I have just been listening to an amazing podcast featuring the late Daniel Kahneman relating to the 2022 book “Noise – A Flaw in Human Judgement”.
So, what is the concept behind the term “noise”? in short it refers the disparity of outcomes within a system that should be defined by consistency. For example, sentencing within the US legal system *should be relatively consistent, but it turns out that it’s not, and noise in this case refers to the root cause of these disparities. As a result, noise often goes unnoticed and can have a detrimental effect by creating a ‘lottery’ type series out outcomes especially based around recurrent decisions. Kahneman [along with Sibony and Sunstein] explore various aspects of this idea such as; predictive vs evaluative judgements, level noise vs pattern noise and how noise can effect group decisions [leading to groupthink] as well as concepts such as occasion noise [way too much to go into here but the book is well worth a read]
Which leads to the question; Can a noise-free environment be created and maintained? If so, how?
One of the many benefits of the Lego Serious Play method is the levelling of the discussion. Transparency then just happens as a result and a space is automatically created where deep discussion can take place with safety. Further methods can then involve making connections and landscapes allowing multiple perspectives and responses to be heard.
Similarly, Kahneman’s book also goes into detail about how after a “noise audit” these [sometimes terrifying] variations in judgement can be addressed. One of the critical aspects involves creating your less noisy environment with the people who form part of the system [rather than simply telling them to be less noisy]
Summarised as: If you have noisy systems in your organisation, it could be holding you back [quite a lot] to address this can I suggest that you run a series of workshops:
- Lego Serious Play to identify where the noise is coming from and going to.
- Design Thinking to create the less “noisy” environment as you move forward.
- Regular noise audits
- Rinse and repeat.
No need for ear defenders [and maybe not as many lawyers]
