Part 1. Within an environment where change is needed, you must recognize the obstacles that can make changes difficult to implement. Two of these obstacles are risk, which can be observed by others, and biases, which tend to be personal and internalized.
Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words:
- Discuss risks and biases for a chosen organization. How can they affect analysis?
- How could you minimize resistance to the use of analytics-based decision-making?
Part 2. Reply to the following discussion in a minimum of 100 words:
“Discuss risks and biases for a chosen organization. How can they affect analysis?
Risks and biases are in all organizations. This is especially the case when any company has to make changes or transitions to different operating procedures. For example, when I was in the Marine Corps we went through numerous changes with personnel. With these changes of management came different ways of training based on the manager’s style of leadership. Some of the risks that came with these changes are the risk that people will be less receptive to the change of management. Personnel can say they understand but then passively resist by not doing what they are told or how they are told to do something. Another risk is that the person that is now in charge can not be as effective as the person prior. This can lead to low morale, less productivity and possibly more resistance. Biases is also a big problem that can come with these changes. People that have trained one way for so long can be resistance to having to change something that has always worked for them. Their bias for how they are used to working can lead to them to not even attempt to try to learn something new, even if it can be more productive. Bias can also come in the form of relationships. People that have worked with one leader for long enough, or went through so much with them such as deployments, can be biased based on that relationship and choose to not be receptive to anything new. These issues can affect analysis tremendously. They can lead to inaccurate analysis because of resistance to change which makes it hard to have strictly objective based data.
How could you minimize resistance to the use of analytics-based decision-making?
Resistance can be minimized in a few different ways. One way is to show the positive effects of analysis based decision making to the group for them individually. Show how the changes being made are more productive than the old way of doing things. And lastly, make sure to ask for feedback, ideas, etc.” – Daniel C.
Part 3. Respond to the following classmate in a minimum of 100 words:
“The credit union I work for is a perfect petri dish of examples and testing of organizational risk taking perspective and bias. We are known for being a very conservative and risk-averse institution with those behaviors/mentalities being based in how we were formed (as a credit union to serve factory workers in the 1950’s) and the retirees of those factories now serving on our board, along with our CEO being a former regulatory examiner for the governing body of credit unions, the NCUA. When considering bias, I look at our Board of Directors, referred to in the industry as being “pale, male and stale” or old, white men. When bringing matters before this board for approval, especially technology initiatives or non-traditional lending or investment programs, there is an automatic perception of risk and loss, financial and reputational. Their bias being, “we would never use that gadget/widget/app” so why would anyone else need it, or “what’s wrong with the traditional investments of cd’s or bonds? Those biases and aversion to risk cause the requestors to over-analyze and overthink how they will present a certain request and appear to be overselling. They also cause the institution to lag behind competition and lose potential revenue and reputation, as a result. Pile on top of that, our Bauer 5-Star Rating and CAMEL 1 Exam scores and anything that could remotely smell of risk is heavily scrutinized and often delayed as a result of the CEO perspective on risk, based in his exams of poorly managed institutions.
Analytics-based decision making can be a means to overcoming bias and risk tolerance issues. Resistance to this is common when the audience doesn’t understand the data. To overcome this, our organization is working diligently to gather data from our systems into a data warehouse and to teach the team how to mine and report the data and how to present the information to less data savvy recipients. This requires patient and informational delivery and visuals, along with gaining allies before presentation.” – Joanne H.