32 MARCH 2018 • FOGHORN BUSINESSMATTERS As a leader in passenger vessel design, stability assessments and refurbishments, our vessels are not only beautiful, they’re also safe and efficient to operate while producing maximum profitability for owners. To bring Jensen on board for your next passenger vessel design or build, contact us at 206.332.8090 or visit our website at jensenmaritime.com. PASSENGER VESSEL DESIGNS: OPTIMIZED FOR PROFITABILITY gplink.com Put Your Fleet at Your Fingertips W hen I first entered the business world after the military, I didn’t under- stand why you couldn’t post every- one’s salaries on a wall and be totally transparent. It worked just fine in the military and there was so much drama in the corporate world about compen- sation. Many exasperated people tried to divert my enthusiasm for such an experiment. Finally, a very patient person showed me a newspaper article that claimed 85 percent of Americans believe they are above average drivers. In a flash I understood the chaos that I’d unleash with almost everyone benchmarking themselves as top per- formers. As a double dinosaur I had a lot to learn: I was the last class in engineering school that used slide rules and the last class in business school without PCs. This doesn’t surprise some, particularly my kids, who like to joke that I went to school in the 1870s. Throughout my career I have ignored many warning signs and should have learned the concept of confirmation bias a long time ago. That’s the tendency to spin information to confirm one’s preexisting beliefs or theories. Some angles about this bias: • You show it when you gather or remember information selectively or interpret it in a biased way; • It is stronger for emotionally- charged issues or deeply held beliefs; • Ambiguous information is shaped to support an existing position; and/or • It comes from wishful thinking or the limited human capacity to process information. I have made tons of mistakes when just about everyone else had seen the red warning flags. I’d want my new hire to be the latest star, putting them on a pedestal early in their tenure, which would only embarrass them and build resentment among my team. I’d ignore troubling trends for new ventures and turn tiny grains of good news into a big deal. Or, I wouldn’t fully grasp sincere, direct assessments until too late. This has been repeated throughout human history. Thucydides wrote in The Peloponnesian War “… for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.” As a society, we see that confirmation bias accelerating. Social media encour- ages our own echo chambers where Bias Versus Intuition By Bob Shaw, Industry Consultant