Why we focus on trivial stuff and how to avoid it
Finding ways to make better and faster decisions in meetings
Meetings
Have you been part of meetings where you expected the executives to get together, ruminate over the problems facing the company, arrive at a solution, and pass the executive order to take action?
I am sure you have.
And I am sure after many of these meetings, you have held your head in surprise and disappointment as the meeting group ended up discussing the most trivial point in the agenda in great detail and just skimmed through the critical ones. Thus, while the trivial stuff got done, the critical one is still pending and now you are wondering when to call the next meeting.
Don’t call the next meeting!
The Law of Triviality and Ego Depletion
The Law of Triviality was proposed by British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson in the 1950s. Farnam Street says:
The Law of Triviality states that the amount of time spent discussing an issue in an organization is inversely correlated to its actual importance in the scheme of things. Major, complex issues get the least discussion while simple, minor ones get the most discussion.
This law is also called the Bike-shed effect (more on that in the link at the end of the post).
This definition begs the question - Why does this happen? After all, the executives are all well-intentioned and well-informed people, who want to make decisions for the benefit of the company.
No?
This happens because of the subconcious mental effect known as ‘Circle of Competence’. Everyone has a circle of competence that encompasses a variety of topics. Any topic that falls within our circle of competence, gets a lot of attention and debate. On the other hand, any topic outside our circle of competence is either altogether avoided or dealt with an insolent bout of overconfidence.
Going back to your meeting, let’s assume that the executives were discussing a simple topic such as buying office furniture and also a complex topic such as setting up a new private cloud-based IT infrastructure for the company.
Given that everyone in their lifetime has bought some sort of furniture, this topic will be under the circle of competence of most executives and thus everyone will be offering an opinion on this from the top of their lungs.
However, setting up a private cloud-based IT infra is not something many (if any) executives would have done. Thus, this will be far from their circle of competence. Thus, many executives will be trying to avoid this point of discussion altogether.
It gets more interesting. The order in which things are discussed is also important. If the IT infra is the first point in the meeting, given that the executives may not know much about it, it will lead to what we call ‘ego-depletion’ effect.
Ego depletion effect means that like other resources, our mental bandwidth is a finite resource and any activity that draws from it leaves lesser resources for subsequent activity. In such cases, either the person takes a lesser interest in the subsequent activity or just goes with the default solution.
In the case of our meeting, since the executives are suffering from ego depletion due to discussion on this complex task, it affects their ability to execute the next task, which is making a decision on this discussion.
So, in most cases, they will just go with the default option, which in most companies is to maintain status quo. So no decision is taken.
How to get things moving
If you have a bias for action, this can be a terribly frustrating experience. Farnam Street provides three strategies on how to get over the law of triviality and ego depletion.
Specificity: If you haven’t already realized, it was a bad idea to have topics as diverse as furniture and IT infra in the same meeting. To avoid getting into decision paralysis, organize meetings with more specific agenda items. It is perfectly OK if the meeting has just one agenda item
Less is more: It is more important to have people in the room who have something crucial to say, than to just stuff the room with myriad voices. In fact, if you want to arrive at a decision, it is better to have as few people in the meeting room as possible
I know that this could be difficult in companies with a politically charged environment where everyone wants their fingers in every pie. So you can try these strategies
Mark people as optional in meeting invites. Takes care of their ego and they are under no compulsion to join
Tell people that attending the meeting may not merit their ‘critical’ time and bring them up to speed later
Create a committee from day 0, which has a set of core members (limited number, important for decision making, the topic is within their circle of competence) and invitees (everyone else who may feel bad for not getting invited)
Name the king: If possible, assign the person who is supposed to take the decision at the end of the meeting. This will ensure that even if there is no consensus, the onus of decision making is fixed and work gets done
This terrific article from Farnam Street (which I referred to for this post), provides even more insights into the law of triviality. Do give it a spin.
Why We Focus on Trivial Things: The Bikeshed Effect
cheers,
Rohit
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