I’m back! I didn’t post anything last week because I went on my annual golf outing with my Board Of Advisors. All is well except my golf game.
I don’t know if you saw anything about a survey that was released last week. I did and I made a note to make it my first post upon my return because it makes a number of points that I think any of us could find useful in business. The survey was run by Civic Science which has been conducting online polling since 2008. It was a very simple question and the responses were astonishing, at least to me.
Should schools in America teach Arabic Numerals as part of their curriculum?
That’s the question. They surveyed over 3,600 people and over 2,000 of the respondents said “no.” That came out to 56% of respondents saying we shouldn’t teach the numerals we all use every day. Yep – those are Arabic numerals. Interesting, right? Kind of scary too because it reveals what happens when you allow yourself to answer a question based on your inherent feelings (or prejudices) without having a full understanding of the question being asked.
It wasn’t just a test of prejudice against the word “Arabic.” They also asked about teaching a Catholic priest’s theory on the origin of the universe. While obviously, it’s a much more obscure fact (the Big Bang theory was his idea), it shows once again that people will answer something without enough (or any) information based on inherent biases (53% said “no” to this, which is taught every day).
How often does that happen in your business setting? Someone starts to say something in response to a question in a meeting and suddenly it’s quite obvious that they have no idea about what they’ve been asked. It’s not just people answering the wrong question either. It’s quite possible to have an understanding of the question but no grasp of the facts required to answer it.
So here are three words (3 in Arabic numerals) to keep in mind: I don’t know. They can be hard to say, especially when you have a knee-jerk response to a question. But ask yourself if that response is based on fact or on your existing bias. You might be surprised what you’ll learn along the way as well as prevent your team from making a bad decision. Make sense?
Consult Keith 