failed Agile transformation with Famous Consulting Company #2.

Maybe even with #3 and #4.

Why?

Because the problem was never with #1’s “ability to execute.”

The problem was the governance model that landed that decision– the mistake pathway.

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If anything, the good folks at Famous Consulting Company #1 should have been brought in to fix the governance model.

But here’s a bigger LOL: maybe the pathway that needs to be corrected is the one that keeps tapping Famous Consulting.

[Woooooow. My company is totally enjoying its 20s.]